Essay
-”The Order of Things”
Carl is a reverend and the main character in the short story by Judy Troy. He has a wife and a daughter, but he is having an affair with this woman, Lily Forrest. The story goes about how he and Lily isn’t satisfied with their marriages, and are trying to make up with it by having sex. These to person’s looks almost like each other and this is why Carl has fallen in love with her. Carl sees himself in her, in a female version. The description of the persons looks is very direct (explicit) in the story, we are told for an example that: They’re in the early forties, married to teachers, they look alike (Six feet tall, pale eyes, angular features and light hair). The story hasn’t many characters in it, and they’re well described, the looks directly, but the personality indirectly (you have to guess how they actually feel), and you might get mixed signals at some points. It’s funny to think that a Reverend, who have become this, because he is so religious, is having an affair with somebody else. He should at least be so religious that he wouldn’t cheat on anybody, even though he doesn’t like the wife? The fact that he is a Reverend in this story and not an ordinary man, might be to show that love beats everything, and also might not be. I think the relationship is only based on sex and have no feelings from Lily’s side. Carl has fallen in love with her, because he can see himself in her and not because she is a unique woman (depends on the definition of unique, unique might be as yourself), but Lily clearly has no feelings for him. She have chosen him because he is a better option that her man, because Carl is so much better than the husband. He clearly can’t satisfy her needs, that’s why she cheats on him, and also the fact that the husband isn’t open enough for her, to get the husband to know well. She already knows Carl because she looks so much like him. The story is taking place in America, some place south of Cody, close to Yellowstone Regional Airport. This is somewhere on the northern part of The United States, this clearly has an impact on the story, because I don’t think it would be easy to get into a motel room in the southern states without any questions asked. I say this for the reason that I consider this is taking place at the time where racism where at its highest and black people hasn’t the same rights as white people. We can only tell that this is colored people we are talking about because Carl is called a Reverend and not a priest, as this is the term for a priest in Afro-American community.
As of the title I can say that it can have many different meanings, but in my opinion it means that you can’t mess around with how the world is put together and “crime” is taboo. Like the both is married and have kids, but they go around and have an affair, this can’t be right, so karma pays back and gets Lily killed; She is ran over by a car, someday when she is going over to him. This show you can’t go around and do “bad things”, because some day you will either get caught by somebody or you will have a major setback. This is my interpretation of the title, but it can have all sorts of meanings. If you look at it like, Carl and Lily where harmed at the softball match to see each other and get together because they were meant for each other and this is faith. So we have two versions of understandings to the same title. But clearly the way you see the title, is also the way you see world, do you believe in karma or in faith, do you see this as right or wrong? That’s the big question here.