A Simple Exchange of Niceties Essay

795 Words4 Pages
A Simple Exchange of Niceties By Joanne Fedler “A Simple Exchange of Niceties” is a short story, told by the young, female main character, who got pregnant by accident. It is written in spoken language, including all thoughts of the girl, and in present. A name is not given. She had sex with a stranger she met in a Pub, who then left her with the child. She has a favorite bench in a park, which she in some way has developed a personal relationship to. She also doesn’t like to share this particular bench. One day, where she as usual was sitting on the bench, she got interrupted by a woman. The woman tried to talk to her, but the girl was trying to avoid talking. She is generally somewhat of a loner. She avoids contact with others and has really bad self-esteem. She has no problem with sharing material things: “I’d give anyone the shirt off my back, or the food off my plate” (Page 8, line 24), but when it comes to for example the bench, which marks intimacy, she does. It turned out that the woman who joined her was infertile. First, the girl wanted to abort the child, but after this meeting, she decided to have the baby and then give it to the woman, who obviously has a hard time, not being able to give birth. The relation between the main character and her mother was also bad: “She would have exchanged me for a week’s holiday at a three-star resort … not that anyone was offering … but if they had … “(Page 10, line 101), but when she told her that she was pregnant, her mother suddenly showed interest in and love to her, and when she was giving birth, she even sat down next to her and embraced her. When the girl came back to the bench with the child, the woman was gone and never showed up again, so she decided to keep the child, as it was her destiny. The girl has, as mentioned before, a special relationship to that bench. It is different from the other benches and
Open Document