The Red line
Analysis
The short story takes place in London. We know this because the different sections in the story are named after subway stations in London; another way we can tell is the characters statements about the city: “Cathy had been at work, so the boyfriend had shown him around London” (p. 64, l. 25 - 26). The story unfolds in the subway’s underground system of London in the late 19’hundreds but could as well be set as today, because the way our characters describe their surroundings: “You couldn’t walk, always it had to be busses and what the English called the tubes” (p. 64, l. 29-30). Here we get an impression of a modern city where everything has to be fast and there is no time to waste. All of the main characters meet in the underground system at the end of the story. All the characters are placed here and throughout the story we hear their individual stories and get an impression of how they are and how their personalities are, these flashbacks and changes between the different characters can make it confusing at the beginning of the story, but at the end it makes good sense. This is a post modernistic narrative technique, and it is used because we have to hear the story from everyone’s point of view, to understand what is going on. I think the narrator has chosen the city of London because it’s a modern world city where everything has to go fast and it’s easy to get confused like Berto got.
The title is called The Red Line. I think the narrator probably has chosen this topic because of the setting Berto is in, he sits in the subway on the line he think is the right one but really he is so confused that he is on the wrong line in the wrong direction. I think in the end where Berto got killed and he sees his blood edge across the floor from left to right. He remembers what the boyfriend had told him about the red line, that it goes from west to east and he had to follow it to the east. The story could have been named after the tragic incident at the end where Berto gets killed and he sees his blood edge across the floor, here it all makes sense for him, and he knew that he should had taken the red line: “At Least it was clear. He’d been shown the way. Follow the Red Line to the east…” (p. 73 l. 33-34 ).

Berto is one of the main characters in the story. Berto is an old fashioned Italian guy who has come to England to visit Cathy, an English girl he met in Venice. They had a minor affair at the time Cathy was in Venice. Berto does not speak a lot of English and he does not understand very well, which makes it difficult for him to socialize and navigate around London: “…he’d tried to ask a man for help. He hadn’t been able to make himself understood” (p. 63 l. 33-34). Cathy, the girl he came to visit, turns out to have an open relationship with her boyfriend: “She’d told him about something called a “trial separation” and an “open relationship”, and even though he looked the words up, “he still didn’t understand what they meant.” (p. 64, l. 14-15-15). This shows us that Berto is a traditional man with old values such as a normal relationship. He is afraid of the modern society. The way he gets lost in the subway is also a symbol of him getting lost in the modern society, where everybody laugh at him for him not being able to be a part of it.

Word count: 630 words.