Engelsk analyse af Land of the Lost

Everybody needs a close friend or family especially when they are old. It is important to speak with other people and see that someone loves you. If you cannot see that you are loved, then you will often feel alone and thus in some way lost. In “Land of the Lost” by Stewart O’Nan our main character is an unnamed older woman who is alone. While the short story shows what the woman does to find the missing girl, it is clear that loneliness is the worst thing for older people. The main character is an older woman who is lonely. After her ex-husband and her two adult sons leave her, she feels very lonely. Her only real friend is Ollie who is a “(…) German shepherd, as her sole companion” (p.1, l.2). She cannot see that she is loved anymore because it is not enough that her sons only visit her sometimes. Furthermore, the main character’s jobposition as a cashier at a BI-LO is not of very high social status. Additionally, her manager from work had to ask her to stop discussing the missing girl. To summarize, things are going bad for her, therefore she wants to find her. As readers, we see the point of view from her perspective. When she gives her bad opinions of herself and the world in the narrative, the reader sees her views and inner thoughts. That means she also wants to show her sons, the coworkers, and other people from her town that she is not crazy because she is trying to find the girl. Her loneliness and unfortunate events lead her to try to find the girl. There are many situations in which her loneliness is a problem and causes her to try desperately to find the young girl. She is bored and when she starts to inquire the matter of the missing girl, it begins to be too much. Often in the middle of night she walks with her dog in Kingswell where she lives and where the girl is buried. She has a file of the case and she finds some places that look interesting to dig into. She also has called FBI one time, but they did not find anything. Then her son says she must stop, but she does not give up. In the end, she finds the girl in “(…) the shell of a sleeping bag, she could see the thick seam of the zipper. With a finger she wiped at the crumbling mud, revealing rusty teeth” (p. 4, l. 135). The text does not say directly that she is dead, but it is implied. Normally when someone finds a dead body they do not think about what others would say about you finding it and stuff like “then everyone would know she wasn’t crazy” (p.4, l. 141), but our main character says that in the end. It sounds like she does not want to find the girl to help the family, but to show all that she is not stupid. That is egoistic. In short, her loneliness is a problem because she does dangerous investigations which police must do and not her. It also looks like she is selfish.