Loss And Despair In Thomas Wolfe's The Far

Today, every day, people experience losses. Hopes, dreams, senses, and loved ones can all fade away. During the Modern Era from 1914-1946 life was especially difficult. World War I had started (1914) and ended (1918), the Great Depression had occurred (1929) and World War II started (1939). During that era, people have the feelings of loss and despair wasn’t just a fad, it lasted years. Many Americans had a complete absence of hope, and all had the familiarity of losing something or someone. The people of this time expressed their feelings through writing; the literature of the time was full with the theme “Loss and Despair.” There were popular pieces of literature at the time: Thomas Wolfe’s “The Far and the Near,” a short story about a man

The theme loss and despair controls the entirety of the story. Emily experiences a few large losses and reacts in an unusual way, she gains a new dark view of life. Emily dropped her life, she did not follow normal routine “[a]fter her father’s death, she went out very little [and] after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (Faulkner 2). The town had watched her progressions, Emily went from a “a slender figure in white” to “a small fat woman in black” (Faulkner 1). Emily had changed even her appearance. The despair she had retained caused her to mourn in an abnormal fashion. The author makes one think that Emily’s love had passed, but really “what was left of him, [was] rotted beneath what was left of [that] nightshirt” (Faulkner 6). They had identified that his disappearance was false. He really had been murdered, they also “noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head,” Emily had murdered her once lover; she acted upon her loss in a cruel way (Faulkner 6). After experiencing only two losses Emily had become a new person, an outcast to

Phoenix is a woman who had lost the majority of her family, is now losing her memory, and is also starting to notice unreal images. On her way to retrieve the medicine, Phoenix imagined “a little boy,” the boy “brought [Phoenix] a plate with a slice of marble cake on it, ... and when she went to take it, there was just her own hand in the air” (Welty 741). At the end of the story we are left to decide if her grandson was alive or had passed, looking back at her false sights it seems to be that she could be imagining her grandson. Seeing the spirit of her grandson or simply losing her mind, both of these now control who she is. She has to stop very often on her journey considering her untrue vision. Arriving at the hospital, she was questioned on her arrival. It took her a moment to remember why she was at the hospital. She then remembers it was for her grandson. Phoenix had told the nurse “It was my memory [that] had left me.” Phoenix then explained that her grandson is “‘not dead, he just the same’” (Welty 744). Her confusion along with her loss of memory has the reader questioning if she legitimately had already lost her grandson. Losing her grandson and memory had concluded in large confusion and unreal sights, controlling her life, forcing to proceed on long, difficult