Break It Down By Lydia Davis Summary
“Break it Down”
In the short story “Break it Down”, by Lydia Davis the narrator is obsessively trying to calculate eight days of love, in which he spent approximately $800. In the process of evaluating the cost, he breaks down the love affair, but soon it is clear that he is trying to specify a love affair, to make sense of something that is gone. The narrator takes on the subject of failed love and lovers’ pain, showing the ways in which the mourning-self wrestles with the instincts to express memories into language as a way to deal with feelings of pain and isolation.
Eventually, he figures out that they had sex once a day, eight times total, so he spent $100 each time, or $50 an hour since they stayed in bed for two hours, an experience that he decides is expensive. But he goes further, the cost must include the small moments as well. “You 're with each other all day long and it keeps happening, the touches and smiles, and it all adds up....” (Davis 399). Soon he breaks down the cost to $6 an hour as …show more content…
But you often fear that your partner does not wish to be as close as you would like. Relationships tend to consume a lot of your emotional energy. You are sensitive to small things in your partner’s mood and you take your partner’s behavior overly personally. You worry if you don’t hear from your partner regularly. When you feel like your partner is getting distant, you tend to express your anxiety by threatening to leave someone and hoping to make them stay.Assuming that we have no reason to hide or disguise our feelings, if we like certain people, we are more likely to spend time with them, talk with them, confide in them, do nice things for them, and in general we strive to make them happy. On the other hand, if we dislike or are angry with certain other people, we are likely to avoid spending time with them, avoid talking with them, avoid doing nice things for them, and in general we do not strive to make them
In the short story “Break it Down”, by Lydia Davis the narrator is obsessively trying to calculate eight days of love, in which he spent approximately $800. In the process of evaluating the cost, he breaks down the love affair, but soon it is clear that he is trying to specify a love affair, to make sense of something that is gone. The narrator takes on the subject of failed love and lovers’ pain, showing the ways in which the mourning-self wrestles with the instincts to express memories into language as a way to deal with feelings of pain and isolation.
Eventually, he figures out that they had sex once a day, eight times total, so he spent $100 each time, or $50 an hour since they stayed in bed for two hours, an experience that he decides is expensive. But he goes further, the cost must include the small moments as well. “You 're with each other all day long and it keeps happening, the touches and smiles, and it all adds up....” (Davis 399). Soon he breaks down the cost to $6 an hour as …show more content…
But you often fear that your partner does not wish to be as close as you would like. Relationships tend to consume a lot of your emotional energy. You are sensitive to small things in your partner’s mood and you take your partner’s behavior overly personally. You worry if you don’t hear from your partner regularly. When you feel like your partner is getting distant, you tend to express your anxiety by threatening to leave someone and hoping to make them stay.Assuming that we have no reason to hide or disguise our feelings, if we like certain people, we are more likely to spend time with them, talk with them, confide in them, do nice things for them, and in general we strive to make them happy. On the other hand, if we dislike or are angry with certain other people, we are likely to avoid spending time with them, avoid talking with them, avoid doing nice things for them, and in general we do not strive to make them