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Shiloh

 

            What do you do, feel, or even act like when your life is changed from one event maybe not in your life, but in someone else's? Well that's what happens to Norma Jean Moffitt in the story "Shiloh" by Bobbie Ann Mason. Norma Jean's husband was the kind of husband who was never home, but at random moments here and there, when he was passing by from trips driving his truck. She was content with this, well in reality she grew to having absolutely no problems with his line of work, until the day came when he couldn"t do his job anymore. Leroy Moffitt injured his leg in a highway accident and was home ever since he was unable to drive his tractor-trailer. These two people now stuck in one home, married, and to Norma Jean, stuck together under one roof. After awhile Norma Jean realizes she can"t take him being home. She also realizes that she really doesn"t know who her husband is or even was. And in the end does Norma Jean stand at the brink of her freedom, or her own death? Norma Jean I think is standing on the edge of that cliff staring at her death. Not maybe because she wants to die, but knowing that she has nothing more to look forward, but the reality of the end. .
             Norma Jean was a woman who was content with her life, she was content with her mother still having a large say in how she thought and what she did. She liked the idea her husband wasn"t around, and when that all changed, she changed, Norma Jean changed. The thought of her mother knowing she smoked, she couldn"t have that. So when her mother Mabel finds out, she mentions the one thing that would cause a reaction out of Norma Jean. The memories of the lost child as an infant. The sad feelings brought back, all to pay her back for seeing her smoking. Then you have the husband, what does he mean to her now? Is there love, lust, hate, and disdain? It makes you wonder though, the ideas that are running through the mind of Norma Jeans how she really feels of her husband.


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