Delprøve 2. A - 19. maj 2011
Introduction and thesis statement: “Save as many as you ruin´’
Every single human through their lifetime comes to collect both good and bad memories, positive and negative experiences, but somehow these memories stays within us for a long time, we can choose between to forget and ruin them or keep them within us so that we can learn from our mistakes and to use them as an inspiration for the next step we take, Each of us has a lifetime story to tell but will we leave a family legacy or will those personal memoirs and family memories fade over time and be lost?

In the story “Save as many as you ruin”, reader are presented for the protagonist named Gerard, who has experienced a lot through his lifetime, and still keep memories with him.
Even though he has ruined most of his experiences in life the memories still remain within him.
Gerard, does not seem to be in contact with his emotions. He has only loved one woman in his life although he has slept with many. The reason for him sleeping with so many women could be him being promiscuous. When he finds a woman whom he actually falls in love with he still feels an urge to sleep with other women, “Gerard vaguely remembers the feeling of being in love with Laurel and the desire to have sex with Issy.” (p. 5 l. 123-124). Even though he loves Laurel he can not remain faithful. His urge to follow his sexual instinct overpowers him and he is not able to control it - it controls him.

The two women we are presented with in the text, Issy and Laurel, have had a very different effect on Gerard. Even Gerard is not aware of it he is a lot like Issy in some ways; when he tells her that he is in love with someone else and she then has to tell him that she is pregnant, she laughs at first but then cries. Laughter is mostly combined with joy, where crying is often combined with sadness. Here we see something between her feelings, just like Gerard she doesn’t know how to deal with them either.

On other case, there is Laurel who is a clear symbol of someone who is alive.
What Gerard has with Issy is like a release of his sexual desire, where Laurel makes him feel true love.
After Laurel breaks things between them off, he still longs for her, as he keeps her wristwatch in his bedside and sometimes falls asleep with it. He uses the wristwatch with a symbolical meaning, perhaps he wishing for Laurel to be with him. He sleeps with her watch instead of trying to find her and find a solution;. He lives a life by remembering his past and it is there which we in the flashbacks learn about him.

The writer Simon Van Booy, make use of weather, specially the snow, to give the story a mood. When Gerard leaves his office it has just stopped snowing, but when he walk through the city he begins to get some imaginations and the snow returns, maybe because it has a meaning of that he begin to understand the feelings and experiences which he has gone through his lifetime. When before the snow returns he asks himself an important question, “Am I like everyone else…” (L. 24. 25), here the narrator shows us readers that he isn’t aware of how he really sees himself.

In many several places there is some contrast between positive and negative like when Gerard is having a flashback of his old physical education teacher running the Olympics, it says: “Millions were about to be killed as a teenage Hetherington crossed the finish line.” (L. 15-16). They joy of Hetherington having crossed the finishing line stands as a good contrast to the millions of people who are about to lose their lives. These examples hows that the Gerard is having a hard time to decide between what is positive and what is negative.
These contrasts are also used to describe the changes within him which takes place: “He thinks of
Issy. He remembers her laugh, then the roar of snapping flames at her cremation.” (L.196-197), right here his desire for other women dies. Issy’s laugh only reminds him of death, and he doesn’t anymore compares Issy with the scent of perfume or her high heels. The memory of her cremation kills his desire for other women. He is finally come over his desire by being given a second chance from the woman whom he deeply loves, and he no longer has to be a in negative side of life. He has dealt with his memories and he has left them being aside...