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Discuss the character of Sophie. Why do you think she is so eager in responding to Kolk’s summoning her while at the same time showing also signs of reluctance and regret? What is the importance of the spiders in this short-story?

Bambi In losing her husband she loses herself, her life, her facade. She spirals out of control, and then within her own control, still spiraling. Wanting t…moreIn losing her husband she loses herself, her life, her facade. She spirals out of control, and then within her own control, still spiraling. Wanting to be lost, punished, alive without the guilt of her own abandonment of Matthew—which is to still BE when he no longer CAN BE, to go on feeling, wanting, and resenting after he's gone (a kind of conversation she's having with the memory of him, frustrated she can never have any answers or resistance of which she's now desperate for).

Wanting to be what you've always been, someone who is wanted, a woman who is wanted by men—A man. Any man who PROVES his want. This is familiar and so a comfort. She was a girl in someone's apartment once, not Matthew's wife, and she'd had her desires for other possible lives, and now again she's no one's wife, she's the girl again, and what promises comfort quite like a direct tie to THEIR old life. The last time she was HER in life before she became His wife.

Grief reaches out and touches you, violating and surreal, with many hands—limbs—in the dark when you're least expecting, or yet when you're bracing for it and when it comes it still shocks you. Like a spider, taking up a home in your warm safe places.

Nobody's grief can be strictly translated, only endlessly interpreted without confirmation. Sophie is scared, and scared people are dangerous, uncertain, and frantic.(less)

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