Lust: Emotion and Main Character Essay Example
Lust: Emotion and Main Character Essay Example

Lust: Emotion and Main Character Essay Example

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  • Pages: 5 (1128 words)
  • Published: May 14, 2018
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Character Analysis of the Short Story “Lust” In the short story "Lust" by Susan Minot, the author creates and develops the main character differently than many authors do. The protagonist is not developed by depicting a physical appearance, but is developed partially through her relationship with other characters, and is predominately created by her own feelings and actions. The narrator, who is also the main character, is not identified but is nameless and faceless and the author uses this, as well as simile, to build the character.

Using all of these, the author creates a heavily conflicted character that is both incredibly helpless and emotionally removed. The reader does not know what the main character looks like, but we do know how she thinks and feels. And while "Lust" is more of an interior monologue,

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the narrator does share with the reader her relationships with others, who are predominately male, as well as brief encounters with her house-mother and headmaster.

In the beginning of Lust, she does not talk about how she feels, and her sexual encounters have almost no meaning to us; it looks like an itemized list of conquests given with a seemingly indifferent shrug of the shoulders. As the reader, we are proven otherwise as she recounts her tale. We learn exactly why she is driven to these men for love and gratification. Each experience with a boy has been given its own small, irregular paragraph. These descriptions prove to be very choppy as well, and it is suggested that Minot uses fragmentation and white space to mirror how fragmented and empty the narrator feels.

During these encounters the narrator is

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usually emotionally removed from the experience. For example, when Tim returns to her after closing the door, he finds merely a body waiting on the rug" (Minot 229). This shows how helpless she is to the men in her life, and how emotionally fragmented she has become. She also admits her helplessness, indirectly, in a few ways "For a long time I had Phillip on the brain,"(Minot 230) she admits. "The less they notice you, the more you got them on the brain" (Minot 230).

She even admits that she was good at certain things, including Whiffle Ball as a child, but even back then the boys would tie up her legs until she showed them her underpants. Even as she grew older, sex was still in the way. It would interfere with her skills in math, painting, and sports, because it reduced her ambition to the point that sex would be all she could think about. The descriptions of the authority figures in the narrator’s life also create the feeling of an emotional distance. Not only is her family nonexistent, she makes herself seem to not be interested in them at all. Parents never really know what's going on," she tells us, "especially when you're away at school most of the time"(Minot 235). No one at her boarding school seems to be cared for. The school doctor "gave out the pill like aspirin". The headmaster tells her he doesn't care what she does as long as she didn't do it in public. The house-mother treats them to her perfect beliefs about finding true love. But no one seems to care about her (the narrator),

and in fact, they enable her helplessness. At one point she realizes how detached she is and asks the boy she is with who he is. And she even tells him that enough is enough.

But the pattern doesn't change. She only begins to feel a dipping disparity. Later in the novel, she begins to realize how the constant feeling of sex and being used makes her feel, "There'd be times when you overdid it. You'd get carried away. All the next day, you'd be in a total fog, delirious, absent minded, crossing the street and nearly getting run over. "(Minot 234) She furthers this feeling by her use of simile. Many times she compares herself to a harmless creature, "you'd put your nose to his neck and feel like a squirrel" (). Through these comparisons the narrator is revealing that she feels small and unimportant.

Sex does not empower her; in fact, it has the opposite effect. If she feels off kilter it is described as "piece of pounded veal"(Minot 235). The narrator uses other figurative language to explain how helpless and detached she feels. After the act, she becomes "a cave, filled so absolutely with air, or with a sadness that wouldn't stop" (Minot 233). Minot characterizes her torment and detachment with immediacy only at the very end of the story. She continues to use metaphors, but her writing style becomes less fragmented, signaling the ultimate realization of truth for the narrator. After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, an

elusive gaping worry. You don't try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it's nothing after all, everything filling up finally and absolutely with death"(Minot 235). The main character has realized all of this, but by then it is too late and she remains helpless still. The fact that the narrator has realized this doesn't change much. She learned that it’s easier to open your legs than your heart.

The narrator has proven to herself that she is just as jagged as ever. She still does everything they want, knowing its wrong. It's no surprise to her that after the "briskness of loving" his mild surprise is something she's known all along. She "seems to have disappeared" (Minot 355). The theme, as with all of Minot's short stories, is one of human beings seeking love and fulfillment and filling the never-ending void with that which is superficial, hurtful and empty. In the beginning, thru the author's more cheerful vocabulary and short sentences, we see that the character believes she is doing what she likes to do.

As the story goes on, the vocabulary becomes more negative and the sentences run long as if seeking some solution to end the pain. The main character is a wealthy girl from a family that can give her the best, although that best is simply superficial stuff. What she lacks is love, love from her family and love of herself. She's a very sad, empty young woman who, deep down, wants to find love from her many partners, but who knows she is just being used. But, it's better than nothing, even though the emotional pain increases with

each lover. Works Cited Meyer, M. (2011). Literature to Go. New York: Bedford/St. Martin.

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