Analyse af Robin Blacks novelle '...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived'

The death – and with that the grief – is not a state of emergency. It is normality. It is something we frequently meet through life. Either directly, when a member of the family, a colleague or a friends dies, or indirectly when someone in our circle of acquaintances loses one of their closest. Death is, however, an inevitable part of life. Therefore, one must tackle the sorrow and pain that death may cause. A theme the short story “…Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”, written by Robin Black in 2010, focuses on – the problems that death can bring upon an ordinary family, which an average person may, or may not be aware of. The short story …Divorced, Beheaded, Survived is about a woman who is not thorough described; she appears as a mother named Sarah (p. 2 l. 47)”Great, Sarah. Really, really great.” who reflects her life as a past-tense narrator throughout the action. The composition in the short story is very distinctively, based on the media res in the beginning (p. 1 l. 1) “Without question, Anna Boleyn was the plum role”. Accordingly the story jumps frequently in time from past to present and in reverse order, it revolves around two places in time, her childhood and the present. Despite this confusion in the structure, one does not lose track of when and where, we are in the narrator’s life throughout the story. Instead the structure makes the story quite interesting and capturing to read. The short story is based upon the events of the protagonist brother’s death, and the acts they played with their friends shortly before the tragedy (p. 2 l. 48-49) “That was the spring of fourth grade for me, 1973 – the last months before Terry got sick, and then sicker, and then got better for a little bit, but then died In ’74...” The protagonist’s brother Terry catches a terminal sickness, which causes him to die only a few months after their final role-play in the backyard. The play dealt with King Henry the 8th’s different wives and their different fates. The first wife was divorced from Henry the 8th, the second one was beheaded and the final one died a natural dead – therefore saying (p. 3 l. 43) “Divorced, Beheaded, died.” The dead of Terry has fatal consequences for the protagonist, as she is being filled with despair and the feeling of an unjustified loss. The loss of her brother, Terry, seems like a heavy burden on her shoulders. A burden she prefers deny oneself (p. 3 l. 49-51) “… but then died in ’74, which shocked me when it happened, but now, thirty years later, it seems to have been as inevitable a conclusion as the strike of Molly’s axe”. Thirty years later she is still carrying the grief for her lost brother, and she compares the feeling with the strike of Molly’s axe back at the play (p. 3 l. 45) “Nothing pleased me more those afternoons than when, as Molly’s head hit my neck…” It is revealed in the story, that what appears as to be ‘present’ takes place thirty years after Terry’s death. The protagonist is clearly affected by her brother’s death even though thirty years has passed. In the present the protagonist lives with her husband Lyle, her son Mark and her daughter Coco. As a mother she is very determined to the fact, that her children’s mutual relationship shouldn’t be similar to her own childhood. (p. 3 l. 60-62) “… Mark and Coco are four years apart – we had been two apart. Terry and I. And maybe it was superstition that made me wait that extra stretch of time before getting pregnant again. I don’t know.” She automatically compares her own relationship with her brother Terry, to the relationship between her own children. Perhaps she wants her own children, Mark and Coco, to build up the relationship she and her own brother lost, because of his sickness. (p. 4 l. 105-107) “There was no more ease between us. Not even between my brother and me. I didn’t know how to speak quiet, solemn boy he had become. And he didn’t seem to need me, anymore.” One day while the protagonist is in the kitchen, the phone rings. It is one of Mark’s friends, Nick, calling to say that Mark’s friend Peter had been killed in a car accident. When she delivers the bad news to her son Mark, he is obviously shocked. (p. 5 l. 118-126) “My son’s face changed as he took in the news. “He’s dead?” I nodded. He shook his head. “No. That’s impossible. Just yesterday…” I nodded again; and he still shook his head… “Mom, he can’t be dead.” I didn’t speak. Can’t be. I know that feeling. Can’t be. But is” Off all people she can relate to the feeling her son Mark is feeling. The protagonist is obviously affected by both her son’s reaction to the news as well as the fact that she has experienced the same feeling of anger and confusing due to the death of her own brother.