Analysis Of The Love Of My Life

Of all the materials that we have covered in class so far, one short story has stuck with me more than the others. “The Love of My Life,” by T.C Boyle, is a short fiction that revolves around two young lovers. I’ll admit that when I first started to read this short story, I did not expect it to have the ending that it did. Like most of the stories that we have read so far, I figured that this was going to be another story with abortion as a main theme. Although I wasn’t wrong about it being a pregnancy gone wrong themed story, I didn’t expect the ending to be as gruesome as it actually was. What Boyle did was take a recurrent theme, in this case pregnancy, and twist it into something much more disturbing in my opinion. The beginning of the

However, Boyle foreshadows heavily in beginning when he states that, “They’d rented a pair of slasher movies for the ritualized comfort of them— ‘Teens have sex,’ he said, ‘and then they pay for it in body parts’”(Boyle, 1). In my interpretation of this scene, Boyle uses this technique of foreshadowing to introduce the concept of sex into the story. As a result of this introduction, readers are able to start interpreting what the main theme of the story is going to be about, which I interpret to be as pregnancy. My interpretation is supported when we, the readers, get to the fourth page of the story to what I consider the “downfall.” In the beginning of the third page, Jeremy and China have planned a trip to the Catskills together that has been in the making for quite some time. Throughout the fourth page, Jeremy and China are enjoying their time at the lake and partaking in promiscuous activities. Boyle implies that Jeremy and China have unprotected sex on their camping trip when he states that, “she had forgotten to pack her pills and he had only two condoms with him” (Boyle, 4). What I find interesting about this whole situation that Jeremy and China put themselves in is the fact that they are both so adamant about not having an unplanned pregnancy in the beginning of the story. Boyle doesn’t hide this fact from us readers, especially when he characterizes China the way he does.

Boyle further displays her childlike qualities when she protests Jeremy’s wishes for an abortion and can only respond with, “I can’t” and “I’m scared” (Boyle, 5). Her fear isn’t what deems her as childlike in my eyes, it’s the way she closes herself off and simply ignores the pregnancy. It’s one thing to ignore, for example, a bad grade. The fact that someone could ignore a living thing growing inside of you for nine months is mind boggling. When it is time for the birth of their child, they meet in a motel. Jeremy delivers the baby and China responds with, “Get rid of it. Just get rid of it” (Boyle, 6). I could do nothing but stare at the paper when I read what came out of China’s mouth after the birth of her firstborn child. It is impossible to believe that there was no motherly instinct or attachment found in China. What makes this story so gruesome and disturbing is how nonchalantly China and Jeremy murder their baby. Boyle describes the scene as, “He never gave a thought to what lay discarded in the Dumpster out back, itself wrapped in plastic, so much meat, so much cold meat” (Boyle, 7). This line gave me cold chills becauses it’s very hard to wrap your head around an act like this. How could someone not give even a passing thought on the murder of their firstborn by their own hand? Additionally, after China attempts to cover herself from the law as portraying her story