Summary Of The Ways We Grieve By Ralph Ryback

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In the article The Ways We Grieve written by Ralph Ryback, readers are enlightened on the inevitable stages of grief from loss, to despair, to recovery. One of his focal points was on Grief is more than just sadness “Grief can manifests itself in the form of immense emotional and physical suffering, and we may experience anything from anger to denial, to guilt, to sadness and despair.” (Ryback 2017). The audience of “The Rabbit Hole” can see this through the character Becca which ends up affecting her relationships. Becca: “I’ll get you a basket of Mustela lotions instead. They Prevent stretch marks.” Izzy: “Becca, let go.” (Lindsay-Abaire 47) this scene exposes Becca’s true emotional despair affecting her relationship with even her own sister. …show more content…

The structure of this short story begins with introducing Shyla as well as her past to create some kind of sympathy for Shaila as a socially segregated individual due to her religion/ethnicity. Since the story is told in first-person narrative by the griever Shaila, then this helps create the structure as well. Readers soon see Shaila’s stoic approach to her losses from the plane crash as well as the actual characters within the story making the overall message more realistic. “By the standards of the people you call hysterical, I am behaving very oddly and very badly, Miss Templeton.” (Mukherjee 976). This is Shaila referring to her people who are being suspected and considered “hysterical” by people such as Miss Templeton. Hindus grieve with ceremonies and religious practices in order to maintain a sane and religious lifestyle and this is where readers see her instinctual grief opposed to cultural grief. Because of this, Shaila’s family begins to worry because this is abnormal for a Hindu to reject cultural grief. But, readers see her culture negatively affecting Shaila’s grieving process when she describes her feelings towards the way she should feel and the way she does feel. Thus, this shows that religions and culture can interfere with the way the individual

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