Sunday, January 24, 2016

Angels and Drifting Dreams

One aspect in the story "Night Women" that really stood out to me was the  feeling of fake mending of the reality the characters live in. In this particular reading, a prostitute describes her lifestyle and work habits. She hopes that her son can grow up with aims and greater dreams. She tells her son that the men who come at night are angels and that they will stay for some time, but he never wakes up to see them. She "[wants] him to forget that [they] live in a place where nothing lasts"(86). In these stories, everything disperses and the future is unknown, this is why she has "grown to learn"(85) that the only thing that is certain is that she must satisfy with what is available that day. 

The truth about her state is that the only aspect of her life that is consistent is the men who come, but their company does not last because they leave in the morning. That is the only thing she can truly know. This is why she makes them seem as divine creatures that come from another world that are difficult to comprehend, so that her son "...dreams of angels skipping over his head"(87) . She creates a reality that is hard to comprehend by creating "angels" so that her son does not look to the unlashing and inconsistent reality that they live in. 

In the end, she says that the angels have "a lifetime to come to [them]"(88), so that the not lasting transforms into hope that one day her child might wake to see the truth in a good way and to see her suiters as angels and not as what they truly are. 








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