I bring you a ‘Read of the Day,’ a short story, so that we can indulge in the joy of reading. You can visit my site to check a short story for analysis and participate in the discussion in the comments.
Read of the Day
Today, we will read Wants by Grace Paley.
You can read the story here: Wants by Grace Paley
About the Author
Grace Paley was an American short story writer, poet, mentor, and political activist. Her works focused on working-class New Yorkers, especially women and immigrants.
Though she wrote only 45 short stories in her lifetime, Paley is counted among the masters of the form. Her short stories are seriocomic, empathetic, courageously optimistic, and wise.
“Wants” first appeared in the author’s 1974 collection, “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” and later featured again in “The Collected Stories” (1994), a Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist. Apart from “Wants,” some of her other widely read short stories include “Goodbye and Good Luck” and “The Used-Boy Raisers”.
Her major works include “The Little Disturbances of Man” (1959), her debut collection, which brought critical acclaim, “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” (1974), often considered her finest, and “Later the Same Day” (1985).
Her poetry collections include “Leaning Forward” (1985) and “Fidelity” (2008, posthumous).
Story Analysis
Paley writes the story in the first person. The narrator is a woman sitting on the steps of the library where she spots her ex-husband. She gets excited seeing him and greets him warmly.
“Hello, my life!”
To which her ex-husband replies, “What? What life? No life of mine.”
However, he follows her into the library and keeps taunting her about their 27-year-old marriage. He gets downright petty and specific about how their marriage ended because she didn’t invite the Bertrams to dinner. The narrator doesn’t respond in the same manner.
There’s still love and affection from both sides despite the divorce. She looks past his caustic remarks and still looks at him kindly. He chooses to still love and care despite his claims of being otherwise. His words and actions betray his supposed apathy. He’s abrasive because he’s still hurt. And he’s still hurt because he still cares.
He attributes their divorce to the mismatch of their wants. He even derides the narrator for not even wanting anything in life.
I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn’t want anything.
Don’t be bitter, I said. It’s never too late.
No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger. I’m doing well this year and can look forward to better. But as for you, it’s too late. You’ll always want nothing.
For the first time in their interaction that day, she felt stung. It was “yesterday once more”.
He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber’s snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, half-way to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.
As the narrator reflects upon what her ex-husband accused her of: not wanting anything in life, she defends that it’s simply not true. She wants a lot of things, but not what her husband wanted and failed to understand about her. All her wants were non-materialistic and idealistic. But it didn’t mean she wanted nothing in life. Neither was she passive about her wants.
She was taking small steps to working around her flaws, such as procrastination. For example, returning library books after eighteen years for a fee of $32 even though the library was just two blocks away. She was trying to be responsible, a good citizen by speaking up about social issues and stopping the Vietnam War for the better future of their children. She wanted to be married to one person forever.
The narrator knows her wants are not materialist or practical. She’s self-aware as she’s a deep person unlike her shallow ex-husband, whom she truly loved. She realises that despite her failed first marriage, and the potential success of her second marriage, her dream (read want) of being married to one person forever isn’t reasonable.
Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn’t exhaust either man’s qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.
It was impossible to know one person in an entire lifetime, let alone two in a couple. Not to forget the fact that time was never on their side. An entire lifetime together can still feel short and incomplete.
She’s wise to realise the greater truths that most people fail to in their entire lifetime:
Life will always be incomplete.
She’s humble and self-aware of her shortcomings. And life’s tragedies cannot rob her of her humour, grit, and agency. Even if that agency looks modest, like returning overdue books to the library after eighteen years with the late fee.
The narrator is strong enough to laugh at herself and the situation amid her melancholy. Even as she bemoans and quietly accepts the loss of her first marriage, she moves forward to the future in modest hope and personal renewal in tiny, incremental steps.
This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z Challenge 2026.
