Blog Option 5

“The Anatomy of Desire” might have been one of the most disturbing pieces of text I have ever read, but I found it to be the best piece of gothic we have read all year.  In my opinion music, TV Shows, and stories that get people talking, questioning, and envisioning are the best. I am giving this story a 5/5 because it was scary, let the readers draw their own conclusions, and provided a great life lesson.

 So far this year we have not read a story that I thought was scary. This story disturbed me. The image of a man with mostly no skin is something that I had never thought about, and I still cannot wrap my head around. In previous stories, I felt that you could feel the ending coming; in “The Veldt” you knew something bad was going to happen to the parents, but I never felt like I knew what was going to happen here. I never thought Handley was going to ask for her skin, and that maybe Handley did not have true feelings for her. I thought L’Heureux went over the top with the sex, but at the same time it was so shocking and gross that it actually made the story scary. I never want to hear “I want to be inside of you“ ( L’Heureux 341) again, because I will always think back to this story.. The over the top goriness that I don’t think one reader has ever thought of is the reason why this was scary. Imagine if you came across Handley? I would probably run the other way. 

The best part about this story was that for only a few pages, it let the reader draw many conclusions on their own.  The first question that I still cannot figure out was the relationship between Hanley and the Saint. Were they in love with each other? Was Hanley just using the Saint? Did the Saint first “love” Hanley to make him feel better, but then develop true feelings? My second big question is the relationship between Hanley and the General. The general got very affectionate, and I do think some homosexual activity was happening. This is probably a crazy theory, but I think Hanley was truly after love rather that be from a female or a male. At first, I think Hanley wanted love from the saint; he wanted affection and intimacy but was not satisfied with what the Saint was giving. Maybe he was realizing that the possessed love was not there because she really did not love him, she was just doing it because that was her job. He then started getting letters from the General, and I think saw that the general had that possessed love for him that he had been searching for. It was then that he decided that he wanted the Saints skin, and I think that was because Hanley was going to go be with the General. The story ends with Hanley not satisfied, and maybe that is because of the last letter the general wrote. You could imply that the general killed himself, and Hanley no longer could have the one thing he wanted, someone possessed with him. The great thing about this story is there are so many ways to interpret it. The questions about relationships, the skin, what war was this, the religious playing with the word saint all have so many possibilities that make sense. 

The last part about this story is that it had a life lesson at the end. Great gothic stories I think always have a lesson that can be taken away. The last line of the story “He plucked at his empty skin, and wept.” ( L’Heureux 343) was not satisfying to the reader but also shows that you can’t always have what you want. I think all of us have had something in our life that we were so obsessed with getting or accomplishing and it ends up taking over our life. Maybe if we focused less on being obsessive over desires, we will live happier lives or even satisfy those desires.