Opgave A...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived - by Robin BlackThis is a short story written in a unique and curious setting, allowing you to see the world of anordinary family whose lives have been affected by the deaths of their friends more than is fair. Thestory grasps some of the problems that death can bring upon a family which an average personmay, or may not be aware of. Below, I will analyze and interpret Robin Black’s curiously writtenshort story about the unnamed narrator and how the impact of her younger days has affected herand her son’s life. The short story is from 2010.The short story,’ …Divorced, Beheaded, Survived’, is about an unnamed mother, whoreflects her life as a past-tense narrator throughout the whole text. The story is based upon theevents of her brother’s death and the acts they played with their friends shortly before. Thestory’s structure is a bit “jumpy” but also wonderfully flowing. Even though the story takes placeover roughly 30 years, the reader won’t find it difficult to keep track of the time. The structureitself is quite interesting, since it reveals the age of some persons beneath the lines. For example,she mentions the ‘director’ of the acts, Johnny, was an 11-years-old boy - a year younger than herbrother, and a year older than herself: “Johnny was a year younger than Terry, a year older thanme” (Page 1, line 29). Not much later, while mentioning the inevitability of her brother’s death,she says that the (almost) present time she’s in is 30 years later: “but now, thirty years later” (Page2, line 50). The age of the mother is a bit curious and I will analyze that later.Even though the tragic events of her brother’s death thirty years earlier still affectthe narrator, Robin Black has decided to avoid a huge climax at the end of the story. Where thelast lines in such a story most often reveal a secret or a point-of-no-return, these three linesbasically make it clear that the big disastrous event in her life has happened and she is justclarifying how it has affected not only her and her son, but all the relatives of the dead:“”Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” Miss Rafferty wrote the rhyme out onthe board while Molly Denham and I dutifully copied it into our notebooks, as though we mightotherwise forget” (Page 5, ll. 174-176). The very last sentence is most likely symbolizing how theyboth pretend not to have known anything about King Henry VIII, which is an attempt to avoidbeing reminded of the heartbreaking death of Terry years before.