Past Needs, Future Wants

655 Words2 Pages

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs (Twain). When two people who love each other very much, divorce each other, most of the time they both want nothing to do with the other one. Other times one of the two might be devastated and feel that his/her entire life was left behind with that x amount of years. In the story, Wants, the woman feels that all her passion, love, and devotion in her life were given to her husband, but now they are apart. In the story the woman's disposition and desire to her husband are highlighted by these three attributes: How all her feelings were left with her husband for the 27 years of marriage, her devotion to her husband and family for all those years, and how she changes herself to grow as a human being.

The first attribute that highlights her disposition and desire is how all her feelings were left behind with her husband. For twenty-seven years the woman and her husband were married and then they got a divorce. For the entire twenty-seven years that she was married to her husband, that was her life. Nothing else meant anything to her, but her husband. In the story when she says, "Hello, my life" (Paley), she is trying to be sarcastic about the fact that her husband was her life. She is trying to make him feel bad and make him realize that she loved him much more then he did. When he responds, "What? What life? No life of mine." (Paley), he is basically saying that his heart was never in if from the beginning and that he has moved on. He does not want to look back into the past because that was then and he wants nothing to do with that anymore. She still desires him and maybe by making him realize all these things that she feels, then he will feel the same that she did for him and their family.

The second attribute that highlights her disposition and desire is her devotion to her husband and their family for all those years. For years all she cared about was her husband and her family and when they divorced he moved right along with his life. It was different for the woman though.

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