Jane Martin's Beauty

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Jane Martin’s Beauty For the closed reading of a print text I chose to review Jane Martin’s “Beauty”, a short story that speaks about love and people striving to have something they do not already posses. The central conflict in the short story is that each character has something the other character desires. The central theme in the story is jealousy. In todays society, everything is predicated and based off ones image or beauty. It’s all about how people perceive themselves in the world and they want to do everything that they can to impress their peers and the ones they deeply care about. Not enough is based on ones “inner beauty” and the great attributes a person can have related to their intelligence and personality. The short story deals with two friends on the opposite end of that spectrum, one is beautiful and one is very intelligent. In the story, both Bethany and Carla are jealous of one another and seek a trait that the other has. Bethany is the intelligent one with a good job and Carla is the beautiful one that always gets asked out by attractive men. Both of these characters are jealous and say things throughout the story to prove that the other’s trait is more desirable. What is more important, beauty or intelligence? That seems to be a problem that many people deal with in their respective lives and there doesn’t seem to be an underlying answer that justifies one case or the other. Throughout the story, the characters bicker back and forth about why it is better to be intelligent over being beautiful and vice versa. I believe Jane Martin is trying to tell us that there really is no answer to this controversial question and that this is a problem that people deal with on a daily basis. She believes that neither is better and both people should be content with the card they were dealt. There are perks and treats for being either beautiful or
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