Iregularities

Irregularities Being obsessed with someone who hardly notices you is experienced by many people. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is always tragic. In “Irregularities “The narrator experiences that kind of pain. Not only does she lose the love of her life but also their unborn child. The fact that he is a heart doctor is very symbolic. the heart is the most obvious symbol of love, and a way to illustrate the tragic lovestory. It shows how much her heart is broken by her boss, and how close she bonds to the unborn baby and how heartbroken she gets when she miscarry it. The story starts in medias res. We start by hearing about onions and that she cannot eat them anymore, without even knowing that she has a baby. During the story we get hints, in the form of flashbacks, that she is going to tell the whole story, which builds up a tension so we do not find out what happens until the end. The narrator is clearly in love with her boss, she is obsessed by him. She feels that she is inferior to him. He is almost described as a god who cannot make mistakes. “My boss, James Soelander, M.D., doesn’t even know yet about the baby inside me, though I believe he ought to. But he is always forgetting where he put his pen when its tucked behind his ear or where he has laid his beeper though it is usually clipped to his belt holding up his slacks. So I can see how it happened” (Page 1, line 11) “Sometimes when Dr. Soelander is out for the afternoon, I do my work on his office computer just to touch the cashmere coat he leaves hanging on the back of the chair” (Page 2, line 45) This affection is clearly not repaid by Dr. Soelander. He is obviously not interested in the narrator in the same way as she is with him. The relationship is doomed from the start, but the narrator clings on to the small hope that he will choose her in the end, and the baby is her mean to win him over. But she dares not to tell him because of the fear of scaring him away. His little interest in being in a relationship with her is clearly shown in a conversation they have where all he can talk about is the onions she threw out, though it is a clear sign of her being pregnant, and she just wants to know if he wants to have serious relationship with her. “’Whats that smell'’ he asks again, looking around. ‘The onion smell.’ ‘It’s an onion’ I say. I wink. ‘Go figure.’ He sits on my desk and slaps the red folder he is holding on his thigh. ‘Know something' Onions are my favourite vegetable.’ Are you flirting' I want to ask. Am I your girlfriend' I want to ask. ‘Are they a vegetable'’ I ask. I have never really thought about it that way. ‘Well, what else would they be'’ ‘You have got a point’ ‘They are certainly not a fruit!’ ‘I hear you.’ ‘Though I could eat one like a fruit, I really could. I could pick one out and bite straight into it like a pear.’”(Page 2, Line 55) She thinks about love, while he goes on about onions. The relationship he began with her, for sexual pleasure or whatever his motives were, has a much deeper impact on her than he imagines. The narrator’s sister is often mentioned in the text, as this perfect person who she dreams of being like. She often daydreams. Dreams about how her situation could be, now that she has the opportunity to escape that boring life of hers. She puts all her hopes in on that Dr. Soelander will choose a life with her and their baby. “ I see myself as a mother, maybe with aprons and cookbooks and playpens. I imagine a big white wedding that my sister can coordinate and finally be happy about.”(Page 3. Line 124) She is confused. She don’t know how to react or how to hold on to Dr. Soelander. She desperately seeks for help in the women’s magazines she is always reading. She defines herself through what others think, and tell her to do. She haven’t got the confidence to have her own identity, so she uses rolemodels and how other people behave to form her own identity. And maybe she can grow into that perfect housewife that she always reads about in her magazines. And she succeeds convincing herself, with the help of these superficial magazines, that she can hold on to him and that they will have a bay and get married. And then the shocking truth hits her. “ As much as I have read in these various woman’s magazines about pleasing a man, I couldn’t seem to please him, the one that really mattered.” She always feels that she is of less importance than others, always going on about her sister and Dr. Soelander, even the doctors wife, the fact that she even doesn’t find it important to mention her name is a sign of that. But finally there is someone who wants to listen to her. Who thinks her irregular heartbeat is beautiful, and who acts like he cares for her. “ Dr Soelander took my chin in his hand and said. ‘You have the most beautiful heartbeat I’ve ever heard’ he said, and then leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth.’ Her heartbeat is irregular. And her life is irregular. When she loses her baby, she is finding it hard to realize that she it is all over. Her dream of marriage and a happy life with Dr. Soelander suddenly shatters from the one day to the other when he loses his interest in her, and she loses the one thing she gained from their short lived relationship. The baby. She ends up having heartburn. It is a pretty obvious metaphor of her being heartbroken by him. She comes to him to try and fix it (Because he is a heart doctor.) Again he misinterprets her signals and thinks that there is something physically wrong with her heart. In the end she pleads for him to recognize her, fix her broken heart and make her happy again. Maybe he knows what she really means, maybe not. But again he rejects her. “’But you’re a heart doctor! Can’t you do something about this'’ I plead, holding my chest. ‘He shakes his head, rushing out the door smiling. ‘You know, you slay me sometimes, you really do. Heartburn has nothing to do with your heart at all. It’s a gastrointestinal matter really.” Irregularities is a sad love story. The narrator is an insecure and shy person, who gets used by her boss, she gets to dependent on him, and she probably continues being a shy and sad person.