"Escape" : The more to escape loneliness, loneliness is close behind

When you were 18, did you ever want to escape your dreary home and either make your own way or start a little family of your own?

Alice Munro's novel Escape begins with such an 18-year-old choice.

The girl Kara likes to work with animals. When she was young, the family raised cattle, sheep, horses, foxes and other animals, which were the main source of their family income.

She knew and depended on animals, and her dream was to live in the country, among them.

When she was 18, she fell in love with Clark, an excellent horse trainer, and decided to elope with him as soon as she saw Clark hanging a saddle on the wall.

In order to gain independence and integrity of self, we run away from dull family, rigid feelings, familiar people, suffocating life...

However, after escape is the free sky, or a new yoke?

Alice Munro | Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House

After eloping with Clark, the two settled together in a rural area and made a living running a riding ranch.

Next door lived a middle-class couple, the wife is a college teacher, the husband is a poet.

The poet was bedridden all year round, and Carla had come to his house to take care of him and earn a little money.

Although the poet could not even speak, but still full of desire for young Kara, he tried to touch Kara again and again, in this young body to find a little vitality.

Carla refused, of course, but it became a fresh irritant in her and Clark's increasingly dull life.

She mentioned it when she was making out with her husband, and when she realized that it would make him more excited, she even made it more complicated.

In a lonely life, a little excitement is better than nothing.

Now that the poet was dead, it was only a bit of fun for the couple to tease each other.

There had been heavy rain in the town, there was no business at the racetrack, and there were so many horses to raise that Carla and Clark had no money to spend.

In order to cope with the hardships of life, Clark actually came up with an idea: let Carla ask the poet's widow Sylvia for money to compensate her for the sexual harassment she suffered while caring for the poet.

Carla followed her husband's plan to see Sylvia, but unexpectedly, Carla did get the money, not to help the family, but to pay her way out of the country.

Sylvia, a college teacher, married the poet for unknown reasons.

Novel, though not describe details they got along, the poet's death, Sylvia immediately all equipment, hire people moved her husband's disease to empty the belongings of the husband all, even through the clothes and her husband had not been opened gift also threw the distance to dump, she let the shadow of the house as if never had a husband.

This detail shows that Sylvia has no attachment to her husband and has even had enough of being in the same room with him.

She mentioned that she had never read her husband's poetry, and that anything she thought worth writing about was not interesting at all.

Two people may never understand each other, appreciate each other, a marriage, the two spirit does not fit together, bring only loneliness.

Sylvia prefers to spend time with younger girls, whether it's the students in her class or Carla, who comes to the house to help, reminding her of her younger self.

As Carla cries out to herself about her husband's bad temper and the poet's sexual harassment, Sylvia, an older, mature woman who knows more about the horrors of an unhappy marriage, suggests that she run away again and seek her own life outside.

She gave Carla clothes, money for travel, and friends who would take her in. She thought carefully -- she had a big, empty house, and when she settled in, she could use her riding experience to find a job nearby and support herself.

This sounded charmed to Carla, who immediately followed Sylvia's instructions and got on a bus to the city.

Carla was determined to find "a life, a place, and chose it for one particular reason only, that it would not include Clark".

She had used a similar argument when she fled her parents' home to Clark, telling her mother and stepfather, "I've always felt the need to live a more authentic life. I know I shall never be able to gain your understanding on this point."

But in Clark, "a more real life" is not to be found. Instead, her delicate feelings are slowly destroyed by Clark.