The Rental Heart – analytical essay
The human heart is an organ that pumps blood throughout the body; it helps the body create oxygen so we can live. The heart is a crucial part of the human anatomy, and a part we cannot live without. Despite being so important, is the heart only the size of a large fist, but if the heart is not beating then there is no life. That is the physical description of the hart, but what about the psychological description of the heart? What does it mean when you get your heart broken for the first time? Will it never heal? Can you ever fix a broken heart?
In the short story the rental heart written by Kirsty Logan, we are introduced to the problem of a broken heart, and hos the protagonist in the story deals with having his/her heart broken repeatedly throughout the story.
The short story is about a guy/girl telling us about his life with heartbreak, every relationship were he/she got his/her heart broke by the person he/she was in love with. It is about how he/she deals with the pain and sadness that comes with a broken heart. Every time a relationship ends the protagonist takes the broken heart out of his/her chest, and rents a new heart he/she can replace it with.
The story is not written chronologically, it is set up like a time line, we start out in present time, and afterwards we go back in time as the protagonist talks about his/her former love stories.
The first person the protagonist tells us about is Grace, and she is the last person we hear about.
In this story, the view on the heart is different from how we look at the heart in real life, instead of the heart being a body part, it is viewed as a machine part, that you can easily take out and replace whenever it breaks. In the story both life and the body is compared to a machine, the machine cannot work if one of the parts is broken, as the body cannot work properly if the heart is broken. “They made it seem so complicated but it wasn’t really. The hearts just clipped in, and as long as you remembered to close yourself up tightly then they could tick away for years. Decades, probably. The problems came when the hearts got old and scratched: shreds of the past got caught in the dents, and they’re tricky to rinse out.”[Line 12-16 page 1]. The machine symbolizes the body; we need all the right parts to function. Rental hearts are a symbol of broken machinery, which just needs to be fixed and replaced. Whenever the protagonist fells hurt or broken he just takes, out the broken heart and replace it with a new one. If I should give an example when your car will not start, you can easily fix it by replacing the broken part with a new one. Just like the protagonist in the story is replacing the broken parts with a new one.
Kirsty Logan is using Science fiction elements in the story, the main example being the invention of the rental hearts, the opportunity to replace the broken parts with new ones. The whole idea is almost like if the story took place in a parallel universe, where it is as easy to replace broken body parts just as it is easy for us to replace broken machine parts. “The next day she took me to the heart rental place. I spent a long time pressing my palms against the polished metal until I found one that felt warm against my skin. I made sure that the sharp edges of the cogs were tucked inwards, kept safe from the just-healed rawness of my throat.
Back at Anna’s, she unwrapped the plastic, fitted the heart, closed my chest, took me to bed. Later I watched her sleep and loved her with every cog of my heart.”[Line 46-51 page 2].
Another main Sci-Fi element in the story is the ability for the characters to easily open up their chest to replace the broken hearts with new ones. This is obviously fiction; we all know that it is not possible for a human to open up their chest to take the heart out; this could also be another example that the story could take place in a parallel universe.
“One night, still throbbing, Anna opened her chest. Her heart nestled, a perfect curl of clockwork.
This is how, she said.
I could hear its tick against the soft embrace of her lungs, and I bent close to her to smell its metallic sharpness. I wanted. “[Line 41-45 page 2]
In the story, the author uses the sci-fi elements as a tool to help the protagonist grow and move on with his life, it is as if the protagonist is at a standstill in his love life. He/she has put himself/herself out there, and tried searching for the one that was meant for them, but it always end up with a broken heart. This leading to the protagonist replacing his heart with each heartbreak. However, in the end the protagonist learns that the heart he/she rented for Grace was defective, so he/ never really needed the machine heart to find real, unbreakable love
“The heart was dusty and tarnished and utterly empty. In the centre of it was no picture of Grace, no strands of her hair, no shine of memories, no declarations. The rusting metal squealed when I pulled it out.”[Line 102-104 page 3]. Even though the machine heart was rusting and dusty he/ she had not felt the need to replace it, and even though the machine heart was broken and old, he/she was not heartbroken, the love for Grace was still there.