The short story “Roommates” by Linda Heuring revolves around OB and Brad, who are roommates. It touches subjects as jealousy, prejudice and being different. The short story also focusses on how the people you acquaint yourself with influence your behavior. Brad’s friends talk bad about OB, which clearly bothers him, but in the end he takes part in destroying some of OB’s most cherished possessions. This is a result of the friends’ influence mixed with alcohol and jealousy. Brad apologizes to OB three times, which empathizes that regret characterizes the story. Oliver Baxter is a skinny blond-haired college student, who only wears black and almost always has headphones on. It is strongly insinuated that OB’s family died in a fire and that all he has left is a bag of hotel soaps, notebooks from grade school, a guitar case and a scar. The way he orderly and neatly arranges his belongings and bed linen shows that OB values his things highly, which is probably because he does not have much left after the fire. His past would also explain his closed-off personality. He was hurt in his past, therefore …show more content…
Brad’s regret characterizes most of the story and it seems that Linda Heuring wants the readers to remember that one cannot undo what one has said or done, even though the conditions, under which it was done, change. Zebo and Henry’s prejudice against OB, who they call goth and psycho, affects the narrator’s choices and actions, and from that it can be concluded that prejudice is contagious. People have often persecuted those who are different, be it black people, homosexuals or the skinny kid with the glasses. Ms. Heuring addresses this issue in an impartial way, which is likely to have a greater impact on people, than if she had written the story with a clear message, because then she would have seemed