Later in the 80's...

"Janus"-Ann Beattie

In the short story "Janus," by Ann Beattie, the main character is what I would say is an educated, middle-class women who finds herself "disappointed and disillusioned despite having achieved much of what is commonly believed to define the American Dream.  They tend to be unhappy in love, in family life, and in their work; if not actually unhappy, they are merely coping and without any feeling of real satisfaction."  This is a common theme in Beattie's stories, and is shown in "Janus."  Andrea, the main character, is a successful women who sells real estate.  She is obsessed with one thing and one thing only, the bowl.  She brings this bowl to every house showing and considers it her lucky charm.  It seems that every time that bowl is there, in the house she is showing, things go well.  When the bowl isn't bringing Andrea good luck, it's at her house, sitting in the middle of her coffee table, empty.  Nothing is to be placed in that bowl; it is meant to be empty.  The common theme that Beattie uses is connected to this story because although Andrea is a successful women, I feel like she lacks satisfaction in one way or another.  Although she has her bowl, it was her lover who bought it for her, not her husband who she is with now.  Having the bowl around could be a sense of her lover still around.  This shows possibly unhappiness in her life.  Is the bowl the only thing that brings Andrea joy?

"The Way We Live Now"-Susan Sontag

"The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag is about a character, who is nameless, who has AIDS/HIV.  In the 80's, there was an AIDS pandemic.  In 1982, AIDS was officially coined.  In '83, warnings are spread that AIDS is transmitted through heterosexual sex and by giving birth with a mother who has it, thus passing it to her baby.  In the same year, researchers isolate the virus that causes AIDS.  Unfortunately, two years later, the AIDS hysteria builds into a frenzy, and a student is banned from a school in Indiana!  Sontag writes about what the "hype" was about in the 80's, and that was AIDS/HIV.  If you didn't have it, you were petrified about contracting it.  Everyone new what it was, and now they were getting scared.  The title "The Way We Live Now" is representative of the time period and the story itself because AIDS/HIV was the way they were living then in the 80's.  It was what was "the thing."  I don't say that in a good way, because it wasn't good at all.  It was horrible.  It was "the thing" because it was a new known disease that was being contracted left and right.  Now, people knew how they were receiving the so called disease "AIDS/HIV."  The story "The Way We Live Now" is a perfect story to demonstrate how the 80's were lived.