Life Changing Decisions In Andrea Barrett's The Marburg Sisters

Everyone is the writer of their own story and many times people get caught up in the little bumps along the way when the true life changing decisions are seen or when everything is put on the line. In Andrea Barrett’s short story “The Marburg Sisters” life changing decisions are made. Rose and Bianca, two sisters who were once seemingly inseparable were taken on a wild ride in which they both found what they truly valued and wanted in life. Barrett’s point of view and the girls finally coming to terms with their mother’s death helps to reveal their inner selves.
Barrett’s decision to use third person omniscient as well as beginning the story with history allows the reader the much-needed background information. This section of the story provides

Over the years, the girls decided on very different paths leaving the other one and their hometown behind. Barrett’s choice of first person plural shows that even though they were two distinctively separate people now, they were still tightly held together by their lack of closure. As each had their own idea of closure, “All Bianca wanted to do was to keep her sister in touch with a part of the world she persistently denied” (135). This shows that Bianca felt that reconnecting with the past would allow both her sister and her to fully heal. As all Bianca needed was her sister’s desire to talk about the past with her. However, Rose wanted nothing more than to forget the past and bury herself in work, “We didn’t call on Suky that day, because Rose continued to resist the idea as if it, not the potion, were poison” (137). Rose thought that digging up the past was like death, offering nothing good to the girls. The girls’ extreme differences in ideas of closure caused them to fall even further apart. After that night in the lab, they never were able to talk about it or be as close as hoped, “Our lives continued like this for almost a decade, until our father got sick and we went to Hammondsport to see him. During the time of his dying we saw each other intensely, intently, but

After talking with her mother, she decided to close that chapter forever and move on. Bianca once again took off on a new adventure, “A month after we met in Hammondsport for the anniversary of our father’s death, she fell in love with a landscape painter our father’s age and moved with him to a house on a cliff in Costa Rica, where she has no phone” (149). Bianca took off with the hopes that she would never have to look back or think about her past. Her irrational decisions to living with a man the age of her father and continue to be on the run, displayed her lack of closure in her life. She is completely unaware of where she may end up. Barrett’s choice not to use Bianca’s point of view shows that she continued a path of unreliability. The story ends with Rose as the narrator giving both closure and ending to her story, while Bianca ran free on the island of Costa Rica.
Two sisters, Rose and Bianca, journey through life to find their need for closure after their mother’s death. Rose a responsible, smart, and career driven girl wanted nothing more than to escape the path of her past but in the end, she found the most peace in going back to where all the memories were made. While her sister Bianca died for a trip down memory lane and the hope to communicate with their death mother, when in the end, Bianca had no desire for her past. The girls each got what they wanted out of finally talking with their