'Yellow' og 'Tintern Abbey': analyse af død og natur

Life is an uncertain matter, and the only thing we all know is, that we are going to die eventually. Some people want to make the most of life and enjoy every moment, but some people give up when meeting resistance, because it seems useless to keep fighting for something in the notion of that life is going to end some day. This is the state of mind of the main-character in “Yellow”.

The short story “Yellow” is written by Peter Carty. It is a story about the main-character Jon who has been forced by his editor to go to Egypt, where he was supposed to learn how to scuba dive. Jon is a second-string writer at a London listing magazine. Throughout the story the reader gets a notion of the way the main-character and the narrator look upon the nature of death, loneliness and failure.

Jon is a very pessimistic man, whose love life hangs in tatters and who drowns his problems in alcohol, which is clearly a warning of the way he drowns himself later on, and also a preparation for his following death. He likes to stay alone and make his life easier by drinking alcohol, which is seen in line 8 “He locked the door of his room against them, and tucked into his duty-free.” He is also described as very nervous man, who is ashamed of himself because of his lack of courage and ability to take a stand in his life. This is seen in line 62 “You’re yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow.” The fact that he keeps calling himself yellow shows he sees himself as a coward because the colour yellow, in US English, is associated with cowardice. He is the complete opposite of the other man in the diving class; Brian who, despite having worked as a brewer for many years, does not drown his sorrows in alcohol. Jon’s cowardice is seen throughout his diving lessons, where he is very nervous, because he is unfamiliar with diving. His lack of courage is also seen in the way he solves his problems. Instead of talking to his girlfriend about their problems, he goes on the trip to Egypt alone, where he hides alone in the hotel room with a bottle of gin. He feels that his problems have grown bigger and bigger and he sees no solution to them, because he is a coward who just finds it easier to drink them away.