The Narrator's Bond with Her Son

Die, My Love

This emotional thread follows the strange, animal tenderness and growing distance between the narrator and her son.

increasing

Bearing strength in each event

decreasing

The Breastfeeding Scene The Breastfeeding Scene from "Die, My Love". The Breastfeeding Scene Context The narrator watches her nipple satisfy the baby with every slurp, while her husband smokes outside.

The Breastfeeding Scene from "Die, My Love". The Breastfeeding Scene Context The narrator watches her nipple satisfy the baby with every slurp, while her husband smokes outside.

The Breastfeeding Scene Context The narrator watches her nipple satisfy the baby with every slurp, while her husband smokes outside. The baby chokes on her milk and she leans him against her chest to burp. Turn After the burp, he becomes a dead weight, and she wraps him in her scarf. She thinks of Isadora Duncan and the lottery of bodies. Aftermath The nursing scene is both intimate and morbid. The bond with the child is physical, but the mother's mind is already far away.

The Wild Animal Child The Wild Animal Child from "Die, My Love". The Wild Animal Child Context As the husband talks about the stars, the narrator thinks about pacing with the baby for hours, from exhaustion to screaming…

The Wild Animal Child from "Die, My Love". The Wild Animal Child Context As the husband talks about the stars, the narrator thinks about pacing with the baby for hours, from exhaustion to screaming…

The Wild Animal Child Context As the husband talks about the stars, the narrator thinks about pacing with the baby for hours, from exhaustion to screaming, screaming to exhaustion. Turn She thinks how a child is a wild animal, another person carrying your heart forever. The image is both tender and terrifying. Aftermath The baby is not a civilized creature but a force of nature. Her bond with him is a bond with something she cannot control.

The Reviving in the Woods The Reviving in the Woods from "Die, My Love". The Reviving in the Woods Context After the narrator dunks her son in the icy water, he seems too pale and begins to fade.

The Reviving in the Woods from "Die, My Love". The Reviving in the Woods Context After the narrator dunks her son in the icy water, he seems too pale and begins to fade.

The Reviving in the Woods Context After the narrator dunks her son in the icy water, he seems too pale and begins to fade. She shakes him and wraps him up in her red flesh. Turn He comes to at midnight, but his breathing is still laboured. She says the hours of the dog and the wolf are over and the bats take the night. Aftermath The bond is tested at the edge of death. She is the one who nearly kills him and the one who pulls him back.

The Unrecognisable Faces The Unrecognisable Faces from "Die, My Love". The Unrecognisable Faces Context The narrator lays the baby between herself and her husband and watches them inhale and exhale.

The Unrecognisable Faces from "Die, My Love". The Unrecognisable Faces Context The narrator lays the baby between herself and her husband and watches them inhale and exhale.

The Unrecognisable Faces Context The narrator lays the baby between herself and her husband and watches them inhale and exhale. She looks at one face, then the other, then at herself in the middle. Turn She eventually gets bored of their features and is alarmed to find that, after staring at them so long, she no longer recognizes them. Aftermath The bond with the son has become unfamiliar. The family bed contains three people who are strangers to each other.

The Boy at the Institution Door

The Boy at the Institution Door Context The narrator is led from the institution to find her husband all dressed up and her son wearing his football kit, holding hands. The son is already walking and has more teeth and more hair. Turn They hug, and the son has expanded his vocabulary with sounds like coing coing and taca taca. The narrator notes the changes as if he were a stranger's child. Aftermath The bond is rebuilt cosmetically, but the time lost in the institution cannot be recovered. The son has grown without her.

early in the story, in the baby's blue-lit room

during the telescope night

after the accidental baptism

a dawn after the birds' chaos, in the family bed

at the narrator's release from the institution