Week 4: "Yours"

I really enjoyed “Yours”. At first I didn’t understand it, but I read it through a few more times and eventually I took it as an exploration of aging and death. The most obvious motif that led me to this conclusion was the autumnal setting- leaves covering the ground, and trees standing bare like skeletons- but there are many more besides this. Spouses Allison and Clark are described as being “both quite tall” and “something alike in their facial features”. However, they are separated in age by forty-three years. To me, Allison symbolizes youth, naivety, and vigor. Besides the fact that she is the younger one of the couple, she spends her afternoons volunteering with children and seems to have a glimpse into their minds, which is evident when she warns Clark not to make his jack-o’-lanterns too surreal because they’re for kids. Clark, on the other hand, symbolizes old age and experience. He leads a slower life and spends a lot of time sitting in his glider rocker, and when he does move, it is carefully and languorously. Clark’s wisdom is evident when he says towards the end of the story that he wants to speak to his wife “from the greater perspective he [has]”, most likely due to his vantage point on the path of life. It is also evident in the pumpkins he carves, which are “expressive and artful”, and made with great skill and artistic command. Allison’s pumpkins are “less deftly drawn” and more crudely crafted, symbolic of her lack of life experience compared to her husband.

The way in which Allison sets up the finished jack-o’-lanterns on the porch railing- “[taking] a while to get each candle settled, and then to line up the results in a row” and then lighting the candles and “[fixing] the pumpkin lids over the little flames”- seemed very gentle and almost motherly to me. The faces carved into the living things give them a human persona, and the way she fixes them is almost like she’s tucking children into bed. This, plus her characterization as I mentioned it above, and the fact that Halloween is mostly for kids but Allison and Clark prepare for it anyway, seemed to communicate that Allison longs to be a mother. No offspring of Allison and Clark are mentioned. Maybe they weren’t able to have children because of Allison’s illness, or her illness in combination with Clark’s age.

As his wife lie dying, Clark wants “to get drunk with his wife once more”, tell her “that to own only a little talent, like his, [is] an awful, plaguing thing; that being only a little special [means] you [expect] too much, most of the time, and [like] yourself too little”, and assure her “she [has] missed nothing”. I interpreted these sentiments as a kind of bitterness that he is losing what had for so long brought youthfulness back to his life, as well as his way of giving her peace of mind by telling her she won’t be missing out on much, because being wise, talented, and special isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This might also be Clark’s way of expressing grief, and of dealing with the somber idea of his much younger wife dying before him and leaving him alone in the world.