Hi all. :)
Welcome to the analysis of this story.
Now, bear in mind that literature may be interpreted in an innumerable amount of ways so long as one is able to provide valid justification from the text to corroborate one's views.
This analysis I'm offering is merely to be able to understand my intention for the story and plot as well as my abridged exploration of the themes evident.
Hence, this is inherently subjective and if you choose to interpret the story in a completely different way, that's fine!
Anyway, allow me to begin.
In essence ,the woman - the narrator - is dead. She was killed through ''the accident'' which happened before the story began. Meaning she is only really alive in the story through the reminiscing.
The reason she's even here to narrate is because she's a wraith. Her spirit is bound to the earth, she is unable to pass on.
She drifts through her old house and notices, daily, the neglect the home suffers due to her doting husband's grief.
He is entirely incapable of coping with his dear wife's death, hence his suicide through VAE. (See ''catch me at the worst time'')
The reason the husband appeared to ignore his wife is because he cannot see her! Her body is no more. Her soul is intangible. She is able to see him but he is unfortunately oblivious to her presence.
A truly sad tale of love and loss.
I have always been a depressed, closet die-hard romantic, therefore I wished to display a morbid manifestation of love; dying for each other. Tremendously melodramatic, I'm aware!
The essential purpose of this story is to illustrate that however invincible we may think we are, however everlasting we might feel our love will be, it will end. We will end. Things fragment, things die. New things are born to take their place. The cycle continues indefinitely.
So love as fiercely as you can while you still have the opportunity.
Life may be the longest thing any of us do, but it is over in a disappointing instant if it has been wasted.
Leave feedback if you wish and an enormous thank you to my readers - no, friends that have supported me through this work.
Love hard and without regrets.
Laura. ♡
YOU ARE READING
When He Stopped Listening
Short StoryWinner of the 2016 Anti-Watty Awards. his eyes glazed his tea grew cold his calloused hands trembled he gradually stopped listening to me he never came back
