Analyse af novellen 'A Simple Exchange of Niceties'

The short story “A simple Exchange of Niceties” is about a young girl, who is pregnant. She is the narrator in the short story. She is thinking about a bench in the park, it is one of the places where she feels accepted. She wants the bench for herself, we can see in the story what she said about the bench “I know it’s stupid to be possessive about things that don’t belong to you, but I like to think of that bench as my bench”. The story is situated at the bench, where she revolve on the reality of her being pregnant, and what the baby means/ not means to her.

The young girl became pregnant by an accident “He fucked me from every direction and on every surface in my apartment”. It was not supposed to happen. That is the exact same way she feels about herself; that she was not supposed to happen. She is very degrading on herself. She doesn’t believe that she will ever amount anything and she doesn’t believe that she was meant to be a mother. She doesn’t even care about having a child. The father to the unborn child is also a young man. He is not ready to have a child; he is not even close to the point in life where you decide to have children. His mouth is dirty, and by that I mean that he used to call the pregnant girl for a slut and a whore. She thinks that she is in love with him, but I would say that she is confused about her situation and believes that it would be a lot easier if she had someone by her side. She doesn’t trust anyone, and don’t think that anyone is there to help her. She is not open to new people and doesn’t want to talk to anyone even if someone wants to talk to her; she cuts them off nicely and let them know that she is not interested in talking. She sees herself as a superior, in the way that she judges everyone. She doesn’t like to listen to people or help them with their problems or well being.