Ann beattie s janus essay

The 2 headed ancient Roman idol Janus used to be the god of doorways and portals. Designs and statues of Janus overlooked entrances, gates, passageways, bridges and entrances and exits of temples. Those of ancient Rome presumed that Janus, with his two heads, observed the comings and the goings of people, the risings and the settings in the Sun, the beginning and the end of love and that which was past as well as that which has been to come.

In modern times Janus is linked to hypocrisy and being “two-faced. Janus is usually invoked the moment referring the duplicitous, the deceptive, the liars, the frauds, plus the cheats.

A lot of is referred to as ‘Janus-faced’ to signify the real motivations for their actions are different than the ones that they overtly claims to have. The two different associations of the word ‘Janus’ exist in Anne Beattie’s brief story of the identical name. Janus is the story of a wedded real estate agent known as Andrea, who also possesses an attractive bowl that she is tremendously attached to.

Andrea seems to have an infatuation with the pan. She leaves it in houses that she is engaged to sell and believes the bowl brings her good luck and is accountable for the sale in the houses.

She warns her husband against leaving his keys inside the bowl and it is greatly disturbed by the concept that she may lose the bowl. Donna believes that she has a ‘relationship’ with the bowl. It can be revealed that the bowl can be described as gift via a past lover. The lover asked her to leave her partner and be his alone but she would not do so. This individual termed her “two-faced; a janus in the present00 sense (Beattie). Andrea wished a future with her lover but was reluctant to give up her husband, despite being unhappy with him. Now with her lover having rejected her, she even now clings towards the bowl that he skilled her.

Like the Roman our god Janus she cannot forget about the past. The girl clings to artifacts coming from her past that were better abandoned. Andrea’s relationship with her hubby is very unsatisfactory for her. He could be a successful stockbroker and the girl with a successful real estate agent but their relationship is devoid of all love. Andrea and her husband have all the material possessions they need, they inhabit a superficial materialistic society where the main pleasure in the person’s life is deemed to come from obtaining new assets, but now they are rich, possessions do not give them the same satisfaction anymore (Beattie).

The cavité shape of the bowl of can be symbolic with the emptiness and lack of that means in Andrea’s and her husband’s existence. Andrea and her partner are childless. This childlessness is probably a conscious career decision on their part, they are all being substantial performing pros dedicated to all their careers. Once Andrea forgets the bowl at a house, she likens her action to a mother forgetting her child (Beattie). This shows that Andrea is usually deeply bothered by devoid of children; she gets sublimated this kind of dissatisfaction with childlessness in an obsessive attachment together with the bowl.

The empty dish is representational of Andrea’s own empty womb. Through this too, Hazel ambivalence and her two-faced ‘Janusness’ is usually revealed; on one hand Andrea knowingly chooses not to have kids in order to better pursue her profession being a real estate agent and on the furthermore, she nurtures a hidden desire to have children that is expressed in her fanatical attention and affection for an inanimate object. As suggested by the title, Janus is a deeply ambiguous job of short fiction, available to multiple interpretations but generally speaking it is a call up to abandon the tr?t life and embrace enthusiasm.

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