Essay about the short story: Pool by Corey Campbell

The short story “Pool” is about the couple Darla and Jon. The overarching theme in the story is: unhappiness in relationships, and failing marriages which both are very relevant to the society in which we live in. The author (Cory Campbell) is trying to shed some light on how it is being in an unhappy relationship.
The main character Darla is a young woman, and even though we aren’t told her age, based on the quotes: “Darla herself, just older than the couple” and “now they were in year four”, I would conclude that the other couple are in their mid-twenties which I take to mean that she is in her late twenties. Darla doesn’t want kids, which is one of the minor themes in the short story. She isn’t very confident in her looks which we can conclude from this snippet of the text: “she hated others seeing her in her swimsuit”.
Darla is in an unhappy relationship with Jon, which after their condom split is tenser than before. They have been a couple for just under a year, and Darla has recently realized that she isn’t happy in their relationship which we can see in this quote from the text: “what she liked best about him, Darla realized earlier in the car, was that it wasn’t going to last”. He is also pressuring her to do things she doesn’t want to do throughout the entire short story, for example when he is trying to get her to drink alcohol even though she isn’t allowed to drink, because of the morning-after pill that she took to prevent a pregnancy. Darla generally thinks that Jon is a bit too immature for her liking, an example being that he took her to a restaurant “much too expensive for him”, and also that he keeps trying to get her into the pool while knowing that she doesn’t like showing her body in front of others.
Unhappy relationships are the main theme for this short story, since not only are Darla and Jon in a dysfunctional relationship, so are Mandy and Trevor, it seems like they are only staying with each other for the sake of the baby. The story is written in 2009, which is a time where it is very easy to get a divorce, it isn’t like in the olden days where getting a divorce was frowned upon, these days it is very normal to get divorced. It seems like the author is trying to showcase how normal these kinds of dysfunctional relationships are, and how easily people are led into committing adultery. These days it’s hard to find a person who doesn’t know at least one divorced couple
Adultery is also what I believe the end is hinting at, especially with the lines: “for a moment it felt good to be touched by someone else” and “but she pulled him back by his arm and steered him to sit on the bed” both lines implying that Darla and Trevor’s relationship is turning from friends to lovers. Darla also lets go of her “fear” of showcasing her body and lets Trevor see her completely naked body since she doesn’t really care about anything anymore, she has completely given up on her relationship with Jon.
The short story takes place at Mandy and Trevor’s house where they are hosting a pool party. Darla immediately notices that all of their photos are of their baby and there is none of Mandy and Trevor, a lot of the pictures is the same pose just in different sizes, which suggest that they don’t really care for each other and are only staying together for the sake of their baby.
In conclusion: both couples are in unhappy relationships and are barely staying together. The author is trying to shed some light on how it is being in an unhappy relationship, and why people are willing to cheat on their significant other. He describes how the two couples are growing from each other and how Darla and Trevor eventually end up together since they are both trying to escape their relationship.