Question

reader response short essay about 55 miles to the Gas Pump

Answer 1

It reintroduces the theme of desolation and loneliness in a darkly humourous fable about the extreme behaviour of which human beings are capable .A drunken rancher commits suicide by jumping off a cliff , but in a moment of surreal imagination ' before he hits he rises again to the top of cliff like a cork in a bucket of milk ' .

After his death his wife cuts a hole through the roof of their house to find out what he has kept locked in the attic for the past twelve years . As she feared , she discovered the corpses of the paramours he has kidnapped and murdered ,women whose pictures have been published in the newspaper as missing women . The ranchers widow also sees evidence that her husband has been having sex with the corpses , prompting the narrator to comment . When you live a long way out you make your own fun . Offered in the place of the moral in a traditional fable , this understand cycnicism leaves the reader with the disquieting sense of the infinite possibilities for human evil ready to rise to the surface again and again like a cork in a bucket of milk .