Roddy Doyle's "seep"

Essay on Roddy Doyle's "Sleep"

The short story tells of a man and a woman in Dublin, Ireland, a man and a woman with both differences and likenesses. Their likenesses can pull them apart and their differences can pull them together. "It was the thing he'd always loved about her. The way she could sleep." - P.1/l.1. Sleep is their biggest difference and it is also one of the biggest things that draw Tom to Tara, the way she could sleep. He loves the way she can sleep, but in a way it is also one of the things he hates most about her: "he'd lie awake, hoping she'd wake up, praying for it, dying." P.1/l.2-3. He both loves and hates the way she can sleep. He loves to watch her sleep, it makes him feel lucky, privileged and trusted, because she drops all of her defenses which he takes as a sign that she trusts him with her life, her body, her heart and her soul. He also hates the way that she can sleep, he lies awake hoping, praying, dying for her to wake up and be with him and love him.

With Tara, totally devoted to him, he feels trusted and probably also loved, because otherwise their relationship, all through their marriage, seem a bit superficial, with superficial love, for Tara's sake at least. The love and the devotion in the relationship seem a bit one-sided, it seems like it is Tom that keeps the relationship going and he has probably been keeping it going all through the twenty-six years they have known each other. It is not definite at all, because the story is narrated from Tom's point of view and we do not really hear much about Tara and how she sees things. We do not know if that is because the writer just do not tell us about her or if it is because there are nothing to tell, because Tara is asleep all of the time and therefore have nothing to say or contribute with.

The short story shows many examples of Tom and Tara's differences. In many ways they are each other's opposites. At one point, Tom reads a book: ""A Tale of Two Cities"" -P.2/l.37. The book title could be a symbol of the two people, Tom and Tara, a tale of two different people.

She has a nice flat with a kitchen and a bathroom, he has a small one bedroom flat with a Baby Belling cooker and a shared bathroom.

She pronounces all of her "g"s: "We left it in the fucking taxi" -P.1/l.19. That is quite unique and unusual. Tom does like the majority of people: "which was fine sometimes and fuckin' desperate other times." He does not pronounce all of his "g"s.

He does not eat on restaurants; he goes to pubs, while Tara is more cultural and introduces Tom to restaurants, for example the Lebanese restaurant with the belly dancer.

"She loved her grub" - P.2/l.41. Tara loves and enjoys food, while Tom: "Food never grabbed him" - P.3/l.82. Food does not mean very much to him, he just uses plain and simple adjectives like good and great, he never wrote about food, for him it just was not very important.

Tara acts more like a middle-class person, a bourgeois person, she has a nice flat and she eats at restaurants. Tom is more between middle-class and working class, he does not have a nice apartment, and he goes to pubs instead of restaurants. In the last paragraph on page two, we hear a lot of information on where Tom is in the class-system and where he wants to be.

Tom tells of Bewley's: "where you could get a fry or shepherd's pie - the people's food." - P.2/l.62. Bewley's was a place where you carried your own tray, with old women with pots of tea and cakes, a place where there were room for everyone, even room for the junkies, he did not want to eat with them, but Tom liked that they were allowed in there, it was the only place he would go to. A place for the people, not some fancy, bourgeois, middle-class restaurant. He does not want to sit with the junkies, but he wants to be with the people and he despises