Author: schoenem

“I don’t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields” (190). I read this as the narrator dying and going to heaven to be with Louise, in the second sentence of the paragraph the narrator begins describing a scene which to me seemed like them dying, the walls exploding and the room growing to hold the whole world feels very dramatic death-like to me, they go on to describe open fields and being able to look dow at the whole world, giving a very heaven-like feel to the scene. If they are describing death it would mean that they would finally be with Louise again, hence why it would be a happy ending but at the same time they would have died. In the paragraph Louise is described as being paler and thinner, but still warm with bright hair, I read this as her having died and being a figment of the narrator’s imagination, particularly because it was followed by what seems to be the narrator’s death.

“It’s flattering to believe that you and only you, the great lover, could have done this.” (15) The author likes to believe that they are the only one who could have gotten in the way of their girlfriends marriage as unhappy as it might have already been. This passage compares the author’s girlfriend’s marriage to an empty shell, this is how the author views their girlfriends marriage but I think that in some ways the author views themselves as a damaged shell, in the way their life seems completely focused around being with all of these women through their life and not being in any relationships that would be viewed as “typical” or “healthy” and instead being in ones that have to be hidden and the relationship itself damages another relationship that the girlfriend is already committed to.