Regarding our past couple required readings...

The stories about people being happy about their spouses dying and feeling as if they are now "free", as Theodore Dreiser describes it, proves to be very unsettling to me. What kind of people would say that about the supposed love of their life? To put it bluntly, these thoughts are ridiculous and inexcusable. Even if they are unhappy, it is their fault only for being so. In "Free" the protagonist does address this in the text by explaining his thoughts on the matter. "God, what a fool he had been!...having made a mistake it was his duty...to stick by it and make the best of it...", said Mr. Waymaker (page 19). He is majorly contradicting himself in this passage because he seems to blame it all on himself that he is stuck in this marriage, and yet, instead of "making the best of it" all of his thoughts towards his wife are negative. He is not "making the best of it" because if he were, he would have some sort of affection for her. At the very least, he would not want her to die. I think that he should be grateful for the children she bore him and the love she has for him. I also think that he is slightly in denial because he must have loved her if he proposed to her and wanted to marry her. If he had not, he would never have even started the process. However, people do tend to be out of touch with reality and make stupid mistakes when they have a great deal of freedom. He did talk about having a well-established position in an office building and having money. So, maybe he was as blind as he said he was. I just can't imagine not being happy with the one you have pledged your life to and the one you have had children with and have been intimate with. I do not understand how someone can go through all of those things and not feel anything. I have always had an appreciation and an adoration for couples who grew old together and had never been with anyone else. This is why these few stories have made me angry because it is not something I ever thought could be possible or, in my case, fathomable.