The wife's story
The Wife's story by Ursula K. Le Guin is a type of science fiction. The wife, one of the main characters, used to tell the story. The wife's tone of speech is full of grief. After she had gone through all the stages, including her husband's death, her heart is broken. She felt hopeless in her life. According to the story, I can see the wife mainly experienced four types of emotions: love, suspicion, fright and self-contradiction.
The wife loved her husband so much. She was admiring her husband. At the beginning of the story, she mentioned: "He was a good husband, a good father. He was always gentle. If you'd have seen him playing with the children, anybody who saw him with the children would have known that there wasn't any bad in him, not one mean bone." (P.89). Also, the wife said: "That's one of the things I first loved about him. He didn't grouch and whine when things didn't go his way. So we got to talking that way." Just by reading this clue, I can determine the wife's love for her husband was deeply showing from her heart. Later on, the husband's behavior changed. During the full moon time, when everybody asleep, the husband couldn't sleep, and went out into the glaring sun, and went off all alone. Whenever the wife asked, the husband just told her "going hunting". Whenever he came back, he would bring a stranger smell with him. The wife felt suspicious because her husband's attitude was changing. The husband acted not normal. On P.91, the story mentioned: "Oh, hunting, be back this evening", and it wasn't like him, even his voice was different." This indicated there are some changes of the husband. Then , the wife felt scared. She saw the husband turn from a wolf to a man. On P93, the story said: "and I saw what he saw. I saw the changing. In his feet, it was, first. They got long, each foot got longer……". On P93, "My own dear love, turned into the hateful one". Her heart must be turn apart at this point. At the end of the story, the husband tried to hurt the kids but was killed by the wife's sister. The wife felt self-contradictory. She can't bring her husband back from the death. On P95, it mentioned: "I was last, because love still bond the anger and the fear in me." Also, when the husband was getting killed, the wife still wished her husband to be alive. To support that, the book mentioned: "I went up close because I thought if the thing was dead and spell, the curse must be done, and my husband could come back alive, or even dead, if I could only see him, my tree life, in his true form, beautiful. But only the dead man lay there white and bloody. We drew back and back from it and turned and ran, back of into the hills, back to the word, of the shadows and the twilight and the blessed dark.
After the wife experienced everything, she had nothing to say. Her husband was gone. Her husband brought away her love and hope. However, she couldn't do anything with it. She couldn't prevent my accident. From "The Wife Story", I can surely tell you that's what life means. People always experience something that's uncontrollable or unacceptable, and it just happens. Does life contains conflict? I guess so. I really learned a lot from this story. I also noticed that our society is so complicated.
