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xxxx d. 9-3-2012

engelsk A terminsprve

Save as Many as You Ruin

The text Save as Many as You Ruin was written by Simon Van Booy in 2007 and the main character is a man who reflects on his own identity and then he suddenly meets his former girlfriend. The text is a short story because it has a small gallery of characters and a short storyline. The story starts in medias res with Gerard leaving the office. Afterwards the events are represented in chronological order but the storyline is interrupted by several flashbacks. For example Gerard has a flashback to Issys funeral lines 111 to 122. The narrator in the text is a third person narrator who is also a personal narrator that is bound to the main character Gerard. It is a personal narrator because the narrator reduces his point of view to one person whose inner thoughts are the only thoughts the reader is told about e.g. : He wonders if his life is an extraordinary one (l. 10). As this line from the text also shows, Gerard reflects a lot on different phenomena and things he has experienced. These reflections often originate from a specific observation he makes, which result in reflections on history and life. This movement from reflections on a specific thing to reflections on more abstract things as Life makes some parts of the short story very similar to the essay genre. For example: at first Gerard reflects about footprints in the snow (l. 4) and this reflection leads to reflections about the Indians who once lived in Manhattan (l. 5-6), which again leads to reflections about his own identity (l. 7-9) The story takes place New York, where Gerard probably lives. The mood in the text plays an important part in the story. In the beginning of the text Gerards reflections creates a very glorious, overwhelming atmosphere, because he thinks of his own life compared with the billions of other people who lived before him (l. 4-25). The atmosphere in this part of the text also underlines that something is going to happen in Gerards life. Something big also happens because in the middle of his reflections he suddenly bumps into Laura, who is the great love of his life. The mood in the text also plays an important part in the end of the story, where Gerard drinks whiskey. In this part of the text the room is surrounded by mysteries and something supernatural e.g.: All of a sudden he feels a chill like cold water down his back (l. 199). This supernatural atmosphere starts immediately after he thinks of Issy, and together with the sentence; But in the space between him and the world he can see only air, only air and the auras of the day past and day to come(l. 201-202) it shows the reader that Gerard always will be haunted by the mother of his child and if he wants to move on he also has to deal with the past.

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engelsk A terminsprve

Lines 201-202 also show the reader the contrast between Laurel and Issy. Issy is a girl, who Gerard once had an affair with. She is a good-looking uninhibited girl, who sends a lot of sexual signals. Her and Gerards relationship is based on sex, but they end up getting married because Issy gets pregnant. Issy is also very selfish and unreliable because she often tells lies (l. 128-129) and just leaves her own and Gerards daughter because she wants to fulfill her lifelong ambitions of becoming an actress (l 86). Lauren is quite the opposite of Issy. Laurel is sweet girl who is concerned about others (she asks how Gerards family are (l. 86-110)). She is more mature than Issy and she is an editor of business books. The relationship between Lauren and Gerard was based on love. The contrast between Laurel and Issy also shows the reader the contrast between Gerards past and future. Issy represents the past, and at that moment Gerard was like her. He was younger and more immature and he had a lot of affairs with women he did not love. He was also very selfish and even though he met Laurel, who he liked, she was not enough for him and he chose to have an affair with Issy. He was hubristic and suddenly he was struck by nemesis: Issy got pregnant and because of that Laurel broke up with him. Suddenly Gerard is alone with a child and he has to mature in order to be a good parent. Laurel represents the future and at first he was not mature enough to have her. When he meets her eight years after he is more mature: he works in an office (l. 1), he is self-confident (his reflections (l. 1-25)), and concerned about others. The last one of Gerards new qualities is shown in the way Gerard is concerned about his daughter and how he wants to protect her from things such as the death of her mother e.g.: I love her, Im her father. I want the best for her(l. 107). After eight years he is more like Laurel and therefore he is ready to begin a relationship with her again. The new relationship with Laurel shows the reader that Gerard is ready for the future and that he has turned in to another and more mature man. In order to move on from the past he has to face his former life and he knows that he has to confront his daughter with the death of her mother, which he is ready for now. My overall impression of this text is that it is a text about the main characters important stages in his development from a young man to an adult. This development is underlined by the atmosphere in the text which gives the reader a hint of what is yet to come. The Main characters development is shown in his relationship with two women: one of them represents the past and the other one represents the future.