To honour. To mock. To fear. To hate. To be fascinated. To laugh out loud. (629)
In Jeanette Winterson’s short story “The Green Man,” the main character is trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. He goes back and forth between things that do not relate and brings them back to his regular life. Winterson tells this story through the mind of the main character, so things are not always linked at the same time.
The conflict of the story is that he doesn’t know what he wants to do. The main character doesn’t know if he wants to leave his family or if he should stay.
I love them both, sincerely I do, and I can’t explain how you can love a thing and want to be parted from it forever. (632)
Throughout the story he goes on and on about how gypsies are coming and how they are bad people. When the gypsies come to town, there is a fair that the gypsies put on. One of the gypsies is selling horses and his daughter wants one.
A sexual encounter happens with that gypsy and the main character, but the wife and daughter do not know. While reading this short story, the reader might conclude that some parts in the story could be a dream. This whole story happens in the mind of the one character; therefore, it is hard to distinguish what is real and what is not.