Vitamins Won't Get You In A Good Mood

Vitamins

This has been the most interesting of the short stories I’ve read up to now. It includes very attractive subjects such as adultery, alcoholism, drug abuse, and loose morals. “It was a nothing job… (He) went drinking with the nurses.” (Pg. 91) From these fragments I was able to infer that the main character is some kind of a doctor or a nurse. Having this kind of job would require being a responsible person and not going out drinking as soon he got off work. Regarding alcoholism, I observed that there are various scenes where the main character gets off work and stops at the bar to have a drink before getting home. “I fixed us another one.” (Pg. 97) This is the way the narrator would say that he fixed himself a drink. This phrase also appears several times in the story.

Something I found very interesting was how the most important scene or the climax of the story wasn’t the one that caught my attention. While the part where they’re (Donna and the protagonist) in the bar was very tense and action filled, I think Donna’s epiphany was a lot more important. A drunken veteran makes her realize that she should become a prostitute. “’It’s true,’ she said. ‘I could have used the money’” (Pg. 108) Meanwhile the main character doesn’t care about this at all.

Finally, we observe drug abuse when the main character gets to house and swallows a whole bunch of pills. “I knocked some stuff out of the medicine chest.” (Pg. 109) This quotation may also mean that he just knocked some bottles of pills to the floor. Still, I think this could be a way of saying that he was looking for pills to get hopped up on.

If I were to relate this story to my life, I think the only aspect ii would find would be the selling of the vitamins part. My mother has sold Herbalife for nine years now. That would be it, the rest of the story is pretty hardcore and I can’t manage to find any other relation.

As for some of the literary devices we see in this story, we see a great amount repetition. For example, in page 92, the word “girls” appears about twenty times. Maybe the narrator wanted to exaggerate how the work his wife was doing was only for the opposite sex.