The title of the story – “The Bottom Line and the Sharp End” – is a reflection of Avril’s life. Avril repeats this phrase at least two times: when she tells about relationships with the stage manager and when she loses her hair. Avril understands that “nothing lasts” that is why people should not be afraid of taking the risk. Every man that she loved gives her something good or bad but she learns what love is. Avril experiences many rises and falls but the most important thing that she experiences love. For Avril love is happiness and the purport of life. “Those were the days, when love was love. And I tell you, Helen, it is still is, and the only thing I regret is that it can’t go on for ever – love, sex… I still feel love, and I still say love, though it’s not what men want, not from me.” Avril does not regret anything, she is grateful to each man that was with her. She does not say an insulting word about her ex-boyfriends, she tells about them with respect and tenderness.
Avril’s hair is a symbol of her life. She changes its colour, shape and length after each period of life. She attempts to change her life in this way. Every time Avril’s hairstyle becomes a reflection of her state. When she is a sixteen-year-old girl, she has long, smooth and shiny hair that is the symbol of purity and youth. After Avril’s appearance in the sub-pornographic magazine and going with the boy “behind the bicycle sheds” she decides to cut off her hair because she does not want anyone to recognize her. Then Avril gets a part in a Whitehall Revue and has a blonde, back-combed bob. During the relationships with stage manager Avril has a black beehive that she has never liked. Finally, she has thin, wiry henna-and-grey curls. We can see that Avril’s hair is shorter and it loses its outward appearance ever time until Avril becomes bold totally. “Nothing lasts, not even hair,” – she says. This is “the sharp end”.
When Helen met Avril for the first time, she just finished her apprenticeship and she was poor and worked hard. Avril was a beautiful young woman wearing expensive clothes and looking great. Helen envied her. However, she didn’t even imagine how difficult and full of ordeals Avril’s life was. I think that there is an author’s thought that we should not envy somebody’s success because we never know at what cost he or she got it.
Now all is the wrong way round. Helen is a successful businesswoman and Avril is just a singer in the night club. But we can see that Avril does not envy anyone. She does not think about pecuniary values at all. She appreciates human feelings much more than money, clothes and jewellery.
Avril’s story helps Helen to see clearly that whole her life has been empty and meaningless. Helen has everything: the salon, the husband, grown children, bank account, but she has not love. At the beginning, Helen is even afraid of entrusting her husband to mend the electric kettle. She fears that something will go wrong. It is a very good indication that Helen has many doubts of everything, even of such a trifle as a kettle. However, during the conversation between her and Avril, Helen’s eyes are opened. She realizes that her life has not been full, she feels “weary of the salon and her bank account and her marriage and everything she valued: and of her tidy hair and sensible shoes and the way she never took risks and how her youth had passed and all she’d ever known had been in front of her eyes, and fear had kept her from turning her head or seeing what she would rather not see”. Only once in a lifetime Helen allows herself to sin with someone, but she prefers to forget this “drunken episode”. She is ashamed of it. She does not know what failure is, so when Avril became bald, Helen “felt her hands grow cold, and her head fill with black: she all but fainted… nothing like this had ever happened before, in her professional career.” Nevertheless, not without reason Helen feels, “on the other side of the shock and horror, agreeably purged, sensuous” when Helen see that Avril is bald. She is cleansed of her prejudices, stereotypes and fears. Helen never loses not because she has the absolutely right mode of life, but because she never takes the risk. However, when she suffers a misfortune she understands the real sense of life.
I consider that the theme of the story is a purport of life. The author helps us to understand that the purport of life is not pecuniary values but spiritual and moral. And the greatest value that brings happiness is love.
Message is expressed explicitly by the Avril’s words that she says at the end of the story: “Nothing lasts, so you’d better have as much as you can, while you can. And in the end, there’s only you and only them, and not what they think of you, but what you think of them”. It is a message-answer because the author gives us a sufficiently clear idea that every person should enjoy life to the full, a person should experience all feelings in their catholicity, especially love because it is the most wonderful feeling. Nothing in this world lasts forever, and if you are afraid of risk, pain and failures, you will never learn love and happiness. There is a proverb: “If there were no clouds, we should not enjoy the sun”. I think it suits this story. We perceive the life through both rises and falls, and it is love that gives us a taste of true life. “Love fills even senseless life with a meaning and even full of reasonable sense life loses its meaning without love.”
