Born Again

The short story “Born Again” was written by Anne Billson. It was written in 1993. It is a postmodern story. Postmodernism is a term that describes the movement in arts, literature, culture, etc., that was an extension of modernism. Postmodernism involved the break with the norms and ideals of the modernism. In postmodernism you often include the perception of common truths. Postmodernism is a very hard term to define, since it is so abstract.
Born Again is a story filled with action. It is filled with violence, but in the same way it is kind of ironic and satirical.

Born Again is a story about a woman named Nancy Loughlin, who lives and works in the city of London. She is very career-minded. It seems like/that she has a very important position in an international firm of some sort. The reason you could think it is international, is because of her appointment with “the Belgians”. She is a single woman and it does not appear that she has any family. She is very fixated about her health. She does not allow her self to do drugs, have sex, and smoke cigarettes or anything related. The introduction however, implies that she might have a past that involved these vices.
Even though she cares about her health, she still allows her self a glass of wine, and her urge of the famous Fudge Tub is very excessive.
In the text Nancy is pregnant, but she has not been sleeping with anyone for some years. She then gets in trouble with a quite extreme Christian organisation and all hell breaks lose.
The members of the organisation try to kill the child but fails miserably.

The title of the story can symbolize a lot of things. After reading the first couple of lines I figured that it symbolized her “rebirth” after a life of filthy habits. This turned out not to be true since the story did not have much to do with this.
Later on in the story she calls herself a “born-again virgin”. This could refer to her previous life of vices. Still I do not believe that the story is about this. I believe that the story is about her child, who might be the Anti-Christ, I getting reborn.

The short story has some ironic components. Miss Loughlin does not seem to take all the things, that happens around her, very seriously. There are a lot of horrifying things happening around her and she does not fear them and she actually kind of ignores them. A normal person would probably be horribly traumatised by all of these events, but not Nancy. These are just some of the ironic elements happening around her. These elements make this action filled and horrifying story seem sort of ironic and quite humoristic. This just stays true to the postmodern genre. This is seen in other postmodern works like “Pulp Fiction”. The movie is quite humorous and has some of the same action- and horror elements as the text.

Numerous issues are brought up in the text. Issues like abortion and religion are brought up.
Very early in the story Nancy gets pregnant without knowing the father. According to her she has not had sex for years. This is very similar to the biblical story about Jesus and his mother, Virgin Marie. An abortion is a very severe thing to deal with. Normally, I guess, a woman would at least think about getting an abortion. Even though an abortion was legal and was no longer a taboo, it is still kind of a big deal. Maybe not for the society, but perhaps for the individual person it is a great matter. The fact that she does not even put any thought into this decision makes her look a bit cynical.
An argument that could support her decision though, could be that it is not long ago that the women entered the job market. I know that they started working earlier, but it is not that long ago, that the whole idea of a career woman started.

The ironic thing of this abortion however is the fact that a Christian organisation supports the abortion. The organisation is a bit exaggerated, but still. They imply that her child is some sort of “Anti-Christ”, by calling her the “Whore of Babylon”.
There is no doubt that the brothers of “The Divine Order of the Dead Saints” are supporting her decision.
As soon as she explains to the last member that she does not want to keep the baby, they leave her alone.
That her plan does not follow through is a different matter.
In a way the author sort of makes fun with religion. Other examples of this are that Nancy is very blasphemous by using variety of biblical terms like “Good lord” or “Jesus”. These examples are a bit subtle, but I still think they support my theory.

Nancy has a very special way to abstract from her issues. It is not a secret that she wants to have things under control. She quits all of her filthy habits and she is very focused on her career. Her career I her way, and everyone else’s, to gain financial security. This makes her in control of her own life.
Whenever she is not in control she craves the Fudge Tub. She moves her own stream of thoughts away from her problem. She does this a few times in the story. Eating a whole Fudge Tub is not what you would consider healthy, but the damage is so minimal that she is still able to control her urge.

Towards the end of the story Nancy gets more or less powerful. She cannot be harmed because of her pregnancy but now she relapses into her vices. This is indicated in the last sentence where she says: “I might as well take up smoking again” (p. 87, l. 32).