Simple Recipes By Stephanie Thien Analysis

Lost for words

As a child, we tend to appreciate the time we spend with our family. They were our first bond and the example of a role model that we wanted to follow as we get older. Unfortunately, sometimes, as we age, some moments in our life can take a turn for the worst, which create childhood traumas. That’s when our perspective changes for a loved one. In “Simple recipes”, Madeleine Thien showcases how living in a loving family can change in an instant. In other words, the love we once had for someone could not be the same as it was before. In her short story, Thien uses a heartbreaking tone to explain the sorrow of no longer having the same love for her father and describes the conflict between the family. The heartbreaking tone

At the dinner table, the fighting between her father and her brother escalated quickly. Obviously, the narrator did not see any of this coming whatsoever and she felt “as if everything in the known world is ending right here” (20). When things like happens for the first time, it’s clearly going to cause trauma for the reason that it is disturbing to see the person she loved most acting violently towards their own child. Later on, it will most definitely be hard to live the same as before because the memories will always come back in her mind. When she spent time the day after the incident with her brother, she felt her father’s presence “at the entrance of the room but [she] cannot turn to look at him” (21). It shows that the narrator doesn’t want anything to do with that parent and how his actions are unforgivable. It is extremely painful to deal with something like that, to switch up emotions so fast to the opposite of what love is. Speaking of love, now that she’s older, living on her own, she realizes that the way everyone would gather to eat at the dinner table was one of her favorite times to remember about. It saddens her to think that it’ll never happen again due to the father’s act of violence that destroyed their relationships. That said, this brutal conflict changed everything in different