Summary:
Publish Post
Luci Tapahonso's "No Denails from Him" is a short story about a woman's spiritual fight to live after so much of her has died. As the story begins the wife has a vivid dream about her husband being unfaithful, this dream is so terrifying it "push[es] her to the floor." Even though it is only a dream she knew at that movement that her marriage was over and that her husband was going to leave her, "she needed no proof, no denials from him." As her marriage ended she stopped living her life and thus died in some sense. Her life became a constant blur of "school, work, [and] paying bills...." while she became consumed by the feelings of anger she repressed. Her depression deepened as she started to feel as if his leaving was her fault, when these feelings compiled with the stress of teaching and raising kids life in general became too much for her to handle. At this point she began to listen to music everywhere and all the time, she even "slept with the radio on low" so that when she woke up she could pretend that she was not alone. It was the songs about peole, that had felt the lonelines that consumed her, that allowed her to actually affirm that she was not alone. And that she was not the first to experience that type of heartbreak. These musicians put "music to the pain" she thought was her death and music to the new life that "he" gave her.
Thesis:
In "No Denails from Him: Luci Tapahonso uses the reoccuring themes of nature and music to show that often people believe they've died when in reality life has just begun.
Death/Rebirth:
The wife in the story experiences a spiritual and emotional death after her husband leaves her and their kids for the affections of another woman. Her "death" was within her depression and not being herself, but she finds new life through music and songs about people being lonely. the feeling she got from knowing other people had gone through what she had experience, that feel from the music was her rebirth!
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