Analyse af 'Divorced, Beheaded, Survived'

Death is an inevitable part of life and loosing a relative is never easy. It is hard to move on if a person close to you dies. Therefore, one must tackle the pain and sorrow. In Robin Black’s short story, “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”, the theme is death. It focuses on the problems that death can bring and how it could affect an ordinary family.

Robin Black writes the short story in 2010. It is about an unnamed mother, who reflects her life ad a past-tense narrator. It is based upon the events of her brother’s death and the acts shortly before his dead. The short story starts in media res. However, the story jumps frequently in time from past to present and the other way around. The flowing structure makes it quite interesting to read. It is not difficult to keep track of the time, even though the story takes place over 30 years.

The mother used to play in the garden with her friends when she was a child. Her older brother Terry played with them too. Johnny Sanderson was a friend of both the narrator and Terry. He was the ‘director’ of the role-play they used to play. It dealt with King Henry the 8th’s different wives and their different fates. His first wife was divorced, the second one was beheaded and the final one died a natural death.