Dark Roots: Literary Readings
Equality is shown through how gender, sexual preference and race is portrayed. In ‘What thou and I did, till we loved’, Beth and Rebecca are both female and in a relationship. This is revealed towards the end, but it isn’t built up in any way, it’s just there since it is shown as normal. Equality for women is also shown in numerous stories, the women are just as powerful, if not more so, than the men also there. In ‘angel’, it shows how bad it is when people are targeted for being a certain race. This ends badly for the one who did wrong by targeting the little girl because she is Vietnamese.
Caring for the environment is shown through bad things happening to characters who are harming it. In ‘cold snap’, the lady has just moved from the city, and disliking some tress, she starts killing them. This ends with her crashing into a tree and presumably dying. ‘Direct action’ also shows this, with Gary sneaking to block a drain delivering filth into a river. This ends up him being in trouble, but, the company ends up with bad headlines and are starting to falter.
Women are the main characters in the short stories, usually with men as side characters. They are mentally strong, if not physically strong, such as in ‘sea burial’ and ‘the testosterone club’. In ‘sea burial’ the wife tricks her husband into walking with her and kills him, while in the ‘testosterone club’ the partner tricks her husband into eating heaps of pickles that would make him flaccid. This puts the women in power in these stories, instead of the typical males in power.