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Reconciliation

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Reconciliation

What is insanity? Some would say that insanity is the seed of disorder in one’s mind, and that those who suffer from insanity, can’t see the world for what it really is. But what if insanity is just the society’s way of dismissing those with a different understanding of the fundamentals of the world. Many people treat those with mental disorders as less than humans, many people just dismisses everything they have to say.
This question of disorder becomes very relevant in the short story “Reconciliation” by Polly Clark. The main character and narrator, Laura have developed a different view of the world than most people. The narrator of the short story is a first-person narrator, and therefore she is bound to be Subjective.
The story she tells us is seen from her point of view, and it is always a problem, if only one point of view is used on actions. Especially if the narrator has problems seeing the world through uncoloured glasses.
The narrators mind is a mess, this is clearly seen in the first line off the story in which she didn’t bring her shoes to work “It's my first day …. and I have forgotten my shoes” (p. 1 l. 1)
This show that she doesn’t have control over her life, in the next couple of lines, she has an internal dialogue about what kind of lie she is going to tell the people at her work “My trainers definitely will look weird with my skirt, so I'll tell them that my feet hurt ….. I hurt my feet... mountaineering, I'll say” (p. 1 l. 2-4) This kind of lying is a clear sign of a mental disorder known as sociopathy, in which the person is prone to lying about everything, just to make it a little easier.
The excuse she makes up is also a very obvious lie, which could mean that she doesn’t really know how normal people think which is a side effect of sociopathy.
Furthermore she tells us, that she has dry washed her hair, probably without success. This just intensifies the idea that she has an instability in her mind. Laura is in a drastic psychological development. She is married, but she going to be divorced, and when she goes home after work it is without her husband. The relationship between Laura and her husband was not always strained, they used to be able to talk about everything, but something changed in their relationship. It was probably first after they got married that Vernon began to notice that something off was off about Laura, which became too much for him, and they had to live separately. Laura’s relationship with her husband is very strange. “[…]up to my manager’s desk. His name is Vernon. He looks like a turtle” (p. 1, l. 22-23). At first he is just introduced as her manager and she does not say anything about her relation to him. The husband is the one who reveals their relationship because he tells his employee that Laura is his wife. They are about to get divorced and therefore, the atmosphere around them is very tense. Nevertheless, Laura comes to his office and clearly wants something to happen between them even though she had to overcome some struggles. “Aren’t you glad to see how much I wanted to see you again?” (p. 1, l. 36-37). Unlike Laura, her husband seems to have moved on. “How has he managed to remain himself, to become – dare I say it – even more himself with not even a scar and even a brand new blue shirt” (p. 2, l. 50-51). The new blue shirt is a symbol of the change that her husband has gone through. Vernon has also moved on unlike Laura, who still cares deeply for him. She uses a lot of imagery to describe him “His name is Vernon. He looks like a turtle” (p. 1, l. 22-23) which indicates that she uses images to connect people to different traits in her brain, which again is a sign, that she has a different way off seeing the world. But she can also see that she is the reason they broke up “[…] defective enough to mean that I must be divorced” (p. 2, l. 47) throughout the story Laura finds comfort in the numbers she is working with, which could mean that it isn’t Vernon she wants, but the comfort he brings. And in the end she finds the truth in the numbers, she finds the partner to the lost number, which to her means that she too can find her true partner.
The main theme in the short story is reconciliation, as in the title, because Laura is getting reconciled with her husband who she has not seen for months. Also, relating to the numbers, reconciliation is an important factor, because when Laura finds the matching number to 22.49, she realises that her marriage has ended and that there is another match for her if she just waits. In other words, she reconciles with herself again after many years with the wrong match in her life-puzzle. So as to conclude this analysis I would say that Laura must likely suffers from one of two possible disorders, number one could be a mild form of autism, the second and more likely candidate is that she is a sociopath, which is a person who is prone to lying and emotionally detached from other people, which is when you can’t project your emotions onto other people, which destroys any possibilities of a real emotional connection with other people.

* Malte Kristensen

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