Save As Many As You Ruin English Literature Essay

Save as many as you ruin, is a short story by Simon van booy. The story focuses on life and existence. Our main character meets her only true love after 8 years. When Gerard meets Laurel for the first time, he becomes aware of actually being a human, and that gets his mind wondering, who actually is, and who he will become.

Our narrator in the short story is a 3rd person narrator. Through the whole story, it’s only Gerads point of view. This gives us his opinion on what happens and so on. As the readers, we get to hear Gerads thoughts and observations. ex: “Gerard vaguely remembers the feeling of being in love with Laurel” (p. 5, ll. 123). Through the whole story, we follow the Point of view from Gerard only. This makes us a part of his brain, since we get to hear every single thought he makes, and what he consider.

When Gerard walks through the city, it’s not just what’s going on in his mind we get a part of, but simply everything that happens. ex: “Gerard feels stabbing love for his daughter. He crosses Fifty-third Street. Her name is Lucy, and she is eight” (p. 2, ll. 18-19).

The texts jumps from present to past quite a lot. But it’s simple easy to figure out when he is in the past, and when he is in the preset. This is because the text is written in present tense when he is in the present, and when he is in the past, the test is written in past tense.

Gerard is what we call for a “player” at my age. A player is a guy who hooks up with a lot of women, but never really get any feelings for them. This matches Gerard quite good, since he has been with a lot of women. ex: Most knew he would never love them, so they kept a distance, sparing themselves the grief of an ancient pain” (p. 2, ll. 34-35).

One case where Gerard actually grew feelings for a women, did happen. ex:”Gerard loved one woman once, but not Lucy’s mother” (pp. 2-3, ll. 35-36). He felt in love with Laurel, but he cheated on her with Lucy’s mother. It was destroying his mind. Laurel, this perfect women, who would become a perfect housemother, and the woman, issy; So incredible sexy, but didn’t have a structured life.

Lucy is the daughter of Gerard and Issy. At some point in the short story, issy leaves to become an actress; “When Lucy was six months old Issy went back to Los Angeles of for filling her dream of being an actress” (p4. ll:86-87). Lucy means the world for Gerard, basically the only person in the whole world, he has ever been that close to.

Gerard’s mind is a mystery. He thinks of one thing, and the next second, he thinks of something completely different. Ex; He thinks of snow, and then suddently he thinks of the second world war.

There’s a quite big difference between issy and laurel. Laural has a structured life. She has a well paid job, is friendly and really nice. At the other end, Issy is really unpredictable, she is wild, crazy and this makes her sexy and hot. She’s trying hard to become an actress and she doesn’t really care about that Gerard doesn’t love her.

The general “mood” of the story is quite sad. Gerard thinks a lot about the death, about WW2 where children were gassed, and even at the point where he gets a kiss of his daughter, all he thinks of, is the picture of her mother lying dead in the pool : “She is kissing him all over his face. Gerard imagines her mother floating in the pool” (p. 6, ll. 163-164).

i believe that “Save as many as you ruin” is about creating balance. In this case, it’s all about Gerard trying to get the best out of everything that happens. He might have done a lot of awefull and not respectfull stuff, but he know has to think of all the good stuff he has done. This happens when he sees Laurel, this makes him realize that he got another chance of making him a better life for him self.

The story is about life. Generally love, and love which you have lost through the life and how death has an effect on us. Gerard needed some sort of a vision from his daughter to figure out what he actually missed in his life. The message in the story is: that it is never too late, or if you really want it, you can be happy.