Julia Abadilla Section P

SYNTHESIS PAPER

Loneliness and unhappiness both express the pain of people being alone and unwanted;

this may be their most terrible type of penury. Both feelings may not only be felt when one is

by oneself, but can also be sensed even if they’re in relationships with people. Intimate with

the Moon and East Window divulge how we need to reach out and let those who feel unloved

feel the love and care that everyone in this world deserves.

Both texts are thematically linked by their voices; voice as character for Intimate with

the Moon, and voice as speaker for East Window. Through their voices, readers are given the

very own perspectives of the personas. The voices of each of the personas in the texts have the

same thought patterns and ways of putting together their words & ideas, because both have the

voice of loneliness.

Intimate with the Moon and East Window comprise of their main character/persona

inside miserable relationships. “There’s you and your husband during those days hugging and

sweet..” (3, Intimate with the Moon); this line shows that Hannah was reminiscing a time when

she and her husband were still pleasant to each other, a time that has ended. In the first line of

East Window, “It is noon: oak and maple fight” manifests the persona and his lover, represented

by two different trees which may also represent their differences, brawling at noon; where the

sun is at its zenith, and may represent their heated conversation. These show that the character

and persona are not in good terms with each of their “beloveds”. They even spend their days

downheartedly and wretchedly; lines like “it could be very well be the longest conversation

you’ve had with him for the entire week” (55, Intimate with the Moon) and “The unspent days

we fold and put away like a leaf pressed in a book” (6-7, East Window) reveal how

uncommunicated they are to each other. And those days are even treated as a routine to them;
their unwillingness to talk and spend time with each other has become like a “fixed program”

in their relationships. Because in a relationship, when communication begins to fail, everything

else will follow. The lack of communication and love makes unhappy marriages.

Hannah, and the male persona in East Window, both want the kind of love they’re not

getting. In Intimate with the Moon, Hannah is making herself think she likes her husband’s

best friend, Eli, because she is searching for a love her husband has stopped giving her.

Meanwhile in East Window, the persona states “Love.. a fool wears out his tongue learning to

say it” (17) exhibits that the persona is forcing himself to think that the kind of relationship he

and his “darling” possesses is the real love with intense feelings of deep affection. We see here

two people who starve for the need of love and are unable to fulfill that need.

The struggle that the character and person experience is an internal one. Their dire need

of love keeps on occurring in their heads. They yearn for it, but then cannot get it. The

demonstration of Hannah being unhappy from the sort of treatment she is getting from her

family is of internal conflict. of And in East Window, the persona says, “Few are the body’s

needs; it is the mind’s that are insatiable.”; which is a clear picture of an emotional problem

happening in the mind.

“Intimate with the Moon”, wherein Hannah turns towards the open window and feels

close to the moon, rather than her husband who is literally right next to her in bed. “East

Window”, like how the sun rises from the east and brings a new day, the persona hopes for an

opportunity of a rekindled love. Going back to the thesis, these are manifestations of the depths

of the loneliness and unhappiness of the character and persona. They are in pain for having

come from contentment in their past state of relationships, to feeling so unwanted. The

character and persona are in a relationship with people who constantly make them unhappy,
but are unable to let go; may it be due to ma legal law of marriage, and the continual wish of

recovering love.