“The Love of My Life” by T.C Boyle is a story about immaturity. Jeremy and China, the two main characters, are two students in a relationship. They graduate highschool but before they leave for college they spend time camping. During the trip China gets pregnant and the two leave for separate colleges. Boyle uses an external conflict, a physical setting, simile, and literal imagery to tell a story about immaturity. The central idea is immaturity. Both Jeremy and China are essentially children and their actions often display selfishness, ignorance, and recklessness: “she had forgotten to pack her pills and he had only two condoms with him, and it wasn’t as if there were a drugstore around the corner” (citation). In this passage Jeremy and
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After the baby is delivered Jeremy ends its life in an effort to restore their previous lives: “Fifteen minutes. That was all it took. He bundled up everything, every trace, left the key in the box at the desk, and stood scraping the ice off the windshield of his car while the night opened up above him to a black glitter of sky. He never gave a thought to what lay discarded in the Dumpster out back, itself wrapped in plastic, so much meat, so much cold meat” (citation). After Jeremy delivers China to her dorm he returns to the motel and removes any trace of the birth ending the conflict.
The setting is physical. “The Love of My Life” takes place mostly in Rhode Island but the birth takes place in Connecticut: they packed their cars separately and left for college, he to Providence and she to Binghamton. They were separated by three hundred miles, but there was the telephone, there was E-mail, and for the first month or so there were Saturday nights in a motel in Danbury” (citation). Here, Boyle shows the literal and arguable figurative distance between Jeremy and China using geographic …show more content…
“The Love of My Life” is not a happy story and it’s images are meant to stick with the reader long after finishing it: “ There was no baby. There was nothing but a mistake, a mistake clothed in blood and mucus. When he really thought about it, thought it through on its merits and dissected all his mother’s pathetic arguments about where he’d be today if she’d felt as he did when she was pregnant herself, he hardened like a rock, like sand turning to stone under all the pressure the planet can bring to bear” (citation). Without Boyles confrontational use of imagery and simile the reader could avoid the horribleness of China and Jeremy’s actions, making the story pointless.
“The Love of My Life” is a timeless work. It depicts two people, barely adults, who cannot handle the reality of their situation. In the process of denial and conflict they become monsters. The story forces the reader to confront the reality of murder and pregnancy. Perhaps the most troubling part of the story is the ability of the reader to identify with the panic and desperation of the situation asking them what would they have honestly
After the baby is delivered Jeremy ends its life in an effort to restore their previous lives: “Fifteen minutes. That was all it took. He bundled up everything, every trace, left the key in the box at the desk, and stood scraping the ice off the windshield of his car while the night opened up above him to a black glitter of sky. He never gave a thought to what lay discarded in the Dumpster out back, itself wrapped in plastic, so much meat, so much cold meat” (citation). After Jeremy delivers China to her dorm he returns to the motel and removes any trace of the birth ending the conflict.
The setting is physical. “The Love of My Life” takes place mostly in Rhode Island but the birth takes place in Connecticut: they packed their cars separately and left for college, he to Providence and she to Binghamton. They were separated by three hundred miles, but there was the telephone, there was E-mail, and for the first month or so there were Saturday nights in a motel in Danbury” (citation). Here, Boyle shows the literal and arguable figurative distance between Jeremy and China using geographic …show more content…
“The Love of My Life” is not a happy story and it’s images are meant to stick with the reader long after finishing it: “ There was no baby. There was nothing but a mistake, a mistake clothed in blood and mucus. When he really thought about it, thought it through on its merits and dissected all his mother’s pathetic arguments about where he’d be today if she’d felt as he did when she was pregnant herself, he hardened like a rock, like sand turning to stone under all the pressure the planet can bring to bear” (citation). Without Boyles confrontational use of imagery and simile the reader could avoid the horribleness of China and Jeremy’s actions, making the story pointless.
“The Love of My Life” is a timeless work. It depicts two people, barely adults, who cannot handle the reality of their situation. In the process of denial and conflict they become monsters. The story forces the reader to confront the reality of murder and pregnancy. Perhaps the most troubling part of the story is the ability of the reader to identify with the panic and desperation of the situation asking them what would they have honestly