The Gift In The Short Story: Andy's Gift

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Andy’s Gift

As human beings we have an insatiable need to be present. We want to be able to experience every flash possible, and the fear of missing out on momentous moments is a well-known concern for most people. Missing out can cause the individual to feel an ache of emotional and mental neglect. Imagine being so absent, that you end up feeling excluded from the rest of the society including your own family.
The protagonist in the short story Andy’s Gift didn’t just miss out on significant events, he was completely absent from his own life for several years.

After five years of being a “drooling imbecile”, the main character Andy suddenly, out of no-where recovers from his sickness. He wakes up one morning at the nursing home, where he has been staying for the last five years, feeling utterly alive. Through Andy’s eyes the difficulty of fitting in after five long years of mental illness is displayed. …show more content…

When seeing his own face in the mirror, Andy describes himself as looking like a “chimpanzee infant” (l. 45). A chimpanzee can have diverse interpretations; one is seeing the chimpanzee as a symbol of the importance of your language and communications skills. Andy hasn’t been able to communicate proper for five years, however his mentality has returned and thereby his abil-ity to use his language.
A great deal has happened during the last five years. The life he remembers is far from the life, which he returns to. The alienation between Andy and his wife keeps expanding, and the gap between them seems too immense to be able to stitch together again. The intimacy be-tween Andy and Bromwyn is non-existing, and it culminates when Bromwyn asks Andy: "do you want to make love to me?" (l. 163). This sentence describes the superficiality between the two, and does not imply the slightest amount of affection, only

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