Clarissa
English 1B
Essay #1
05/04/2014
“Lust”
The the short story “Lust” by Susan Minot is about teenage sex, written in a first person point of view. The main character of the story is the narrator herself. She describes herself in terms of her relationship with other people, mostly boys, to build the character instead of describing her physical appearance as a sexually active girl who lives in a co-ed dorm. It’s not like a typical story where the writer describes how the character’s eyes, hair, and body look like. She does not even reveal her name in the story. Although the narrator is reliable in telling the story as a first person “I”, she sometimes uses “you”, which makes the story less reliable. Readers can only imagine what she looks like; however, we as readers know how she feels.
The narrator does not provide descriptions about her feelings and emotions in the first few paragraphs. She tells readers stories about her experience sleeping with different boys emotionlessly, making no sense at all to readers what she is trying to tell us. Each experience has little descriptions, proving that her relationship with those boys is not that intense. For example, in her experience with Tim, she describes herself as “…then came back to me, a body waiting on a rug” (229) and she also admits “They held the door of the goat house and wouldn’t let us out till we showed them our underpants” (231). It implies that she is so vulnerable of herself to boys in her life. She has no deep feelings with them and she feels so empty inside.
The narrator is so young yet her parents are so far away from her. She lives by herself in a co-ed dorm, the birth control pills are available just like aspirins, and even some other girls use DUI. This may be why she is so dependent with the boys. Even though she is good at some things like Math, Arts, and Sports, she would give everything away for the pleasure of sex. She admits “…the second a boy put his arm around me, I forgot about wanting to do anything else, which felt like a relief at first until it became like sinking into a muck” (230). She is so addicted into it. Teenage sex is just so casual in Casey Academy. The headmaster does not care as long as the students do not do it in public.
She is pretty reliable in telling the stories as a first person; however, she uses “you” at some point after she tells us her experience with the boys. The paragraphs when she uses “you”, are more of what she expects girls in general to feel about it. For example, after she describes many of her experiences with different boys, she mentions, “There’d be times when you overdid it. You’d get carried away. All the next day, you’d be in a total fog, delirious, absent-minded, crossing the street and nearly getting run over” (232). She is actually trying to say what she feels like after having sex with those boys, but she uses “you” instead of “I” to describe her feelings. She uses “you” in paragraphs that ‘analyze’ how she feels after each sex experience because the other paragraphs with “I”s are basically just plain story of what happens.
The use of “you” paragraphs is to engage readers more into the story. She wants readers to follow as she’s trying to develop her character through her relationship with other characters since the setting of the story is so simple. The story takes place over the period when she attends school and lives in a coed dorm.
At one point, she started to feel in despair. Even though she feels that “Sleeping with someone was perfectly normal once you had done it. You didn’t really worry about it” (232). When she had sex with someone she doesn’t know, she started to think and wonder whom he is. She describes her feelings again in “you”, “After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, an elusive gaping worry” (235).
She has multiple partners for sex to fulfill her sexual desire; however, she feels cheated in the aftermath. “They turn casually to look at you, distracted, and get a mild distracted surprise. You’re gone. Their blank look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared” (236). She closes the story describing how she feels after all those things happened to her. She does not regret it; it is just that she feels that she is cheated.
The narrator is by far scandalous by having too many partners for sex. She feels that it is unfair because it is more acceptable for boys to sleep around with girls but not vice versa. “The more girls a boy has, the better” (233). She feels that it is easier to open her legs than her heart.