Loser

by Aimee Bender
Setting
At house by the neighborhood

Characters
Mrs. Allen
Jenny's mother
Leonard Allen
Young Man
Neighbors

Point of view
Third Person Omniscient

Conflict
Leonard is kidnapped and needs to be found.

Resolution
The young man's powers went away.

Theme
Bender explores the consequences of loss through the struggle of the young man
who seeks to find himself or his parents with his object sensing abilities and yet
ends up being depressed, alienated and isolated.

Bender believes that we as people must learn to find each other with our hearts
and emotions. She also explores our human desire to love and be loved in return.
Plot Summary
Aimee Bender’s short story Loser is a modern fairy-tale. It is written third-person
narration. Like so many traditional fairy-tales, it begins with the tragic death of the
protagonist’s parents. The orphan is imbued with a magical psychic power which
indirectly separates him from the society making him feel more alienated. At the
beginning of the story, the main character of the story mysteriously develops a
powerful talent of sensing and feeling the tug of remote lost objects, a few years
after the deaths of his parents. Neighbors discovered the young man’s abilities
when he magically found the lost hair brush of his girlfriend’s mother in the
kitchen drawer. Not surprisingly, his girlfriend thought that he did that
intentionally in order to impress her mother and broke up with him.

Mrs. Allen, one of his neighbors, whose son was kidnapped desperately called
him for assistance. This was particularly challenging task for the young man, as he
had never found anybody stolen besides lost objects. Usually he felt the tug of the
objects that initially belonged to someone else or felt the smell of objects that
were replaced from somewhere else. As expected, he wasn’t able to find the boy,
until he knew that the child was wearing a blue shirt, which was accidentally
informed to him by Mrs. Allen, who answered the policeman’s questions. He
found the boy & Mrs. Allen promptly burst into tears. She thanked the young man
a thousand times, even offered him the Green Star, but he refused it.
At the end, he can feel no tug to draw him to a person to love. In a silent plea or
prayer he thinks, “Come find me. I’m over here. Come find me”

Poetic Analysis
 The story is called "Loser" to show how he feels about his parents loss.
 The protagonist is unnamed, referred to as “the young man” throughout
the story because his lack of name signifies his detachment from the
community.
 The young man is much like the Green Star or emerald: the stone lays
under glass, and the young man feels equally encased.
 The young man’s power is extraordinary. Ironically, the magical power has
an opposite effect on him, making him even more heartbroken because it
distances him from human connection.
 Bender argues that the loss of a close person leads to sadness and
loneliness, and often times even a magical talent is not enough for
 overcoming that pain and filling the absence of that person. In particular,
the young man’s inability to find his lost parents even with the special
object finding gifts ultimately lead him to depression and isolation.

 People usually tend to keep a distance from abnormalities in their lives, and
the neighbors of the young man were not exceptions. They have two
reactions: skeptical reactions as some people considered his skills
superstitious and thought he slyly deceives them to get attention &
appreciative reaction as some people appreciate his skills and frequently
utilize them for their personal purposes, overall effect was negative and he
ended up being alone.

 His tiny room symbolizes the state of his well being; he doesn’t allow space
for other people to enter into his life, leaving him “lonely.”

 The “waves” symbolize how his parents were lost at sea, and the orphan
thinking maybe his parents will come back to him.

 Bender further describes the orphan’s character as she shares, “The young
man didn’t know, himself”. The word “himself” emphasizes the isolation
and loneliness of the orphan. Bender implies that the ignorance of one’s
own potential leads to unhappiness, particularly in the case of the young
man, as he couldn’t find himself because of his power limitations.

 Bender uses repetition because the repetition of certain words is a

powerful way of emphasizing your thoughts and emotions that Bender
masters in her short story. For example:

The repetition of the word “Lonely”: to create the themes of sadness.

The repetition of the word ‘Son’: shows that the orphan is making an
emotional attempt to feel like he has family .He is longing to communicate
with Leonard suggests the emptiness the orphan feels from the loss of his
own parents.
When saying “Come find me.”, we observe the repetitive usage of the
phrase “Come find me” is to emphasize the notion that the orphan must
let go of this power, and allow someone to actually find him for once.