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Essay "Divorced, Beheaded, Survived"

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B “...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”
A short story written by Robin Black in 2010.

Death is an issue everybody has to face at some point in their lives. The only thing we know for certain as human beings is that we are mortal.
We do not know why we are here and how we got here, however we definitely know that someday we are going to die. Nevertheless, death is also a very vulnerable topic and it is difficult to know how to handle it when and we all have different ways of dealing with death.
In the short story “...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” (2010) by Robin Black we meet the I-narrator, Sarah, her husband Lyle and their two children Mark and Coco. The short story deals with themes such as death, memories, childhood and the management of something difficult in life no matter if you are an adult or a child.

The title of the short story “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” is a part of the rhyme “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived” which is used to remember the fates of King Henry VIII’s six wives. In Sarah’s childhood she used to play a game with her older brother Terry and two other kids from the neighbourhood, Molly and Johnny, where they had to play King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (King Henry VIII’s third wife). Anne Boleyn was the first wife who was executed wife out of two, out of King Henry VIII’s six wives so when game went on, someone had to behead the one who played Anne. When the played their game over and over again everyone had to rotate so they all could play Anne.
At that time, in 1973, Sarah went to fourth grade and Terry got sick and died in 1974. It was shocking news, but now, thirty years later “it seems to have been as inevitable a conclusion as the strike of Molly’s axe” (p. 3, l. 50)
Thus the title “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” is a symbol of the fact that even though something as terrible as death happens in such a

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