"Birth"

     Being a woman and reading this short story written by Anais Nin, I found myself sad by the closing of the story. As I read the title, I thought this story was going to be about a happy birth of a child, one of life's greatest blessing and I quickly came to find out that I was going to be wrong. The first line of the story, when the doctor tells the woman that the child is dead, caught me off guard. The more I read on in the story, I began to feel the woman's pain and how it was so hard for her to have to push this child out. The more I read on into the story, I suddenly became more and more sadden. Here you have this woman, who tried to give birth to a child that was six months old and was unable to succeed. This story brought tears to my eyes, because here it was, you had this woman who had carried another life around another life for six months and at a time she thought she was giving birth, the baby did not make it. The way that the author wrote this story was quite harsh to me. Normally in short stories, they start you off with a little background, as opposing to this one when you find out the plot within the first line. Although I do realize that life is not fair, I wish this story could have had a happier ending.