Essay of” New Year’s day”
The short story “New Year’s day” is written by a female writer Fay Weldon. In this story there is a man called Alan, and two girls who are called Clare and Amy. Clare is in a relationship with Alan, and Amy is Alan’s ex-girlfriend. This text gives us an example of how difficult it is to find the love. The message in this story is that could be difficult and hard to find the one and only, the person you have to live the rest of your life with, and the one you love and who loves you. When you see messages like this, there is a big probability of, that it is a girl that is the writer, because often write girls about love, and boys about war.
Clare is a thirty-two years old woman, who is Alan’s girlfriend. On the surface Clare is a happy person, who lives the life with her boyfriend, but internally she is an unhappy person, who is unaware of what she wants out of her life. What is nagging on Clare is that Alan has an ex-girlfriend called Amy. Alan has retained some of Amy’s things in his house, for example her bathrobe. Amy is kind of a role model to Clare, or Clare looks up to Amy. You can see that Clare looks up to Amy in this quote “Clare put on a pink silk wrap Amy had left behind and went down to answer the door” (P.53 l. 1-2). A girl would normally not see any of her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend things. It’s normal to just be jealous on the ex-girlfriend, but Clare looks up to Amy, by wearing her things. As I said earlier Clare is an unaware person and you could also see that in that quote. She herself wants to be like Amy. She hasn’t a plan of her life.
Clare and Alan are in a relationship. It’s not every relationship that’s happy and Alan and Clare’s relationship isn’t long and happy. The story gives us a lot of allusions and metaphors of that their relationship isn’t good. One of the examples is “The milk is sour” (P. 52 l. 13). The sour milk is a symbol of their relationship. The milk is sour, and so their relationship. Clare looks up to Amy, and Alan uses Clare money (P. 53 l. 40-45 “paid the taxi last night...”).
In their relationship they have had a lot of quarrels and bad conversations. When they have these conversations, Alan ends up by saying: “We’re so lucky to have each other” and “I have never been so happy in all my life. Let’s just get to the top of the hills before we turn back” (P.56 l.12-14).
Alan tries to save the situation, but when he said that, it was too late. Now Clare has got a plan.

In the story there are a lot of strange events, which meaning is to attract Clares attention. The example with the sour milk is also one of the events. Their relationship is like sour milk. Boring, sour, and maybe Clare have to find a new a fresh boyfriend (P. 52 l. 13).
Another strange event is when she was awakened by her telephone in the early morning. The alert is not just a “wake-up-alert”, but more like a “think-of-you-relationship-alert” (P. 51 l. 1-3)
In the text (P. 54 l.24-33), when the smoke alert is go off Clare is sure that she had turned off the oven. Clare blames Amy for these events. Connected with all these events I will bring these quote “My, you are paranoid” (P.55 l. 8). Maybe it’s Clare who done all these things, but without any feeling of suspicion. She is paranoid.
The title of the story is New Year’s Day. It‘s the day where the story goes on, but also the day where many people start a new life, with new plans and new partners. It‘s the day where Clare leave Alan, and starts her new life. In the quote:” I have never been so happy in all my life. Let’s just get to the top of the hills before we turn back” (P.56 l.12-14), is there also a message of the whole story. In the beginning of the story Alan and Clare were on the way to the top of the edges, but they are on the top of the edges. Clare is taking her hand to herself, and decides to walk alone with a new joie de vivre, and with a sunnier prospect, where she hopefully finds love.

Gode pointer og gode citater. Du skal huske at lave en kort opsamling til sidst og skille dette afsnit fra afsnittet omkring slutningen. Derved kunne du også få besvaret ”pinden”omhandlende temaerne som desværre mangler. Pas på med at gentage dig selv og lave selvmodsigelse. Det største problem er dog det sproglige! Du skal få styr på ordstilling, til eksamen slår de hårdt ned på sproglige fejl, så det er nu, du skal gøre en indsats for at få dem væk. Læs grundigt korrektur og husk at engelsk har en anden ordstilling end dansk