Essay – The False Moon
Any child needs stability and love from their parents while growing up. If this is not the case the child will go out and find “safe places” elsewhere. The main character in the short story “The False Moon”, by Shirley Golden from 2011 is not met with stability and love. He is almost forced out on his own trying to fit into society.
The main character is the first person narrator in the story. His name is Matt and describes himself in a rather bad way; “People don’t run from me; I’m lanky and skinny I’m told…” (lines 14-15, page 1). Matt tells the story of his teenage life. How his mother works all the time and is never there for him, and how he has trouble in school. The subjects are too difficult, and he
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The main character takes care of his mother. He cleans up after her and makes tea. But she doesn’t return the love and he notices it. For example when he helps her up from the floor and puts her to bed. He thinks, “She doesn’t reach for me” (line 125, page 4).
The sketch that Matt makes is a symbol of him wanting love from his mother. It shows the boy’s inner feelings of being trapped. The bottle is a hint at the mother’s heavy drinking. He has a mother who doesn’t pay attention to him and is busy looking for other men. The main character wants and needs boundaries and he is so desperate that he even tries to kid himself, “I like to kid myself she would stop me if I didn’t sneak out of the house” (line 6, page 1).
In the streets he finds a new “safe place”. The nightly ritual where he draws the lines and numbers and the girl “fills in gaps” gives him a feeling of belonging somewhere. The ritual is finally something he feels he can actually count on. As he says: “I didn’t trust words…. But lines were reliable.”(lines 42-44, page 2). The lines are a symbol of the stability and the boundaries Matt is longing for. You can say that the girl isn’t just filling in the gaps in Matt’s drawings, but also the gaps inside of him. As the title of the short story, the nightly ritual becomes his false moon, like insects flocking around street lamps because they think it is the moon. Suddenly Matt has found something
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