Story Analysis: The Story Yours By Mary Robinson

The story “Yours” by Mary Robinson is a short story about a married couple spending their Halloween evening together before the death of his young wife. His wife was suffering from cancer. The story starts with Allison, the wife, coming in from getting pumpkins for the evening events with her husband. She walks through their home where she finds the mail. She finds a letter from her husband’s relatives who saying awful things. The couple carves pumpkins and we find out that Clark, the husband, a doctor and internist also a Sunday watercolor artist. After carving the pumpkins, the couple compares their work and like most couples, they admired each other’s work telling each other that there is better than their own. The story ends with the wife dying, losing her battle to cancer. There are a few things in this story that have a deeper meaning. The pumpkins, the letter from Clark’s daughter and also his wife’s appearance. To begin with, the pumpkins symbolize a lot of different things in the excerpt. We start with Allison bringing the pumpkins in the house. She’s struggling carrying the pumpkins in the house, this signifies the struggle that Allison is having with her battle with cancer. She also tells Clark to carve regular faces in the pumpkins. Clark is a doctor and in the story they tell us that his pumpkins were described as jagged and ferocious.

A husband and wife spending the last days of a love one’s life. I wonder why she was carrying the pumpkins on her own without the help of Clark. But then it dawns on me that she was sick and her strong will not to give or let this illness defeat her purpose to carve the pumpkins. Also I think the daughter was wicked for the letters that she sent. Although we have no knowledge if the daughter knew Allison was sick with cancer or not. Being that she thought that Allison was with her dad for his money leads me suggest to that she did not know about Allison’s