Living with Strangers

Columbus discovered America back in 1492. Many people from Europe moved to America to start a new life. The Europeans took the land from the Indians and moved further and further to the west coast. America used to have an enormous landscape with tress and fields everywhere, but the Europeans build cities and destroyed the landscape. There are today only big cities in America and it's almost impossible to find a place to live without walking into people all the time.

In the story "Living With Strangers" we meet Siri Hustvedt who tells about the different from living in a small city and a large city. She tells about bad experiences she has had and how cruel and ignorant people can be in a city like New York.

Siri Hustvedt is the main character of the story and she tells the story in first person. On the street are people jostling and bumping into her and they don't apologize. She also thinks that the smell in the city is terrible. "I could smell their hail oils, perfumes and sweat. In my former life, such closeness belonged exclusively to boyfriends and family" (p, 1, l, 16-17). Living anonymously in the environment of the big city is one of the themes in the story. The woman in the bus who wears only a bathrobe isn't embarrass about that but Siri's friend who watch the episode were the only one who were watching her and he found it very embarrassing to be the only one. Wildlife is also another theme because you have to change your lifestyle and try to become a person who has lived in New York your hole life. Siri tells about the episode with a white guy who ask politely a black man to put out his cigaret because he was smoking in the subway, and she also explains another episode with her husband where a man was spitting on her. Those two episodes also tells that another theme is that you must survive the atmosphere of the city.

Siri uses a lot of different examples to explain how different life is in a city like New York to a small city as Missesota where Siri grew up. She brings examples from her own life and experiences some other people have experience. "But, before the train pulled out if the station, the ogler threw himself against the window in front of her and began to pound in the glass. "I love you!" he yelled" (p, 3. l, 84-86). Siri uses an example with her own daughter who experience a man yelling I love you to her on her way home from school. Siri makes the town and the people in it look bad by using experiences from her family because she can tell every single detail and tell how her daughter felt about it. It can have an influence on the reader and make the reader feel sorry for the daughter.

However, Siri is also using some comedy in the text. "It looks like you have an admirer" (p, 3. l, 90). In the hole story has Siri told about how ignorant people are and how indifferent they can be in dangerous and embarrassing situations. But the episode with her daughter in the subway is different. Everyone who sit next to Sophie in the train weren't acting when her admirer was screaming