Write An Essay On Ruth By Andre Dubus

There are many symptoms for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder such as: reliving the traumatic event in your head over and over and a deep dark sadness. Possibly may even be the urge to kill if those psychological diseases are caused by a man murdering a beloved child. For Ruth, this became all too much of a reality, but a loving husband who couldn’t see his wife go through with that took action. Ruth going through a deep depression and post-traumatic stress, over the loss of her son, Frank, drove Matt to killing Richard Strout, Franks killer. Depression is a serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act.(http://www.psychiatry.org) Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is an anxiety

The untimely murder of her youngest son Frank propelled Ruth into a deep and dark depression that inevitably lead to Matt feeling obligated to take revenge on his son's killer. “Ruth sees him. She sees him too much. She was at Sunnyhurts today getting cigarettes and aspirin, and there he was… It’s killing her” (Dubus 566). Not even mentioning that she has been buying nothing but cigarettes and aspirin like crazy; she has also been seeing her son’s killer, Richard, everywhere which is making the situation more traumatic for Ruth. Like any normal married couple what one partner feels will impact the life of his or her spouse exponentially. “Beneath her eyes there was swelling from the three days she had suffered.”(Dubus 566). Matt saw pain and depression in the eyes of his wife and the hurting inside of her heart, seeing that would drive any husband to do anything needed to subdue the pain. The pain of seeing a hurt wife should be the most pain any, good, husband will ever go through. The pressure of a wife on the verge of possibly killing herself from the depression that is eating her away is a main reason for Matt’s plot of revenge and murder of

“...she was living with a bastard.”(Dubus 569). Ruth says this referring to Richards ex-wife; portraying her true negative feelings towards the antagonist, Richard. Any parent would feel the need for vengeance of the murderer of his or her son and that is exactly what Ruth wanted to do. “Ruth would shoot him herself, if she thought she could hit him.”(Dubus 568). This quote, by Matt is referring to how the stress, grief and depression was driving Ruth so mad that she was willing to kill him with no problem. Her willingness to kill Richard with absolutely no remorse for what she would have done shows that psychologically she is going through a hard emotional time with post traumatic stress. Matt was forced to put his foot down; any good husband would refuse to watch his wife keep obsessing over her sons death and have the stress of this horrendous situation tear her down mentally. Throughout the story, Matt does not want to see his wife murder another man simply because she was in no right set of mind to do so. “She sees him all the time. It makes her cry.”(Dubus 567). If even seeing the man who murdered her son in cold blood makes her cry there is absolutely no chance that she would be able to focus to kill Richard. However, Matt simply just felt anger and disdain towards Richard and he had the mental focus