Today I will talk about a short story call “Aunty Misery”. This story is about an old woman lived in an old hut with no relative but a beautiful pear tree. She spend all her time taking care of it but the neighborhood children keep coming and steal her fruit and insult her as “Aunty Misery” . One day, a stranger came to her house and asks to stay for one night. She let the stranger stay and serve him with her hearth. The next day before the stranger left, he grants aunty misery a wish. She wish that anyone who climb up her tree who climbs up her pear tree should not be able to come back down until she permits it. And so, the children came to steal her fruit but they can’t get down until she permits them to. Time passed by, another stranger pass by but looked suffocated and exhausted, it’s Death. He said it’s time for her to come with him but she told Death to climb up the trees to get some pears before they leave but Death end up stuck one the tree. Aunty Misery would only allowed Death to come off if he promised not to come back for her. That’s why now Misery live forever. The story take place in a small hut of Aunty Misery, there are 3 characters but the main character are Death and Aunty Misery.
About Aunty Misery, we can see her as a very lonely and independent person, she doesn’t need anyone to take care of her, she can take care of herself. But as you read the story, we can see that she is also a selfish and a little bit greedy. The conflict in this story is just that when she capture death, there will be no more death in the world. No more job for the doctors, pharmacists etc. So people are complaining about her. After reading this story, I found different themes of the story.
The first one is there are two things that you can't escape in life: death and misery. Everyone have to face misery more than 100 times in their life. Death is something you can’t avoided, you have to face it once and once only in your life, but that’s the end of your life. Misery is something really bad, but you can get over it in time, so don’t give up, calm down and don’t be greedy and cause trouble for other people around you.
The second theme is that what you have now can be better than changing your life. Sometimes you want to change your lifestyle because you don’t like the way you are living right now. But in some situation, they can make your life upside down. Maybe you are not meaning to harm the people around you but if there is a mistake in your choice, then it can make everything worsen. So think clearly before you decide to change something that is going to affect a lot in your life.
In my opinions, this story is a really good written short story that fits for teens like us to understand misery and death. Even though it’s quite confuse at the beginning but from the small pieces of literature, the author teach and give the audience a lot of lessons, themes or you can call it moral too. I feel like learning that we shouldn’t fear misery or death because it’s not only myself that have to go through this, every single person in the world have to go through this. It’s a common thing; there is nothing that we should fear about. And don’t think only for yourself; think for other people after you think of yourself also so that there will be less misunderstanding and having trouble for other people.
