Interpretation - A Story about the Body

Adam Williams

Special Post II – Interpretation

A Story about the Body

By: Robert Hass

1.       A Story about the Body is about a man who thinks that he has fallen in love with an almost sixty-year-old woman. Both the younger man and the woman work at an artists’ colony during this summer. The woman was a Japanese painter, and the man was a composer. The woman’s art captivated the man, the way she moved her body and her hands. It states, “He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions.” Then one night, after a concert, the woman abruptly says that she knows that the young man wants to ‘have her’ but she has to be honest with him and tell him that she has had a mastectomy on both breasts. Shocked, the man states that he cannot handle this and he walks away to his home. The very next morning, the man wakes up to find a blue bowl on the porch that looks like it is filled with rose petals, but when he looks deeper, he finds that it is filled with dead bees.

2.      I chose this story, because this story has a deep meaning behind it that needs to be brought to attention. Obviously, the bowl represents some deeper meaning than just a blue bowl filled with dead bees, but the question is what does it actually represent? What do the rose pedals represent? Why are they only on the surface? Does the bowl represent the man or the woman? We also have to understand the man’s motives. Where his motives bad? Was he actually in love with her? One thing that I needed to think about was his motives. The reasons stated in this story about his love for the women seemed to be real. However, they were not deep reasons for love. Also, there seems to be a common interpretation that one could think; this story is about a man who is shallow and evil. He is only interested in the physical beauty of the woman. However, I disagree and intend to bring out these interpretations.

3.        A Story about the Body could be about a man who thinks that he has fallen in love with a Japanese woman, based on superficial reasoning. Let’s start from the beginning. In this story, both of the characters work at an artists’ colony. It states that the man has been watching her for a week now, in which this is a very short period of time to fall in love with someone. It also states that the man is young and the woman is almost sixty. This makes me question why would a young man want a sixty-year-old woman? Is he lonely? Maybe the man is lonely and the woman is kinds and genuine. The man is captivated by her work. An artist usually draws or paints from the heart. What they paint or draw can represent who they are. So maybe the man is captivated by who she is and how she paints or demonstrates who she is. The man is also captivated by the way she moves her body. After thinking about this, why would a young man be captivated physically about a sixty year old woman who has had a double mastectomy? The point here is that the dead bees could represent the harsh facts about shallow love that focuses on the outer appearance of the individual, but I disagree. I think that the man is captivated by who the lady is, not by her looks. Now this leads to the part where he finds out about the double mastectomy. When she tells him that she has lost both of her breasts, it says that he lost his radiance. This tells me that the man was excited and he had the butterflies of love. But they flew away when he received this news. Why did they fly away? Was he shallow? Was he only interested because of outer beauty? I think not. The deeper meaning here could mean that he can’t handle the weirdness of her not having breasts. This makes me think of the disabled in our communities. We often treat them as if they have some disease and they are a different species. I believe that the man was not shallow in a physical sense, but he was shallow in the love sense. Obviously this was not true love, but it was not a physical love. The man just could not handle the weirdness of being with someone without breasts. The next morning, he finds a blue bowl that is filled with dead bees and has a covering of rose pedals. There is a lot that can be interpreted here and in many different ways. The blue bowl represents the individual being, weather it is the man or woman. In this case, I believe it was the woman that is being represented. Next, the rose pedals do not represent shallow outer beauty, because I believe that is a misinterpretation. I believe that the rose pedals are the inner beauty that the man saw in the woman; the paintings, her work, whom she was. The dead bees are the most important part of this interpretation. They represent the woman, because the story says that she swept them up from the corner of her studio. The studio is the same place that the man fell in love with her work. I believe that the bees represent her dark corners, the ugly places of life. I do not believe that the bees represent the man’s ugly inside, because he did not like her for her looks anyways. The theme of this story is that we all have the dead bees inside our bowls, some are worse than others, but we all have them. We all also have the rose pedals, or most of us, which represent our inner beauty, however, the inner beauty cannot cover up or hide the dead bees of our lives. We must learn to embrace them and accept them.

4.      I believe that this story can be easily interpreted as a story about love based on physical looks. However I have a couple of facts to argue this interpretation. First, why would a young composer fall in love with a sixty year old woman, based on physical looks? If this were true, the man has to be older as well and therefore this would make the man seem like an immature teenager who loves based on looks. Second, the bowl represents the individual being, or the outer shell. We are all like the bowl in which we are filled with rose pedals and dead bees. If the interpretation is about physical shallowness, then why was the bowl not fancy or beautiful? The story states that it was a small blue bowl, and nothing more. The emphasis was on the inner part of that bowl, or what was inside of it. Therefore, this story is about the inner self, not physical love. Also, I believe that the bowl represented the woman, not the man, because the man was not an awful guy. Granite, this was not true love, but at least he was honest. If the story is based on physical love, then yes the bowl would represent the man, however it is based on inner beauty and the inner self of love. Therefore, the bowl represents the woman. Also, the bees were swept up from the corner of the same studio that she painted in. This shows me that she was almost hiding the nasty parts of her life and all that he saw was the beautiful paintings, not the bees. Altogether, the man has to accept the entire contents of the bowl; the good, the bad, and the ugly. He could not come to terms with this.

5.     I believe that this is an important lesson or interpretation of life and love. We all have our dead bees in our bowls which could represent our mistakes, hurts and pains. When we fall in love with someone, they must learn to accept all of the dead bees in our bowls, or else it will be a superficial love. We cannot just look at the rose pedals and think that is all we have with our loved ones. Every person has an ugly side to them, and every person has been through tough times and pains. For example, this woman has had a double mastectomy, in which her body is dying and it reminds me of the dead bees. However, true love has to accept this and love her for who she is. We need to look at beauty in a different way. It is great to cherish the beautiful things such as rose pedals, but we can also interpret the ugly things in life as beautiful. For example, good can come out of every situation. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.