The theme that is expressed in this story is about Love. The short story about love is “Three Letters” by Nels Schifano. In this story Nels more talked about a past love story. About a lady reflecting on a relationship that she had which had a big impact on her life. The story started off a little slow because the theme of love didn’t come out until about the middle of the short story but I think that when Nels did talk about the relationship between the two that it was very good and descriptive. The author does a good job describing how the lady misses this person and is reflecting on good times they had together, “I'm afraid I once damaged the environment in your name and took a penknife to the willow we used to sit by” (Nels, chapter 5). The pain of not having the love that was once there is felt strongly in this story.
One thing that the author doesn’t do is describe the lady, the main and only character. He describes her surroundings and that’s all. The tone of the story is sad and somewhat peaceful. During the story Nels makes you think that you are reading letters that her lover had sent to her but in the end you find out that that the letters she were reading were those that she had wrote herself but never was able to send. So the letters were in her point of view and emotions that she was feeling and reflecting on, “In its absence the air in the house seemed to hang with that same question; how would her life have been if she had managed to send just one of them?” (Nels, Chapter 6). This also shows how the lady in the story is and was saddened by the ending of this relationship, “As she let her eyes wander over the page she noticed it was just a little crumpled, stiff in places, as if it had been wetted then dried.” The author uses methods like this to show that in the moment the lady was crying and sad as she is now reflecting on the situation.
This story can make the reader really feel what the lady in the story is feeling which is some what sympathetic. During the story the reader is trying to understand who is this person that you think is writing to her and trying to understand what it was that was strong about the relationship which the person kept writing to her. It also makes you feel for her because the story makes her seem like a sort of lonely person, living in such a quiet house with a cat. “Slipped away again into nothing time (that time that flowed into the gaps between the things you did). Wouldn't a wasted minute become a wasted hour, wasted hours become wasted days? Where could she be now if she hadn't been doing, what? - making tea, sitting in traffic jams, reading the local paper, standing in a supermarket queue. Best avoided, the thought of her life draining into these moments.”(Nels, chapter 3) her loneliness haunts her with nothing time and thinking about the past. After the story speeds up I think that the theme is shown, in a way for the reader to feel what the lady in the story is feeling.
This story is important because it significantly describes how one can feel after loosing someone very close to them like a husband or boyfriend. It realistically portrays a persons actual feelings after being in these situations. Past love experiences is something that everyone deals with and Nels Schifano did a good job at explaining it.
