Response to Dearth from Willful Creatures

This short story is about a lonely woman gets rid of her knot in her mind. She lives alone and no friend in her life. Although she has a lover, she doesn’t ask his help when she meets trouble. She has no relative, her parents and brother all died.

In this story, the subject “bathroom” catches my eyes. It appears several times.

1.      “On the first day of spring, the bountiful neighbor came over with lilies woven into her hair, asking to borrow some matches. The woman had the four hide in the bathroom.” The woman accepts the fact that those potatoes will never leave and allows them live with her. From the description of those days they live together, I feel that, at least, the woman doesn’t hate potatoes. She even doesn’t go to her lover’s house during those days. It means something between she and potatoes. But once other people may find out them, she is afraid and tries to hide them.

2.      “When the neighbor left, the woman’s ears were ringing. She went into the bathroom to pee and was somehow startled to see the four still in there, blinking beneath the silver towel rack. ‘Get,’ she said, brushing them off. ‘Get away from me. Go!’” It is the first and the only time she yells at potatoes. Because in her deep mind, she still can’t let other break into her life. She is looked by potatoes when she is peeing, then she bursts out.

3.      “‘How’s that broken bathroom?’ she yelled.

‘Oh,’ said the woman. ‘Well. There never was any broken bathroom.’” After our women thinks about her former life, she find there are something wrong in her life. She never faces her lonely straight. Even when she has a chance to get along with “something”, she is afraid of it and refuses. But now, she forgives her weakness and accepts potatoes and her new life.

I think the broken bathroom represents the women’s knot in her mind. She doesn’t want other see it and try to protect herself. After she get rid of her knot in mind, after she can bravely says “There never was any broken bathroom.”, she begins a new life.