Short stories are just that, short. They show a small part of the character's lives to convey a message. Both Russell Banks's "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story" and Jhumpa Lahiri's "A Temporary Matter" tell stories that reflect the ways people treat the ones they love and show the temporary nature of love when people are too different. Both stories are about failed relationships and dig into exactly why the relationships failed.
In "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story" we see the narrator, Ron, enter into and depart from a relationship with a woman named Sarah. Ron describes Sarah as "the homeliest woman [he] has ever known" (Banks 1). He pursues her out of some morbid curiosity. He is in no way attracted to her, but for some reason, he seeks out a relationship with her and claims to be in love with her. However, Ron seems to take Sarah for granted, only really showing affection when they have sex. Ultimately, the audience sees that the relationship fails because they are too different. Ron's life is far more glamorous than Sarah's and they come apart because of their different attitudes and lifestyle choices.
The relationship in "A Temporary Matter" is very different. We are presented with a married couple who has recently lost a child. The narrative primarily follows Shukumar, so we mainly see his perspective. Through his descriptions, we see that the couple has been changing and Shukumar feels that things are different. He describes his wife, Shoba, as "looking... like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble" (Lahiri 1). It is the change in attitude that ultimately ends their relationship. Shukumar still maintains his belief that they are working out their problems, but Shoba has changed her mind. She wants something different. By building up to telling him that she is leaving, she inadvertently builds up his hope that they will be able to repair their relationship. This relationship also fails because they develop very different attitudes that no longer mesh.
Both stories show reasons that people who supposedly love each other will trick each other. They also build an image of love that is temporary and fragile. The depictions of love they give are proven to be unsustainable and fail in the end due to the differences between the characters in the relationships. Ron and Sarah are from very different social and economic spheres, while Shoba and Shukumar have grown apart and fallen out of love. The stories are different circumstances, but they both show how fragile and temporary love is as well as how circumstances can easily cause a relationship to fail.
You have a very in-depth description of each story, but since your focus in on themes, I think it would have been beneficial to describe how the author portrayed love in his/her work rather than summarize the narration and focussing on the characters. You did a really god job of connecting the stories into one, clear, overarching idea. I think it would strengthen your last paragraph if there were more specific examples. Also, could you find any instances of differences in in their portrayal of love between the two stories? A counter argument could possibly strengthen your argument. It was interesting to read about two somewhat different stories compared in this way.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEach of your paragraphs do a good job of explaining the two stories you are speaking of and how love is handled within them. The examples and quotations you utilized in describing both Ron and Sarah Cole's relationship and Shoba and Shukumar's relationship are very beneficial to proving how fragile and temporary love is for these couples. I think that your introduction and thesis could be stronger and you could do that by making a more concrete thesis statement to explain your essay and the point you are going to cover. Also, your conclusion is slightly repetitive with the fragile and temporary statements about love that you include. I think you could strengthen it by talking about the couples and comparing their situations more in the end or by simply cutting out a sentence with the mention of fragile love. Overall, it was very interesting to read and see in the different light of the stories being focused on love and how fragile it can be.
ReplyDelete