Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

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The short story is written by Robyn Black in 2010. The whole story is written in past tense, but there are some flash-backs as well. The story revolves around our protagonist, Sarah, and how her childhood memories are being evoked because of happenings in the present. In the beginning, we are being thrown into a memory without further introduction – in media res. Sarah, her brother and the neighbors' children used to act out the story about King Henry VIII and his wives after school. Terrance (known as Terry), her brother, was the best at portraying Anne. Later on he gets ill and dies. Afterwords the children doesn’t acknowledge her, and they stop playing. She recalls her memories when her son's friend dies, and sees how it affects him. The short story ends with the protagonist recalling her beginning in high school, and how her teacher rephrases the rhyme “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”. Thereby we have two different time lines, but the two stories intertwine, and connections are being made, the closer you get to the ending. The narrator, being the same person as the protagonist, is a first person narrator, and we thereby follow her point of view. This brings greater focus on the perception of Sarah, and how she views the other characters – without us knowing how the other characters view the happenings. In the flash-backs the story takes place in the yard of Sarah's childhood home. In present time we are informed that the backyard consists of Japanese maple and thorny rosebushes. However, the setting is not of the biggest importance to the storyline. All of Sarah's childhood memories vigorously buttress the execution scene. The description of feelings and clothes; everything is because of the beheading. “- a red-and-white Diane von Furstenberg wraparound so he could use the beltlike part to hold the couch-pillow baby..” When

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