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The Feather Pillow Horacio Quiroga

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The Feather Pillow by Horacio Quiroga is a gothic short story originally written in Spanish and translated to English. Newly weds Alicia and Jordan are very much in love, however, they both have different ways of showing this love. Alicia longs for more affection and romance from her partner but does not voice her concerns to him. Alicia lives in their new home alone, waiting for Jordan to return every day. One day she falls ill with influenza for days. Her illness becomes more severe until she is reduced to constant bed rest prescribed by Jordan’s doctor. Jordan waits anxiously for Alicia’s recovery but she instead experiences episodes of hallucinations and mysterious sightings of blood on her pillow. Alicia becomes weaker, loses consciousness, and dies. A discovery is found inside her pillow of a monstrous parasite that had been draining Alicia of her blood while she remained in bed. …show more content…

I also like to think very romantically about relationships between the people I love. Physical affection like spontaneous hugs are important to me in order to show concern to one another and like Alicia, I interact with people who are not as physically affectionate as I am. I can understand and sympathize with Alicia’s longing for tenderness from her husband. During my experience with dealing with less emotionally expressive it's easy for me to feel rejected however, I understand that it is not personal. “Of course she would have wished for less severity in that rigid heaven of love, more feeling, more spontaneous tenderness; but always the impassive countenance of her husband held her back” (Quiroga 2). Here Alicia has to deal with the conflict between her needs for more affection and her unemotional husband just, as when working with others, it is sometimes necessary to compromise between communication

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