In Susan Minot short story, "Lust", Minot main character in the story is a teenage girl attending boarding who is looking for acceptance by trying to fall in love but is using the idea of love to cover her longing for attention and comfort. Minot uses specific words to emphasize the characters loneliness and the search for an unrealistic idea of love.
Certain nights you’d feel a certain surrender, maybe if you’d had wine. The surrender would be forgetting yourself and you'd put your nose to his neck and feel like a squirrel, safe, at rest, in a restful dream. But then you'd make out the dim shape of the windows and feel yourself become a cave. Filled absolutely with air, or with a sadness that wouldn't stop. (Minot, 220)
Throughout the text
Minot character is depressed because she is victimizing herself. The character lacks attention and wants to feel “safe”, “at rest”, and “feel like a squirrel”, because those are comforting things to her and she is lacking that comfort at boarding school. She has an idea of what she wants but it is not realistic because of the effort she has to put into the relationship. She knows the men she is choosing are going to provide short term affection but that is not what she really wants. She wants to be in love but she has not grasped what love really is. She uses the word “certain” twice in the first sentence because she wants to emphasize that she is “certain” what she is looking for when she really is not. The word “surrender” echoes throughout the passage because she feels like she has to “surrender” herself to get attention which is just making her forget who she really is. She feels “dim” and like a “cave” because she is trapping herself in this idea of love. “feeling yourself become a cave” evokes a feeling of distress like everything around her is turning “dim” and that her life is closing in on her and there is only one way to go. The idea of turning into a “cave” in way creates this disturbing feeling like you can not get out and have to follow a “certain” path. she feels like a “cave” because she feels trapped in the idea of love and the type of men she is looking for comfort in. The “cave” feeling can also represent social pressures and the realization that the “sadness that won't stop” is because she is using love to substitute the lack of comfort and attention. Minot’s character is lonely and feels sad because she is looking for comfort in the idea of falling in love and the attention that it brings her. Her innocence was taken from her before boarding school because of her disconnect with her parents and the absence of parental guidance and structure she wants and has. You can tell she lacks acceptance from parental figure when she writes, “Parents never really know what's going on, especially when you're away at school most of the time” (Minot, 219). She tries to find attention that she is missing through her different love interests but it takes a bigger toll on her that she could imagine. Having so much attention from men but not the attention she is looking for is causing her to feel depressed. She wants to be in love but does not have any concrete conversations with any of the men she sleeps with in the story and using her looks and sex to get the attention she desperately wants. Throughout the story the character makes it sound like the men are using her for sex when in reality she is using them to fill a void.
I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand… Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past. (170)
"They turn casually to look at you, distracted, and get a mild distracted surprise, you're gone. Their blank look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared.(pg.263)" In Minot's story Lust you are play by play given the sequential events of a fifteen year old girls sex life. As portrayed by her thoughts after sex in this passage the girl is overly casual about the act of sex and years ahead of her time in her awareness of her actions. Minot's unique way of revealing to the reader the wild excursions done by this young promiscuous adolescent proves that she devalues the sacred act of sex. Furthermore, the manner in which the author illustrates to the reader these acts symbolizes the likeness of a list. Whether it's a list of things to do on the weekend or perhaps items of groceries which need to be picked up, her lust for each one of the boys in the story is about as well thought out and meaningful as each item which has carelessly and spontaneously been thrown on to a sheet of paper as is done in making a list. This symbolistic writing style is used to show how meaningless these relationships were but the deeper meaning of why she acted the way she did is revealed throughout the story. Minot cleverly displayed these catalysts in between the listings of her relationships.
he screamed it and he could not be sure if the scream awakened him or the pain in his stomach….Brian stood at the end of the long part of the lake and watched the water, smelled the water, listened to the water, was the water.” The first part of the quote shows how even in sleep you will have a desperation for someone to love and care about you and this book shows this feeling almost perfectly. The second part tell us that in depression you may resolve into isolation and emotion dullness. In these stages and in the book you can feel the struggle and the determination to get through the challenge to accepting the
In this poem the main character is lustful of both the new man she has met in Paris as well as the man she left behind her homeland, although she was under the false perception that it was love. The often confused words 'love' and 'lust' are becoming used interchangeably more and more every day. Indeed, many definitions are being loosened up, and many words are being used improperly. When people use the words 'love' and 'lust', they should be more careful which word it is that they mean to say.
Milestone 1: Literacy Analysis Paper: Love means loving someone unconditionally. Loving them with flaws and all. Love is a part of being human. How can you love without accepting the society you live in? Nowlan’s poem
“ I myself fell prey to wanderlust some years ago, desiring nothing better than to be a vagrant cloud scudding before the wind... But the year ended before I knew it... Bewitched by the god of restlessness, I lost my peace of mind; summoned by the spirits of the road, I felt unable to settle down to anything.”
The Lais of Marie de France is a compilation of short stories that delineate situations where love is just. Love is presented as a complex emotion and is portrayed as positive, while at other times, it is portrayed as negative. The author varies on whether or not love is favorable as is expressed by the outcomes of the characters in the story, such as lovers dying or being banished from the city. To demonstrate, the author weaves stories that exhibit binaries of love. Two distinct types of love are described: selfish and selfless. Love is selfish when a person leaves their current partner for another due to covetous reasons. Contrarily, selfless love occurs when a lover leaves to be in a superior relationship. The stark contrast between the types of love can be analyzed to derive a universal truth about love.
...ause of their own free will. The theme of love is widely portrayed in the world. Love matters because it is what ties two people together through commitment and pain. However, there are those who pervert the idea of love and treat it as if it is filled with lust and pleasure-seeking opportunities. In society, young and reckless people “go out” with each other because they are desperate for excitement in their lives. Those who “go out” fail to realize that they shouldn’t be so committed to one another. Therefore, it is a waste of time at such a young age. Those who do should be paying attention to reality instead of their own fantasy. If adolescent people have love, it is only a hindrance from being who they want to be. In conclusion, love influences people to behave irrationally and to take chances that would otherwise seem irresponsible in the eyes of the mature.
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... to be inside this precarious place, I was careful with every movement. As we both lay in our bags, the cave's darkness soon soothed our eyes and sleep came to our tired bodies. Striking camp early in the morning we traversed over the white, moon lit landscape. We arrived at the car for a late lunch, which ended our camping trip.
We all crave at some point in our lives social acceptance. Either we make an unnecessary joke, imitate others, embellish our style, or forwardly lie into a superficial identification. In the short story "Lust" by Susan Minot, the author creates and develops the main character as a girl who is emotionally disconnected and is craving for significance and attention. The author generates her not by her physical assets but rather by her emotions and actions. Susan Minot keeps the main character “unknown” and with no kosher name in order to construct the character. The narrator seeks acceptance and identity but through an unhealthy number of sexual encounters and as the she tries to find herself, she only loses herself into an even deeper sadness
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