Save as Many as You Ruin

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“Save as many as you ruin” is a short story by Simon Van Booy. The story takes place on Manhattan in New York City. We are introduced to Gerard, who is the main character of the story. Gerard is a contemplative man, who at the beginning of the story, wanders in the snow, deep in thoughts about his life and how short and unimportant it is. “Gerard thinks of his own footprints and how soon they will disappear. He exhales into the world and his breath disappears. (…) He wonders if his life is an extraordinary one.” (p. 1, l. 7-9) In this statement lies a worrying uncertainty, which indicates that he does not think much of himself. He has an extreme low self-esteem, and he has a hard time figuring out what his purpose in life really is. The fact that he is reflecting on his footsteps and his breath disappearing is disturbing, because it is how he sees his own existence; everything he does simply disappears behind him. This first paragraph in the story is filled with melancholy. Van Booy uses the weather as the main tool to create the mood; especially the snow is used for emphasizing the intensity of the situation. For example when Gerard sees Laurel, the snow has become a blizzard, and in the first part of the story, the snowy weather is reflected in a depressive way, where our main character is walking alone in the streets of New York, pondering about his obvious insignificant existence. Gerard is described as a handsome man, probably in his mid 40’s. He is on his way home from work and throughout the evening he is overcome by different flashbacks. One of which he reminisces his old physical education teacher from his English prep school. Here we could interpret that Gerard spent his childhood education going to school in England. We get the impression that he is a smart, hardworking and a well educated single parent, as he quotes poets and makes comparisons to
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