Indulgence and Loneliness

I have a difficult time trying to tying an overarching theme between the poems “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams and “l( a” by E.E. Cummings to each other and to the short story “Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich. However, I believe the idea of the two poems tie in greatly to the ideas of the short story, even if they do not really interconnect with each other very well. This Is Just to Say has the theme of indulgence and forgiveness behind it (even though it is in question about how bad the narrator truly feels about their indulgence). The theme of l( a is very simple and straightforward: loneliness. Love Medicine is a story about a failing relationship in which the narrator’s grandfather is cheating on his faithful, loving wife. Their relationship involves a lot of the three major themes in the poems: indulgence in things that cause trouble (cheating on a person,) loneliness (the grandmother feels,) and forgiveness (grandmother forgiving her cheating husband.)
This Is Just to Say is a very short and to the point poem; the poem has no punctuation, no rhyme scheme, and is only twelve short lines consisting of no more than three words each. In the poem the narrator, whose gender is not apparent, tells of their indulgence in plums that the person he or she is writing to was saving for breakfast the next day. While the narrator asks for forgiveness for eating the plums, there is no real sense of regret, especially when they say that the plums were “delicious/ so sweet/ and so cold.” This poem could have been written by anyone, to anyone and it’s ambiguous in most categories, whether its gender, age, or the type of relationship that the narrator has to the person whose plums they ate; there are many different possibilities with no real definite or irrefutable circumstance.
l(a is also a very quick and straightforward poem about loneliness, but also very ambiguous as well and has no real meat behind its message. The poem reads “l (a leaf falls) oneliness.” The style and form of the poem as well as the message inside the parenthesis reiterates the message of loneliness of the poem. A leaf falling is a very lonely and somber image that holds many negative connotations, including death.. Also, the separation of the words into different lines so that they are spread out and not united personifies the point of being alone and incomplete. Also, it is clear that the “one” in loneliness which appears by itself on its own line is clearly not a coincidence and further serves to drive the point home.
The short story by Louise Erdrich named Love Medicine is a classic story of relationships. The story consists of the narrator, Lipsha Kashpaw, attempting to cure the relationship of his grandparents. His grandfather is become senile and unfaithful to his very loving and now lonely grandmother. His attempt to fix the loneliness and emptiness of their relationship, he indirectly kills his grandfather by feeding them the heart of a turkey, which was his take on an ancient tribal recipe. The sexual indulgence that the grandfather takes part in with his mistress can be connected to the This Is Just to Say poem where the narrator indulges in the plums, even though they are not his to indulge in. The pleasure of the plums as well as the pleasure of sexual intercourse with the mistress are extremely attractive to both the narrator of the poem and the grandfather. Similarly, the loneliness that is apparent in the grandmother, so apparent that it drives the grandson to try to fix their relationship, can be related to the theme of the E.E. Cummings poem l(a.
The themes of the two poems can clearly be connected with the short story, but I have a very difficult time connecting the themes of the two poems with eachother. One similarity is that both of the themes are essential problems that come up in relationships and life, but this as well as all other connecting categories are vague. The only strong connection of the poems is their form and quick flow.