A Birthday Remembered
A birthday remembered essay
Love is very complicated, not just butterflies in one’s stomach, but it also involves a lot of pain. The pain is not easy to drain. We have to confront ourselves with the pain and get over it, but that’s easier said than done. We restrain our feelings and try to forget them. This only causes an even bigger pain. That is the situation for Ellen, the main character in this short story. Ellen’s love life has been complicated, she is a lesbian and obliged to listen to people’s prejudices. Her one and only love, Jackie, dies caused by an incurable illness and she is not allowed to bury her “She has not been allowed to do this one last thing for Jackie. To be with her during the last rituals.” (l.24-25). Because of Jackie’s former husband, Roger, whom she has left to live with Ellen, but he could not accept his wife being a lesbian, because of his man-stubbornness and he even tried to declare her temporarily insane (l.15). Jackie’s daughter on the other hand thinks that what Ellen and Jackie had was wonderful and beautiful, but you don’t know yet if she’s a lesbian herself or a heterosexual (l.102).
The short story is written in third-person (l. 8) “why shouldn’t she?” The narrator is not omniscient, but we have inner-angel from Aunt El since we only “hear” thoughts from her, and not from Tobie or Warrick. (line. 104) “She felt the shock of the words”. You can’t really tell if the narrator is reliable or not, since we don’t know which connection he has to any of those in the story. Neither does he try to make anyone to seem like the “bad guy”, but the narrator is making us feel sorry for Aunt El, for her big lost Jackie. (L. 24 & 89) “She hadn’t been allowed to do this one last thing for Jackie” “but we have to get used to living without loved ones”.
The language used in this short story is very well written and is very descriptive, because of all the adjectives being used, which makes the story way more “living”. (l. 12) “Roger had
Love is very complicated, not just butterflies in one’s stomach, but it also involves a lot of pain. The pain is not easy to drain. We have to confront ourselves with the pain and get over it, but that’s easier said than done. We restrain our feelings and try to forget them. This only causes an even bigger pain. That is the situation for Ellen, the main character in this short story. Ellen’s love life has been complicated, she is a lesbian and obliged to listen to people’s prejudices. Her one and only love, Jackie, dies caused by an incurable illness and she is not allowed to bury her “She has not been allowed to do this one last thing for Jackie. To be with her during the last rituals.” (l.24-25). Because of Jackie’s former husband, Roger, whom she has left to live with Ellen, but he could not accept his wife being a lesbian, because of his man-stubbornness and he even tried to declare her temporarily insane (l.15). Jackie’s daughter on the other hand thinks that what Ellen and Jackie had was wonderful and beautiful, but you don’t know yet if she’s a lesbian herself or a heterosexual (l.102).
The short story is written in third-person (l. 8) “why shouldn’t she?” The narrator is not omniscient, but we have inner-angel from Aunt El since we only “hear” thoughts from her, and not from Tobie or Warrick. (line. 104) “She felt the shock of the words”. You can’t really tell if the narrator is reliable or not, since we don’t know which connection he has to any of those in the story. Neither does he try to make anyone to seem like the “bad guy”, but the narrator is making us feel sorry for Aunt El, for her big lost Jackie. (L. 24 & 89) “She hadn’t been allowed to do this one last thing for Jackie” “but we have to get used to living without loved ones”.
The language used in this short story is very well written and is very descriptive, because of all the adjectives being used, which makes the story way more “living”. (l. 12) “Roger had