For Esme With Love And Squalor Analysis

1. In “For Esme with Love and Squalor”, the first half of the story is just the meeting of our narrator and Esme. It sets up the second half of the story, which is really the core of story, chock full of literary themes, such as isolation, death, ignorance, friendship and recovery. The second half of our story our narrator who is a soldier in WW II, just like most soldier in wars, is greatly effected in a negative way by the horrors that he witnesses. The threat of death creeping over his shoulders, and around every corner, gives him PTSD. In an attempt to deal this crazy situation he finds himself in he now refers to himself as Sergeant X. This is likely him disassociating from himself and the horrors the war has shown him. This is the only …show more content…
The possibility of death greatly effects both Jozef Pronek and Sergeant X. In a way the possibility of death effects them both similarly. The fear of possible death causes both of them to become and alienated from the world surrounding them and without anyone to care for them. Although Sergeant X lives with several officers he seeks no social interaction with any of them. He feels that everyone in his life are ignorant to ravages of war that he has seen. This is shown in how he reacts to the way all of his supposed loved ones, minus of course Esme, react to his situation, with essentially no compassion and care for his wellbeing. This is similar to the way that the people around Pronek have no care for his wellbeing. Pronek is strongly affected by the ravages of War in his homeland. The only people in his life that could care for his wellbeing and how he is being effected are Andrea and maybe possibly Carwin. But just like Sergeant X’s wife, brother and mother in law, they show no empathy, and could care less. Andrea shows she really does not care for Pronek, as she just up and leaves, in order to get some space, and Carwin would rather play tecmo bowl or watch sitcom reruns than listen to the peril that his roommates’ loved ones may be going through. Andrea and Carwin have no empathy for Pronek at all. The way death effects Pronek and X are also different as well, in the fact that it instills in Pronek the hope of his families’ safety. It makes him miss them and hope that he will be reunited with them. Sergeant X on the other hand, becomes so detached from his loved ones, they show him no empathy or consideration. So much so that he becomes disillusioned with them alienated from them world, losing his faculties. Luckily he is brought back by