Half Mammals Of Dixie Analysis

The theme of loss in literature, is an incident that most characters have to face within their story. How characters deal and overcome with losing something, can make them weaker or stronger. In the two literary works, a wife and husband lose important elements in their marriage, needed to sustain their boned relationship. In the short story “Answers,” in “Half-Mammals of Dixie” by George Singleton and the poem “Conjoined,” by Judith Minty, a wife and husband lose trust, connection, and unity within their marriage, revealing that the breakdown of trust results in devastating loss. In Singleton’s story “Answers,” the main characters loses the element of trust with each other, causing tension in their marriage. The husband loses the trust he has with his wife because of the revelation of her dishonesty during an honest game. In

The wife from “Conjoined” describes how her marriage has become a force unity, “Joined at the chest by skin and muscle, doomed/ To live, even make love, together for sixty years”(Minty 227). She feels as though the marriage legally unifies her husband and herself, but she sees both of them as two seperate people, indicating a loss of unity between one another. In “Answers,” the Alexis’s action towards her husband 's response shows readers the current state of their unity, “ I said, ‘We should stay together… and maybe our relationship could be better- but I have a feeling that this is about as good a marriage as two people can have, living under that same roof’...My wife didn’t answer me like I thought she should’ve. She didn’t respond”(Singleton 109). The action of not responding to him, was a clear understanding that she feels more separate than unified with Ronnie, and that living under that same roof was not going to be enough to hold their marriage together. Together, both couples have issues that are affecting their unity within the