Lessons

Content Warning: The source text depicts a nonconsensual sexual and romantic relationship between a minor and an adult.

Roland is the protagonist of the story. His relationship with Cornell was a defining moment in his life. After Roland tells Alissa about Cornell, when visiting her parents in Germany, she observes, “She rewired your brain” (194). In less blunt terms, Roland expresses the same sentiment in a poem when he says that “on a sleepless night she springs up out of the dark […] She won’t go away” (24). Cornell’s sexual contact defines Roland’s early life. Cornell warped both his understanding of sex and romantic relationships. As Roland admits to Alissa later: “I left school early and drifted through scores of jobs. I’m rootless” (193). Roland spends much of his 20s and 30s trying to come to terms with, but also rediscover, the type of one-sided and sexually prolific relationship he had with Cornell.

When Roland meets Alissa, it seems some of this trauma might be put behind him. In committing to Alissa, and having a child, Roland is able to arrest his search for a past sexual idyll and settle down to a more mature way of life. After Alissa leaves him, Roland is once more plunged into a search for something lost.