The Lonely Goatherd Analysis

In Lisa Moore’s “The Lonely Goatherd” and Michael Crummey’s “Heartburn” there’s a continuous breakdown of the couples’ relationships. Repressed feelings, infidelity and the symbolism of Signal Hill and drowning, help strengthen the theme of a lack of communication between Sandy and Georgie from “Heartburn” and Carl and Anita in “The Lonely Goatherd”. Sandy struggles to express his thoughts and feelings with his wife Georgie. Carl is constantly cheating on Anita and neglecting their marriage. This communication problem causes their relationships to deteriorate, which results in great strife for the ones involved. Sandy struggles to express his thoughts and feelings with his wife Georgie. He has a reoccurring dream where he’s reliving the time he drowned as a teenager. As he wakes up in a panic and Georgie asks him if he’s had a bad night and he excuses his strange behaviour for “Heartburn”(p.262). He won’t tell his wife about the terror the dreams cause him out of fear of looking too emotional. Another example is Georgie’s knitting chair. Sandy feels guilty for not fixing it because “he’s afraid [she] will read into it, that she’ll think he’s getting soft in his old age”(p.266). He doesn’t want his wife to think he’s becoming emotional and weak in his old age. Again, he’s unwilling to show any kind of emotion to his wife. Another key point is when Sandy’s father, Ned Wilcox, brings him back home after he has supposedly drowned. His grief-stricken mother is hysterical and