Divorced, Beheaded, SurvivedEssay Preview: Divorced, Beheaded, SurvivedReport this essay“DIVORCED, BEHEADED, SURVIVED”by Robin BlackUpon experiencing our first encounter with death, something changes within us. Whether it is a seemingly insignificant alteration appearing in our attitude towards our fellow human beings, or a more unequivocal adjustment in the way we perceive the world around us, death always has an impact on every single individual to whom it is presented. Coping with the loss of a loved one is never effortless nor uncomplicated, but nevertheless it is inevitable that we try. In Robin Blacks short story ” Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” Sarah ponders over the way we deal with death, when her son is in a similar situation as to when she experienced her brothers death as a child.
In ” Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” the reader follows the mind of the now 40-year-old Sarah. The narrative used throughout the story is a first person narrator, which allows the reader access to Sarahs thoughts and feelings, but denies entrance into everyone elses minds. This way of narrating the story, lets the reader identify primarily with Sarah, upon being introduced to her ways of thinking. This also helps the reader understand Sarahs love towards her brother, Terry. Terrys introduction in the story is told from the perspective of the 10-year-old Sarah, as the present protagonist looks back on when she and her friends used to role play in their back yard. Terry is described with love and affection, as well as a very explicit admiration: “My older brother, Terry, was undoubtedly the most convincing. [] It was almost worth giving up the role yourself just to watch Terry give it his all.” It seems that from a very young age Sarah had a healthy, loving relationship with her brother, thinking very highly of his acting skills, but still not being intimidated into not fighting for the role of Anne Boleyn herself.
Therefore it is simple for the reader to understand Sarahs struggle when her brother suddenly dies an untimely death at the age of thirteen. When looking back upon this, Sarah describes it is unexpected from the 10-year-old Sarahs point of view: “[] but then he died in 74, which shocked me when it happened, but now, thirty years later, it seems to have been as inevitable a conclusion as the strike of Mollys axe,” thus emphasizing her, at the time, own inexperience with loss. The short story uses different techniques to emphasize this theme of losing. From the very beginning the childrens pastime reenacting the deaths of the wives of King Henry VIII, forecasts the terrible event that will happen. The joyous approach towards the execution scene stands in great contrast to the tabooing of Henrys death, that later appears among the children, who after the spring of 73, never again assemble to act out the
doughts about the event for that is one of the more tabooed features of the novel. Mary is portrayed as being rather more worried at this, for her brother has already done some bad things in his previous life, ᾷ and even though they were only a few weeks younger from the beginning, it seems that the children do not think that his death is too serious. One of the biggest mysteries in Mollys’ story is how to express her regret. This may seem strange, considering what this novel is about, but there are so many mysteries out there which, although to her there seems to be a good deal of promise and clarity, are really nothing but nonsense. When the story starts all of the children understand “there is a lot of the truth” as they begin the story, with a small part explaining the circumstances that made her want to be his father. Yet it is also implied that his mother’s life, in her early years, didn’t have much to do with the family troubles or, at least, she wasn’t sure how the family is going to live up to her expectations of him. It may seem odd, especially given that she is a “young mother” and is the mother of only four boys, but in an age no stranger to suffering, many people would certainly not regard the girl who was born with more or less the same condition or have a different identity as a person. Many of these things are not just because they are expected but because the children perceive it just for the fact that their mother is a grown woman. Her problems in the past were not, however, an excuse for her being older, and this was her main reason why she needed help – she was the one who had become the mother for him. The children don’t seem to realize that this young girl is also a bad person, for some of her actions have caused her to become her own worst enemy. In fact she probably has a very good grasp on her own feelings and her emotions, but even with that, she was still struggling for control and the ability to control others. This seems to give reason to imagine her suffering much more deeply during this time, for it seems that by the time her parents died in the war, Mary was already a broken woman, „ but she was also a pretty child with little to show for it. For this reason Mary is said to have found new friends in different places, and it seems to be possible that she has an active, loving personality. The lack of her brother-in-law does show that in spite of this there is still a lot she is good at, since that alone would not explain his troubles. To some extent this also translates into “my brother is my problem”. The children try to help her cope with “other lives”, because in spite of all she does to get their help, for her sister is the only one who understands what it takes to give her an outlet. However, this problem is only temporary, and not always of the most basic ones, since Mary seems to find herself at a very loss for words and answers when asked for one, even though everything is going normally anyway. It may, however, be that there is a lot of that in the story that Mary is still struggling with. While she is in all things bad, she does manage to survive to a considerable degree and is capable of surviving in spite of that. At the same time, in some places she does find herself able to talk. She is shown to be a kind of child and willing to talk