They Re Not Your Husband Summary

Expressing Thematic Relevance There are many ways authors express their themes effectively. Dino Buzzati story, “The Falling Girl” and Raymond Carver’s story, “They’re Not Your husband” uses variety of techniques to convey their themes towards the audience.
“The Falling Girl” is about a 19 year old girl called Marta, who falls off a skyscraper. She is trying to pursue her goal, which is reaching the ball. On her journey, she sees other people who she socializes with or are just like her.
“They’re Not Your Husband” is about a husband, Earl, and a wife, Doreen works night shifts and Earl is unemployed. Doreen works at a Earl hears other males talking about his wife weight and size and he became self conscious about it and started making his

To begin with, the use of symbolism highlights the theme of body image, double standards and insecurity. In both short stories, they are multiple symbols that were used to express the theme. For “The Falling Girl” the symbols used was the skyscraper and age. The skyscraper symbolizes societal hierarchy and age symbolizes body image and double standards. When Marta started falling down the skyscraper, she was a young 19 year old girl, but when she was reaching the bottom floor, she became an old women. “‘It’s always like that,’ the man muttered. ‘At these low floors only falling old women pass by. You can see beautiful girls from the hundred and fiftieth floor up. Those apartments don’t cost so much

In “The Falling Girl”, Marta sees other females falling down the skyscraper, who fell faster than she did and she thinks they are prettier than her. “It was a contest, then. And she only had a shabby little dress while those other girls were dressed smartly like high-fashion models and some even wrapped luxurious mink stoles tightly around their bare shoulders” (pg 3). The other girls falling down the skyscraper have a higher class than Marta and she still wants to go to the higher class and the other girls are falling faster than Marta is when she fell down before they did. This shows Marta’s insecurity about her body image and how she thinks of herself and the double standards about women because the only people falling down the skyscraper are females. For “They’re Not Your Husband”, Doreen has lost weight and others were worried about her health, while Earl just cared about her losing weight and how people thought about her. “‘That I’m too pale, for one thing,’ she said. ‘That I don’t look like myself. They’re afraid I’m losing too much weight.’ What’s wrong with losing weight?’ he said. ‘Don’t pay any attention to them. Tell them to mind their own business. They’re not your husband, are they? You don’t live with them” (pg 105). Earl is telling Doreen that the other people are not her husband, while he is not acting like a good husband at all. Showing the double