Essay Divorced, Beheaded, Survived - 1249 Words

B â€Å"...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived† A short story written by Robin Black in 2010. Death is an issue everybody has to face at some point in their lives. The only thing we know for certain as human beings is that we are mortal. We do not know why we are here and how we got here, however we definitely know that someday we are going to die. Nevertheless, death is also a very vulnerable topic and it is difficult to know how to handle it when and we all have different ways of dealing with death. In the short story â€Å"...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived† (2010) by Robin Black we meet the I-narrator, Sarah, her husband Lyle and their two children Mark and Coco. The short story deals with themes such as death, memories, childhood and the†¦show more content†¦From line 52 to 65 we are introduced to Sarah’s contemporary family, her children and her husband. Then another flashback appears and the tense switches from present tense to past tense. From line 65, page 3, to line 126, page 5, we hear about the car accident through dialogues from the day it happened and through passages of descriptions. Subsequently the tense switches from past to present from line 127 to 130 where Sarah describes her feelings about Terry’s death. In this passage she reflects about the fact that when you are dead, as loved as you may be, you may also be forgotten. There appears another flashback from line 131 to line 147 where Sarah memorises an episode ten years ago where she decided to put away a picture of Terry as soon as Mark was old enough to ask questions because the line between Mark and Terry was too easily drawn. She hides the picture in the dresser where she also keeps her gloves and her really fine scarves, which is a symbol of her protecting her brother and maybe the gloves are a symbol of Sarah still holding him tightly with her hands, heart and memory. From line 147 to 156 the tense goes from past to present again. She is describing how Mark handles the death of Peter and how his little sister Coco is worried about him because he does not speak to his friends. However, because Sarah has experienced death in an early age too, she is not