Pluto

Boys and Girls

Alice Munro

It's always like that. Love is so dangerous that we hurt those we
love and to prevent being hurt we run away. We may clearly see
the choices and the consequences; the sad thing is that there's no
other way. In a way I feel the same as the protagonist, distressed
and defeated; I ran away, not intending to go back to face the
music.

Why do we have always be "use" to anyone to be loved?

"My mother, I felt, was not to be trusted. She was kinder than my
father and more easily fooled, but you could not depend on her, and
the real reasons for the things she said and did were not to be
known.....It did not occur to me that she could be lonely, or
jealous. No grown-up could be; they were too fortunate."

"I didn't have any great feeling of horror and opposition, such
as a city child might have had; I was too used to seeing the
death of animals as a necessity by which we lived. Yet I felt
a little ashamed, and there was a new wariness, a sense of
holding-off, in my attitude to my father and his work."

"I was on Flora's side, and that made me no use to anybody,
not even to her. Just the same, I did not regret it; when she
came ruuning at me and I held the gate open, that was the only
thing I could do."