Two Quests for Love

Sorry I didn’t realize this was due before 10:00!  As soon as we got the assignment to compare a character from Salvage the Bones to a character from another story, some immediately came into my mind.  I thought of Esch and the woman from “Hills Like White Elephants” and I thought of Big Henry and Big Guy from “The Most Girl Part of You.”  But, somehow those seem too obvious so I am going to go in a different direction.  As am rereading the novel and I keep thinking more and more about Esch, one of the things that really strikes me the second time is her passion.  Though the story between her and Manny obviously does not end well, her passion still comes through in the opening chapters as she states, “my eyes wanted to search for Manny so badly the want felt like an itch on my temple.”  “He was the sun,” she later says. 

The character I think has similar passion is the narrator from “Araby.”  Though younger than Esch and different in many ways, he loves Mangan’s sister so much that “her name was like a summons to all (his) foolish blood.” He is willing to do anything to make it to the bazaar that he promised he would get the girl a gift from.  What both Salvage the Bones and “Araby” do is contrast the intense love the characters feel with the dreadful circumstances of everyday life.  Just as Esch is foiled in her quest for love by her pregnancy and ultimately her choice of man, the events that delay the narrator’s trip in “Araby” deny him his chance for love.  Although it does not necessarily end well for either character, they both show their intense desire for love early in the stories.