Essay on The Bench
The Bench
The short story “The Bench”, written by John Fuller in the year of 2007, is about a young, pregnant woman who meets a woman that cannot have children by her favorite bench in the park. She is scheduled for an abortion but chooses to keep the baby and give it to the woman who can’t have children. She doesn’t tell her about the idea though, and she never sees the woman again resulting in her keeping the baby herself after all.
The point of view of the story is from the main character and is therefore omniscient first-person. It seems to be happening during the spring or summer season and takes place over a nine month period, mostly in the park. It could be happening today as well as twenty years ago. The story is very logical; it could most definitely happen in the real world and in some way it makes sense that someone who is going to have an abortion instead wants to give their child away to someone who cannot have children.
The narrator and main character is dynamic because she changes throughout the story. It is very clear that she does not wish to have the baby at first. She doesn’t care about the baby’s health and she can’t see the harm in smoking a cigarette if she is going to have an abortion anyway. She has an opinion about everything and a foul mouth (which is shown through the narrator’s language), and she does not leave out a single detail whether it is about her sex life or how she gets her hair done. An example of this is when she says: “He fucked me from every direction and on every surface in my apartment,” when mentioning the father of the child on p. 9 l. 55. She has also been in prison for shoplifting and is in many ways a rebel. She has not done anything meaningful with her life and believes that she never will.
The main character doesn’t think that her mother loves her but she doesn’t seem to care that much. She seems tough on the outside; does not want to become engaged in other people’s lives, but she still has those moments
The short story “The Bench”, written by John Fuller in the year of 2007, is about a young, pregnant woman who meets a woman that cannot have children by her favorite bench in the park. She is scheduled for an abortion but chooses to keep the baby and give it to the woman who can’t have children. She doesn’t tell her about the idea though, and she never sees the woman again resulting in her keeping the baby herself after all.
The point of view of the story is from the main character and is therefore omniscient first-person. It seems to be happening during the spring or summer season and takes place over a nine month period, mostly in the park. It could be happening today as well as twenty years ago. The story is very logical; it could most definitely happen in the real world and in some way it makes sense that someone who is going to have an abortion instead wants to give their child away to someone who cannot have children.
The narrator and main character is dynamic because she changes throughout the story. It is very clear that she does not wish to have the baby at first. She doesn’t care about the baby’s health and she can’t see the harm in smoking a cigarette if she is going to have an abortion anyway. She has an opinion about everything and a foul mouth (which is shown through the narrator’s language), and she does not leave out a single detail whether it is about her sex life or how she gets her hair done. An example of this is when she says: “He fucked me from every direction and on every surface in my apartment,” when mentioning the father of the child on p. 9 l. 55. She has also been in prison for shoplifting and is in many ways a rebel. She has not done anything meaningful with her life and believes that she never will.
The main character doesn’t think that her mother loves her but she doesn’t seem to care that much. She seems tough on the outside; does not want to become engaged in other people’s lives, but she still has those moments