Poetic Justice

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Characterization on Jed Cunningham

The narrators image on herself

The significance of their youthful relationship

The language used, and the point of view the language has

The theme

The main theme in this short story is the difficulty of choosing between reality and a dream. Once her dream was to marry Jed, but he broke it when he went to Ireland. The narrator has settled down, she married another man and created an ordinary life with him. When Jed suddenly contacts her through e-mail, all the old feelings for him burst into flames again. When Jed tells her he lives alone because he still loves her, she gets the choice between going on with her ordinary life, or following her old dream of becoming Jed’s wife.
Revenge could also be a theme. The narrator and Jed had very different dreams of the future when they were young, and it was these differences that caused the argument, after which Jed left and never spoke to her again. Now the narrator does the same thing to him. She deletes his messages and never answers the last one he sent her. She leaves him when he says he loves her, and she erases him from her life like he left her and never looked back.

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The title

The title can refer to the justice the narrator achieve when she ignores his last message. He is through the whole story described as the Irish poet, and she used to be. But when she thinks about her life she realizes that she is happy with her life, and she is not willing to risk it for an old high school dream. She thinks that breaking up her family to go out and seek herself, would be a sin. And only poets can live happily with a life of sin. So she disappears without a word, just like ...

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