Moving On & The Big Cat

For this week's exercise with the short stories, we're exploring the reasons for the conclusions. The first story "Moving On" wrapped up it's story by telling us that the narrator hasn't fully moved on from her husband's death, but has accepted to attempt to do so and married her second husband. It was successful because in our reality, when you truly loved someone and that person unfortunately had passed away, you mentally will never feel that they are gone. You are consistently reminded of their existence by every sense in your body. But you know deep down that they're gone and you have to settle with this reason, so that you are forced to move on and forget about this person. This conclusion is so relate-able because it gives an opportunity for it's readers to understand how to deal with grief in such sense. I felt that the purpose of the "window friend" in the story was to tell us that it is possible for someone to move passed grief. That you can feel emotions with someone else because we are emotional creatures that do act a lot by their feelings. The dead husband, I believed is a symbolism of showing that if hold on to something that is gone, we can never move on with our lives and be happy for what is. These are supporting characters that help show growth for the main character. 

T.C. Boyle makes it known in his foreword that majority of the reasons why he has selected these stories to be the best american short stories of 2015 is because a lot of the major characters in these stories are deem' likable or not kind of characters that the readers are able to understand them. The character's in this short story can be believed to be a real person with real emotions that we all have felt before. 

Also with the Big Cat story, this story is also relate-able and has a common core connection with it's readers because we live in a society that divorce happens within a family and sometimes there is an unreasonable distraction that you end up back together because of unresolved feelings or having this comfortably to want to go back into something. I feel that the conclusion made sense of what happens after a marriage ends, then comes back after being cordial for years and what happens when feelings resurfaces as to something new. Nothing ever lasts, things just comes back around and maybe into something more.  Valery and Laurene are both supporting characters to this story for the narrator to figure out what he wants from his life. Or what he felt that he had lost and gained throughout the span of his life. 

After the last words of both these stories, I feel that the conclusion is successful because you are able to assume if the characters are genuinely happy or sad over the course of their actions. In "Moving On" the widow gives insight of her feelings towards her new marriage with a man that is seemingly charming and good. While in The Big Cat, the husband is expressing his new found appreciation of his wife for showing him something he hadn't known before. Both stories give room for us readers to question to ask if they're happy or sad for the choices they have made.