The Age of Lead is a short story written by Margaret Atwood, a well-known Canadian writer. Most of her stories are, like this one, stories about society and people surviving in a tough world, for instance The Edible Woman and Surfacing. These are good examples of her criticism of society.
Jane, the main-character in the short story, is a woman who has changed a lot over the years. When we meet her she is a middle-aged woman who throughout the years has changed a lot. The early years of Jane’s life we become acquainted with later on in the story. Of her life we are told that she had a very protective mother who could only approve of one of Jane’s boyfriends, Vincent. When they are 16 years of age they are going out, but because they don’t like the term “going out” they make fun of it. I think this is a good example of the way things have always been between them, that their relationship has been like that from the start. They are not comfortable with tying themselves down, so they are friends rather than lovers. They never have a deep-felt relationship and I think it is because of Vincent’s very laid-back attitude to life and at first, also Jane’s. One example is that their leitmotif, one of a tampo

“She picks them up, clears them away, but they appear again overnight, like a trail left by the fleeing residents of a city under bombardment, leaving behind the objects that were once essential, but are now to heavy to carry.”

Now Vincent is not free. He is in a hospital bed and he does not know what has made him ill. He has been living without taking precautions and maybe this is the reason why he is now in this situation. I think they have been a bit naive when they say they want freedom from the world of burdens and fate. One cannot escape fate or change it no matter how hard the struggle. Jane realises this, when she sees that her best friend is dying, but Vincent is still the joker.

What it all comes down to in the end is that our lives are affected by both heredity and environment. Focusing on the child’s environment and considering the theories of children’s upbringing, which say that the parents have a very big influence on children the first 3 years of their lives, I would say that a living without your mother or father for that matter is not an ideal life as Jane and Vincent think it would be. I can’t really relate to not having to take precautions in my everyday life. If I didn’t take precautions I would probably have died years ago. Precautions in my opinion mean rules that you obey to keep yourself from harm and from doing harm. You think about the consequences of your actions before doing them and this keeps you from getting hurt. It is not only the physical side of it that we have to be aware of. We might get physical bruises and scars when we’re not taking any precautions, but the psychological ones are just as bad, or even worse. A lot of people cannot commit themselves to a man because they are afraid of getting hurt, maybe because they have been before or just because they have been influenced by others with the same attitude. Some times people also refuse dealing with issues troubling their minds, like their father dying or perhaps being diagno