Analyse af 'For Their Own Survival' af Ursula Hegi

Love is a relationship of mutual understanding, where the partners find themselves in new situation. Through a relationship you can find your identity, but this is not something you can do overnight. Lots of people spent a lot of time and energy trying to change that person into someone else, and exactly this may cause a lot of pain and bewilderment in the person. Finding your own identity is always complicated because you have to experience a lot of things and be challenged before you go through a development which leads to that you find your identity. Sometimes when you are being changed results in feelings of inferiority - am I not good enough the way I am? He or she may end up with not knowing who he or she really is. Such a relationship is doomed to fail in time. This is exactly what For Their Own Survival is about. For Their Own Survival was written by Ursula Hegi.

The story takes place during wintertime in Chicago and Mexican peninsula (south of California). The main character is Sam Fulton and the story line is seen through his eyes. In the story he looks back at his unsuccessful marriage with Liz, who was his wife. He is a lonely single man who doesn’t have children. He works as a principal in a school. He apparently has a great need of control; we see that in the description of his job in the army and the way he shapes Liz. Sam and Liz used to do everything together, and when she suddenly left he didn’t know what to do. This is a problem he still hasn’t overcome. In the beginning of the story he wants her back and therefore he reads books about the psychology of women just to know why Liz left him. Later on in the story he perhaps wants to forget about her, which may be the reason why he goes back to the place where they had spent their last holiday together. Before Sam met Liz she was a shy and worried painter who did have any success: “She’d come into the marriage a shy, worried woman, a failed painter” (l. 85-86). When Liz met Sam he had changed her a lot without her noticing it. He had removed all the shy parts of her and made her a dependent woman. She liked being controlled and to have someone to lead her on the right track, but inside her, although lived a person who wanted to be alone and independent. This side appeared when she left Sam.