''At the Pitt-Rivers"

                                                 by Penelope Lively 

   "At the Pitt-Rivers' is a story about a sixteen year old boy that goes to a museum for a little peace and quiet. He writes his poems there. One day a middle aged woman comes in waiting for a man that is about thirty years older than her. Seeing the relationship between them disgusted the boy. In the story the boy says that he has already been in love twice. He thinks that because of the age differences between the old man and the woman, it is wrong for them to be in a relationship in that way. As the story goes on, the couple continues to come back. The boy begins to enjoy watching them and starts to see the true meaning of love. At the end of the story, the couple walks around the museum over and over again and then walk out. The next thing the boy sees is the woman combing her hair in nervousness as the man walks away.

      The moral of the story teaches the boy about the true meaning of  love. At first he thinks he knows about love because he claims that he has been in love two times. In reality, the boy is too young to know what love really is. That is what the couple teaches him. He realizes that age is just a number and if you truly love someone, it doesn't matter what other people think. That is why the boy starts to like and understand the man and the woman. By the end of the story he tears up the poem he was working on for the past few months. The poem he tore up was about a young boy and an older man sitting on a bench together, talking. The young boy in the poem is actually also the older man. No one knows why he tears it up. I think it's because he does not  need it anymore because he learned the true meaning of love.