Does the husband loves his wife as much as he thinks he does?

By Kuan Hu

The literary fictional short story, “Say Yes,” by Tobias Wolff, was published on December 13. In my opinion, the intended audience of this short story is everyone. The story starts on an unnamed husband and his wife, Ann, getting into a quarrel about interracial marriage. The husband disagrees with his wife’s perspective on interracial marriage. In his opinion, interracial marriages never work because a black person comes from a different culture than a white person. They think and do things differently. He even uses analogies of foreigners and statistics to backup his points. However, his wife Ann clearly does not agree with him. She then asks her husband if he would still marry her if she is black. After many arguments and hesitations, he gives her a very heart-breaking answer. After some self-reflection alone by the husband, he goes back into the house for sleep and attempts to apologize to his wife. However, his wife does not respond. This story gives the audience a very implicit ending when the wife turns off all the light and walks toward the bed while the husband realizes that he doesn’t quite know his wife. “The sound she is making are the sounds of a stranger.” The story is organized in a chronological order. The text foregrounds people’s perspective of interracial marriage at that time. The husband is a very clear example of what many people believe in when it comes to racial issues at that time. Their super narrow and biased views really show historical background during that period of time. However, besides the mainstream ideas that this story intends to convey, there are many assumptions and observations we, as the audience, can make based on the details. The husband behaviors show that he is the type of person who does certain things to benefit himself in a relationship. For example, when his wife accidentally cut herself, he goes upstairs and grabs the first aid kit. However, as he is doing it, instead of thinking how much pain and discomfort his wife is in, he is thinking about how much his wife will be pleased by his caring behavior after. This shows that he needs to constantly think about how to behave around his wife to show her that he loves her. This thought process shows that he does not love his wife as much as he thinks because he need to constantly make sense of himself. Real lovers do things only for the sake of love without asking for anything in return. Of course the interracial marriages biases are the priority focus of this short story, but I am also touched by the amount of psychological description of the relationship dynamics of this couple. It really helps me to reflect on and resonate with some of my previous relationship experiences.