3.1.3. “Free Radicals”
The next short story under analysis is entitled “Free Radicals.” The story is told by a omniscient third person narrator focalized in the protagonist of the story named Nita. The story is set in the past, with no time-shifts to the present or the future. The first pages of the story are devoted to narrate some details about Nitaʼs life. She is sixty-two years old and has unexpectedly lost her husband, Rich, not a long time ago. Nita has been diagnosed with cancer a year before. Therefore, they both thought that she would die before Rich. Nita was Richʼs second wife, who had been married to a woman named Bett. Nita and Rich met at university, where she worked in the Registrarʼs Office and he as a teacher. Then, after Richʼs divorce, they got married and moved to the small vacation house that Rich and his ex-wife had bought.
One of the quite mornings after Richʼs death, Nita opens the front door of her house to cool it a bit and she finds a man standing outside. He claims to have come to …show more content…
At first, when I read Nitaʼs invented story, two possible interpretations came to mind: either Nita could have killed his husbandʼs lover or, from the start of the story, Nita was not really Nita but Bett. Nevertheless, the text reveals that the story is invented afterwards: “Dear Bett, Rich is dead and I have saved my life by becoming you” (136). Besides, this fragment suggests a third possible event: Nita could have killed his husband Rich. The unspecified cause of death of his healthy husband together with Nitaʼs ability to invent stories and lie make the reader speculate about it. Furthermore, the enigmatic ending of the story invite not to trust Nita: “These days you never know. Never know”(137). Thus, what this also proves is what Miller says in his book On literature, the fact that readers are forced to trust what a literary piece says because we cannot go beyond the words of the
The next short story under analysis is entitled “Free Radicals.” The story is told by a omniscient third person narrator focalized in the protagonist of the story named Nita. The story is set in the past, with no time-shifts to the present or the future. The first pages of the story are devoted to narrate some details about Nitaʼs life. She is sixty-two years old and has unexpectedly lost her husband, Rich, not a long time ago. Nita has been diagnosed with cancer a year before. Therefore, they both thought that she would die before Rich. Nita was Richʼs second wife, who had been married to a woman named Bett. Nita and Rich met at university, where she worked in the Registrarʼs Office and he as a teacher. Then, after Richʼs divorce, they got married and moved to the small vacation house that Rich and his ex-wife had bought.
One of the quite mornings after Richʼs death, Nita opens the front door of her house to cool it a bit and she finds a man standing outside. He claims to have come to …show more content…
At first, when I read Nitaʼs invented story, two possible interpretations came to mind: either Nita could have killed his husbandʼs lover or, from the start of the story, Nita was not really Nita but Bett. Nevertheless, the text reveals that the story is invented afterwards: “Dear Bett, Rich is dead and I have saved my life by becoming you” (136). Besides, this fragment suggests a third possible event: Nita could have killed his husband Rich. The unspecified cause of death of his healthy husband together with Nitaʼs ability to invent stories and lie make the reader speculate about it. Furthermore, the enigmatic ending of the story invite not to trust Nita: “These days you never know. Never know”(137). Thus, what this also proves is what Miller says in his book On literature, the fact that readers are forced to trust what a literary piece says because we cannot go beyond the words of the