"The Management of Grief"

      This is Lena Gruber.

      Language and voice are what construct the short story as a whole. As the voice changes and morphs so does the main character Shalia. She struggles between behaving the way she's supposed to behave and feeling the way she truly feels. It's her "duty" to hope. She must be a voice for those who do not share how she really feels about when her husband and children died in the plane crash. As she recounts she is aware that her feelings don't match the way she was taught to think, yet she continues to feel obliged, and does, defend the way she must feel. She at first thinks it's wrong to feel the way she feels. Her voice is more factual and "here's what happened." The reader is able to detect when the author's opinion changes by the fact that in the beginning of short story the main character uses almost no embellishing in the description of her reaction to the death of her family. Even though she must think that her children are not dead because she's supposed to, she still feels the symptoms of grief. At first she stops herself from expressing herself and talks about how she wishes she could scream. Those feelings are repressed until later when she begins to open up and talk about her true feelings. The reader can see this transition due to the first person narrative with "I." She expresses herself and the reader sees the dilema. Shaila is taught that grief is a selfish act. But she doesn't care if she's selfish if it means she can grieve. From the realization she allows the reader into the thoughts she was retaining. She opens up about how she misses her family deeply and she thinks about them constantly. She follows the "normal" stages of grieving, regardless of what her parents may think. By the end she finally stops thinking about everything and decides on her own that it's time to try and move forward. All her thoughts and focuses go away and she goes into detailed description about her surroundings and present state of being. She proves though voice and language that she is set free from her duties and obligations from her customs and can just be who she wants to be. The character development was based off of language and voice which guided this short story.