Divorced Beheaded Survived Analysis

The text “… Divorced, Beheaded Survived” is a short story written by Robin Black. The story is a part of Robin Black’s short story collection called “If I loved you, I would tell you this”. The story was first published in 2010.
The story is told through the memories of the narrator, named Sarah, who as a small child lost her brother, Terrence/Terry, and her son’s loss of his friend. In the story, Robin Black deals with the theme of death in different angles. Besides death, the story gives us a feeling about how difficult it can be to overcome the experience of a beloved’s death. Life can become a struggle for moving on. Sarah’s life was changed because of her brother’s death. She is clearly still influenced 30 years later in her adult life. The story is about the woman Sarah and her problematic way of accepting the death of her brother. Therefore, “life”, “death” and “depression” are the key themes in this short story.
The title of the short story “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” is part of a rhyme, which is used to remember the fates of King Henry VIII’s six wives. The rhyme goes “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”. Sarah tells that in her childhood she used to play a game in her backyard with her older brother Terry and some other kids from the neighborhood, called Johnny and Molly. The game where they had to play King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, which was King Henry VIII’s third wife. The children had to behead the one who played Anne. In fact, the