Throughout one person’s life, there are things in which their lives revolve around of like the solar system. It ranges from one’s devotion to raise a good child or to a local man’s little business. Whatever it might be, one’s life circulates around this one meaningful aspect of their lives. However, the author, Ann Beattie, tells a story about a woman who is captivated by this blue bowl. In the story, Janus, not only is the protagonist enchanted by this bowl, but she also truly believes that it promises success.
This beautiful crafted bowl takes Andrea’s life. This one object that is just as mundane as anything is able to fill her with security and prosperity something that her husband can’t guarantee.
For example, before the coming of the bowl, she would have “some clever strategy she had devised to persuade owners who seemed ready to sell. Now she stopped doing that, for all her strategies involved the bowl”; which resulted in having a “very profitable year.”
In the story Andrea, wishes for the bowl to come to life so she would thank it herself, “if only the bowl were an animate object she could thank it.”
But what Andrea doesn’t realize is that this bowl is her.
The way she handles the bowl with such gentleness and knowing that nothing nor no one could harm it. When she thought of “a bowl was a poor conductor of electricity,” it reassured her that no harm was in its way.
She distants herself from her husband as if, he would not handle her with such carefulness as she would with the bowl.
This object took her life, other things that would seem meaningful weren’t. For example, “instead of just moving a pitcher of a dish, she would remove all the other objects from a table. She had to force herself to hand them carefully, because she didn’t really care about them.” Just like her life, the other objects from the table represented her husband and others. This man-made object dominated her. It made other things less valuable through her eyes.
Now...