Essay on Roddy Doyle´s “Sleep”

The short story tells of a man and a woman in Dublin, Ireland, a man and a woman with both differences and likenesses. Their likenesses can pull them apart and their differences can pull them together. “It was the thing he’d always loved about her. The way she could sleep.” – P.1/l.1. Sleep is their biggest difference and it is also one of the biggest things that draw Tom to Tara, the way she could sleep. He loves the way she can sleep, but in a way it is also one of the things he hates most about her: “he’d lie awake, hoping she’d wake up, praying for it, dying.” P.1/l.2-3. He both loves and hates the way she can sleep. He loves to watch her sleep, it makes him feel lucky, privileged and trusted, because she drops all of her defenses which he takes as a sign that she trusts him with her life, her body, her heart and her soul. He also hates the way that she can sleep, he lies awake hoping, praying, dying for her to wake up and be with him and love him.
With Tara, totally devoted to him, he feels trusted and probably also loved, because otherwise their relationship, all through their marriage, seem a bit superficial, with superficial love, for Tara´s sake at least. The love and the devotion in the relationship seem a bit one-sided, it seems like it is Tom that keeps the relationship going and he has probably been keeping it going all through the twenty-six years they have known each other. It is not definite at all, because the story is narrated from Tom´s point of view and we do not really hear much about Tara and how she sees things. We do not know if that is because the writer just do not tell us about her or if it is because there are nothing to tell, because Tara is asleep all of the time and therefore have nothing to say or contribute with.
The short story shows many examples of Tom and Tara´s differences. In many ways they