Summary

In “The Dialectic,” a woman and her daughter sat on the beach in Sopot, and the woman remarked that she would “like to be on good terms with all animals” (1) while eating a chicken wing. The daughter complained about Sopot, then about her mother's bathing suit. The woman enjoyed being at this resort town because of the anonymity—no one knew they were a “fatherless family” (2). The father had recently emigrated to America. The woman hoped his days there were difficult. She buried the rest of her chicken wing in the sand and thought of the brutality of a chicken slaughterhouse where the male chicks are separated from the females and placed “into huge grinding vats where they are minced alive” (4).

In “Sentimental Education,” a woman named Monica looks back on experiences she had in college at age 19. She...