The story takes place in Chicago and in a Mexican village. It is told in third person, but the narrator knows all about the main-character, Sam Fulton. The narrator knows how Sam feels and thinks: “… it struck him as absurd to…”. But the narrator is not all-knowing. We get to know Sam’s wife, Liz, through the things that Sam knows about her. For example: when Liz has left Sam, it is written that she: “…had certainly been prepared when she had left him.” We only know this because Sam thinks about how he had broken her down and built her up again.
Sam compares Liz to the soldiers he once trained and treats her like them too. He does not yell at her and he does not put her through hard survival tests, but he makes her give in to him at such a high level that he can turn her into the woman he thinks she needs to be – for her own survival. And he succeeds. You can compare it to the two pictures from The Pygmalion Series. Pygmalion creates a statue of a woman, a dead statue, which he falls in love with. The statue is then later brought to life, but we must remember that when things are brought to life, they have their own will and can therefore do what they please. In Liz’s case she leaves. She had been brought to life in the matter of becoming a strong and independent woman. She no longer needs Sam to guide her and protect her. She will no longer go crazy without his love. She has learned to survive.
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