Subject
Re: "Sign and Symbol" poll (fwd)
Date
Body
From: JAMES MCSHANE, LL <JAMESMC@queens.lib.ny.us>
The lady or the tiger?
I have not read any of the literary criticism on this story so
excuse me if I go where everyone has gone before.
The third phone call is just this young woman calling back -- or
news of their son's successful suicide?
The evidence overwhelmingly points to the latter because these two
people don't deserve the happiness they are experiencing at the end
of the story. Not only do they not deserve this happiness, the wife
previously realized that for them, "living did mean accepting the
loss of one joy after another."
Let's face it, these two are poor excuses for human beings. What
kind of person would buy for their son -- ill or well -- a basket
of jellies! And when they finally do what might be construed as the
decent thing -- deciding to bring their son home out of this
horrible institution -- it is only because the old man feels that
he himself is dying!
We should be rooting for the young man "to tear a hole in his world
and escape." I think that Nabokov allowed him to do just that.
The lady or the tiger?
I have not read any of the literary criticism on this story so
excuse me if I go where everyone has gone before.
The third phone call is just this young woman calling back -- or
news of their son's successful suicide?
The evidence overwhelmingly points to the latter because these two
people don't deserve the happiness they are experiencing at the end
of the story. Not only do they not deserve this happiness, the wife
previously realized that for them, "living did mean accepting the
loss of one joy after another."
Let's face it, these two are poor excuses for human beings. What
kind of person would buy for their son -- ill or well -- a basket
of jellies! And when they finally do what might be construed as the
decent thing -- deciding to bring their son home out of this
horrible institution -- it is only because the old man feels that
he himself is dying!
We should be rooting for the young man "to tear a hole in his world
and escape." I think that Nabokov allowed him to do just that.