Lust By Susan Minot

In Alice Munro short story “Boys and Girls” is about a young girl confused in life about herself maturing into a young women that takes place on a fox farm in Jubilee, Ontario, Canada with her parents and her younger brother. The character of the young girl that is not specified by a name in the story is struggling with the roles that are expected by her peers of a young women in the 1940’s. This young girl has been helping her father on the fox farm for many years in which brought so much of a joy in her life. As she gets older, as well and as her younger brother Laird grows older, she is starting to realize that her younger brother will be soon be taking over the roles and responsibility of taking care of the animals. Then her mother and grandmother points out the anticipations of her to start acting more like how a young women of her age should present themselves and this has great emotional effects on her, and at the end of the story she shows a final act of disobedience against her father, but it only shows the thing she resist the most, her maturing into a young women and becoming her own person.

Lust is having a self-indulgent sexual desire. Susan Minot portrayed the mind of a promiscuous high school female perfectly. Lust is powerful and seductive, but it's inherently selfish and opposed to love. For many girls who are having sex with different boys they can identify with the desire to be needed. The characters in "Lust" are written in a way to highlight the dysfunction and disconnection of everyone involved. The narrator herself is nameless and faceless, making the reader believe that she has already somehow disappeared, just as the men in her life have made her disappear after having sex. Similarly, the men are listed in a brief and are identified only by their sexual acts or by other, easily objectified characteristics. What

There are many differences between a boy and a girl. Usually when they are young, the parents let them do what they desire within reason. As they grow older, it is the mother’s assignment to show the daughter how to become a woman, and it is the fathers to show the son how to become a man. In “Boys and Girls”, the narrator is older than her brother. Therefore, she is gratefully doing the son’s duties until he has grown up and matured. “Wait until Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have real help.” (775) The lead character did not like this idea at all. She enjoys working with her father out in the yard, and does not want to be a girl, but more a tomboy as a result that she does not have to work in the house. That is why she goes outside during any chance she attains. “I just get my back turned and she runs off. It’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” (775) During this time period, young children had more freedom than young adults. For this reason, the protagonist is annoyed by her brother because he receives more freedom than she does. Meaning that he can do whatever he pleases, while she is the one taking care of his future responsibilities. “Swinging himself sick on the swing, going

"They turn casually to look at you, distracted, and get a mild distracted surprise, you're gone. Their blank look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared.(pg.263)" In Minot's story Lust you are play by play given the sequential events of a fifteen year old girls sex life. As portrayed by her thoughts after sex in this passage the girl is overly casual about the act of sex and years ahead of her time in her awareness of her actions. Minot's unique way of revealing to the reader the wild excursions done by this young promiscuous adolescent proves that she devalues the sacred act of sex. Furthermore, the manner in which the author illustrates to the reader these acts symbolizes the

Throughout the course of time, roles in our society towards gender has evolved. In the story Boys and Girls by Alice Munro relatively has a direct message which is the constant battle of gender stereotypes. The audience is reading through the point of view of the main character, which is a girl, and her frustration she feels. Through the young girl’s experience, Alice Munro is able to show the readers the role of stereotypes or expectations that a female has to fulfill.

With the constant push for conforming into what society deems as acceptable, it is no surprise how much of an impact society plays on limiting the perception of what one’s sexual relationship should be. Society manipulates women into behaving in a certain manner in order to fit into this ideal mold of how women should be. Yet only to a certain point, “Be assertive, but not aggressive. Be feminine, but not too passive. Be sexually adventurous, but don’t alienate men with your sexual prowess.” (Bell 26) Due to all of the conditions, which limit women, it is no wonder how many young women feel “weighed down by vying cultural notions about the kind of sex and relationships they should be having.” (Bell 26) Although these limitations proposed by society can cause personal battles between oneself, it is possible to change one’s perception of how one should act regarding their own sexuality. Bell points out that by using “strategies of desire of the Relational Woman”, (Bell 30) this will assist woman in navigating through their sexual and romantic lives. It is normal for women to feel a desire for relationships and it is inevitable that conflict will arise. If women are able to develop and fully accepting their desires, despite the limitations from society, this will to lead women to building lives that are filled with self-acceptance.

Her character is driven to these men for gratification. She seeks nothing else but satisfaction from these men, to earn her way through to them, but can’t help feeling lost in doing so. She admits to her helplessness when she goes on about Philip, “ For a long time, I had Phillip on the brain. The less they notice you, the more you get them on the brain.” This supports my argument that these men want nothing but one thing from her and when they get it they forget her but she can’t help to emotionally tie herself to them and think about them more than she should. She’s seeking a connection that is only going one way.

In Susan’s Minot short story “Lust”, we get to see how lust can make you feel like “a piece of veal (421) and how you “open your legs but can’t or dare anymore, to open your heart.”(421) The narrator starts off by having sex and remembering all the details on where, when and who it happened with, who doesn’t’ remember their first time right? She starts to become a so called slut. She starts realizing that all the guys only want her for this and after they had sex she “seem to have disappeared.” (421) After she had sex with so many guys, she started to forget names and really not care about them but only want the sex. The narrator has sex with so many different guys, and so often that she forgets what feelings are.

Sexuality is a particularly perplexing topic for young women. Bell notes that “Their (women’s) twenties ought to be a decade of freedom and exploration. But… I have found them to be more confused than ever about not only how to get what they want, but what they want.” (Bell 26) Yes, they are young and has so many opportunities in front of them. Yes, most of them have a college degree and are highly educated. Yes, there are too many choices and they are condemned whichever way they choose.

Jessica Valenti’s 2009 novel, The Purity Myth, explains how “America’s obsession with virginity is hurting young women,” by citing and explaining just some of the infinite excuses behind this theory. As a writer, Jessica Valenti has written multiple other books regarding women, double standards, and the essentials of feminism. In other books like “Full Frontal Feminism (2007),” and “Yes Means Yes (2008),” Valenti has a strong reputation to stand up for women and women’s rights. In her newest novel, “Sex Object: a Memoir (2016),” Valenti tells accounts of how male sexuality is not seen as vulgar as women’s.

NERVE is a New York Times Best Selling novel by Jeanne Ryan that has recently been converted into a major motion film. The story follows Vee, a senior in high school, notorious for being a shy behind-the-scenes-type-a-girl who becomes sick of being outshined by her friends. On a whim, Vee and enters NERVE; A GAME LIKE TRUTH OR DARE MINUS THE TRUTH. WATCHERS PAY TO WATCH, PLAYERS PLAY TO WIN CASH AND GLORY. Everything was harmless at first. But one challenge leads to another, and the prizes are simply too enticing to resist. Determined to stay in the game and win the grand prize, Vee and her partner Ian continue the competition -- until things turn sinister, deadly, and suddenly every resource for help is involved with the “game”.

“If stories were depopulated, the plots would disappear because characters and plots are interrelated” (76). I chose to do my analysis paper over the short story Lust by Susan Minot, in this analysis I will be going over how the use of characterization in lust contributes to the message about relationships. The first-person narrator starts off by detailing her sex life likes it’s a grocery list or some kinds of list of things to do on the weekend. It just goes to show how meaningless these relationship with her sex companions mean. Although we do not know what the reader looks like we do how she thinks and feels. We can feel the narrator become more detached and emotionless towards the end of the story. Even though she is emotionally removed for the story at the end she also becomes more self-aware of what she is doing, and comes to the realization that she is looking for a relationship in all the wrong places.

Humans now have a very different life compared to the past since freedom, opportunities, and information together are playing a vital role in this modern society. Especially young people, they become more independent and are capable of living their lives. However, while society provides people a lot of benefits, it makes their lives even more complex at the same time by leaving them pressured and confused about who they really are. In her essay, “Selections from Hard to Get:Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” Leslie Bell mentions that in this new-in between developmental period American twenty-something women have more freedom and opportunities to their sexual lives than previous generations. But they are struggling with the paradoxes of their relationships and desires at the same time. Bell suggests that social expectations and cultural guidelines, which are conventions of female sexuality and stereotypes of being a good girl, prevent these young women from pursuing their sexual desires and limiting their relationships with men. However, even these women have chosen the way they live, and what kind of sexual life they want to be bad girls to break those old rules, they ended with losing their identities. As a result, establishing a women’s identity rather than clinging to contradictory directives and social expectations impacts female sexuality more. When these twenty-something women try to split

The portrayals of the two genders are highly stereotyped. In her extended metaphor, Jiles contradicts the ideals that girls are like a “Paper matches”(11), relating back to the gender role of domesticity as they have “At Your Service”(10), written on their bodies, and will come “bearing supper”(13) with their “heads on fire”(14), mocking the domestic roles of women. In the modern age there is no need for “hunters or warriors”(7) Boys are apparently “deprived of socially sanctioned rituals. In retort to society they are like “hominoids” who “walk(ing) over red-hot cinders without crying”(7). Mocking their mothers the author says, “Mother thought see won, poor foolish Mother”, when they, the mothers think their sons are going to be perfect like the “first twelve years”(4) where they are: “affectionate, kind, a joy to see in their charming clothes.”(4) Tweedie also compares the adolescent boys to “chimps leaving a tea party”(3), that are “thin and long as celery in their tattered vest and holey jeans” in which she refers to the girls as civilized, as that they have “shining, well brushed tresses”(2) and “immaculate

These stories are patronisingly simplistic: we are indoctrinating these 5 year olds with stereotypes about gender and families. Added to the mix is a lack of female representation as seemingly gender-neutral characters (exhibit A: Winnie the Pooh) are almost always presented as male. The books teachers read to children in a classroom should be representative of the world we live in; not everyone will live in a three bedroomed house, daddy in the office; mummy in the kitchen. So why are we telling children, in reading them such stories, that this is the case? Further proof of this lies in the phrase ‘Boys will be boys’ that I'm sure you will all have heard in the classroom, and at home. This originated in the 16th century, a time when gender inequality was rife. So why are we still using it? By using it nowadays we're giving boys to misbehave without consequence and perpetuating outdated expectations of the way boys and girls behave. There must be a reason why 95% of prisoners are adult