In the story “IND AFF or out of love in Sarajevo” written by Fay Weldon, a twenty-five-year-old college student, who is also the narrator, is on vacation in Yugoslavia with Peter Piper, a married professor of classical history, who is also her lover. The purpose of the trip is to “recover from the exhaustion caused by the sexual and moral torments of the past year” but in reality it’s to see if Peter will decide between his wife of many years or the narrator as his permanent life partner. The narrator creates a struggle within her mind on whether or not to end the relationship between her and the married professor. She relates her struggles with the young Princip who was the assassin of the Archduke. Towards the end of the story the narrator falls out of love with Peter Piper and decides she doesn’t want to be the one to end a twenty-four-year marriage.
The setting of “IND AFF” takes place in the “pretty town” Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. The same place where the assassin Princip shot the Archduke and started the spark which lead to world war I. The narrator goes on to describe Sarajevo as “a pretty town, Balkan style, mountain-rimmed. A broad, swift, shallow river runs through its center, carrying the mountain snow away, arched by many bridges.” As a reader is reading this section of the paragraph they can get a mental image of how beautiful Sarajevo is.
During their trip there seemed to be a severe storm passing through. The storm was swishing all over Europe, practically from Moscow to London. The rain spoils their trip as well as their relationship. “This is a sad story. It has to be. It rained in Sarajevo, and we had expected fine weather.” The author uses this sad and gloomy opening setting to set a specific tone throughout the story. It also foreshadows what might happen at the end of the story. Through the sad, gloomy weather the author illustrates what the characters are going through mentally. The couple would have preferred to do what they love which was to “buy bread, cheese, sausage, wine, and go off somewhere in our hired car, into the woods or hills, and picnic and make love” but the pouring rain forces them into a private restaurant. In the pouring rain the narrator questions whether or not she shows inordinate affection towards Peter Piper as Pricip did towards his country. The restaurant is near the assignations footprints on the ground. While waiting for their wild boar to arrive, they talked about the cucumber salad and that’s when peter starts to complain about the cucumbers and how everything is served with it. That is when the narrator notices that she had “become used to his complaining.” The narrator then starts speaking about the assassination. The restaurant plays an important part in the story. Eating a meal in a literary text is an example of people coming together with harmony. It tells us about the characters’ relationships to the way things are changing in their pride and pretension, to generosity and nurture, according to “The art of reading, literary meals.” A failed meal, as in “IND AFF” where the wild boar is taking a long time to come out, holds opposite connotations. That was when she fell out of love with professor Peter Piper. The setting and theme in this story are directly related to one another. The effective portrayal of the theme depends on the specifics of the setting.
In “IND AFF” Fay Weldon uses symbolism quite a lot. “It couldn’t possibly go on raining forever. Could it? Satellite pictures showed black clouds swishing gently all over Europe…” it’s been raining a great deal, rain is a symbol for purification and refreshment. After a storm there is a new beginning and the narrator was waiting for hers. The storm could also mean that it hangs over Peter Piper as a symbol of his confusion towards his situation with narrator and his wife. He seems to have been distracted the whole time between his wife and the narrator. Peter could never forget about his wife. Maybe the rain can be attributed to Peters bad mood. The reader might also think that the constant rain might symbolize the end of the affair. Which turns out to be the case in this story. The “black clouds represent trouble, in this case there seems to be a lot of trouble between Peter Piper and the narrator. The rains purification leads to the narrator’s realization of error in her situation with the professor and his wife. “We’d sheltered from the rain in an ancient mosque in Serbian Belgrade; done the same in a monastery in Croatia; now we spent a wet couple of days in Sarajevo beneath other people’s umbrellas.” By sheltering from the rain and being underneath other people’s umbrellas one can annotate that the narrator and professor may somehow be avoiding that purification from the rain. They don’t want to acknowledge their error in being together. In the restaurant there meal taking so long to arrive and the lack of conversation meant that they weren’t bonding as couples are supposed to while sitting together at a restaurant. That’s when the narrator fell out of love with Peter. The restaurant also symbolized the parallel between the narrator and the assassin Princip. The narrator mentions “the second was a shot fired by none other than young Princip, which had missed. Princip had vanished into the crowd and gone to sit down in a corner café and ordered coffee to calm his nerves.” A reader might understand this as a place for second chances. “Second chances are rare in life: they must be responded to.” Again with the parallel between the narrator and the assassin Princip, although Princip took the chance to fire at the Archduke, having already missed at his first attempt, the narrator knew this was her second chance. The restaurant was where the narrator realized she didn’t want to live with the guilt of ruining a marriage. The narrator didn’t want to live a life full of guilt like the young Princip assassin did. The author gives details about the situation between the narrator, Peter Piper, and his wife by comparing herself to Princip and Peter as the Archduke.
The narrator in “IND AFF” is also the main character. The narrator is a young twenty-five-year old, naïve, unnamed college student who is in love with her professor. She relates her struggles with the young Princip who was the assassin of the Archduke. The narrator creates a struggle within her mind on whether or not to end the relationship between her and the married professor. She even admitted that what she felt for him was just a confusion between ambition with love because she was a student and he was her thesis advisor, which her academic career depended on. The inordinate affection that the narrator feels begins to wear off. The narrator is a dynamic character because she becomes more mature and realizes that a marriage is not something you ruin unless both of the people in the relationship are certain that that is what they want. Leaving Peter Piper made her a more dependent person and freed her from an entanglement. Professor Peter Piper is the narrator’s lover, he seems unlovable. He is a boring and irritable person. He shows no desire or affection towards the narrator. The narrator mentions in the story that the chauffer “lost his way” just as Peter Piper lost sight of his marriage. He was distracted the whole entire. Peter was stuck on his wife, he could never forget his wife.
Fay Weldon’s story “IND AFF or out of love in Sarajevo” a twenty-five-year-old college student is on vacation in Yugoslavia with Peter Piper, a married professor, who is also her lover. The purpose of the trip is to “recover from the exhaustion caused by the sexual and moral torments of the past year” but in reality it’s to see if Peter will decide between his wife of many years or the narrator as his permanent life partner. She relates her struggles with the young Princip who was the assassin of the Archduke. The narrator creates a struggle within her mind on whether or not to end the relationship between her and the married professor. Inordinate affection it is a term that God uses to highlight an unbalance, “over the top” affection or love we might have for anything or person, that we give first place to before him. Towards the end of the story the narrator is falls out of love with Peter Piper and decides she doesn’t want to be the one to end a twenty-four-year marriage.