At the Pitt-Rivers

     In the short story, "At the Pitt Rivers," the plot consists of a sixteen year old boy who goes to a museum almost every week to "mooch around and be on your own." One of the days he is there, he notices a positively happy older lady. At first he doesn't realize why she is so happy, but then he notices a man of about 50 years of age who was making her "radiant." The boy has sort of a strange sense of love. He says in the story: "I mean, in films, you can always tell who's going to fall for who, because they'll be the two good lookers, and while I'm not saying real life's like that there is a way people match each other." The boy is a big fan of poetry and decides to write a poem one of the days he is at the museum. The poem is about a boy that is having a conversation with an old man, when they realize they're the same people. While he is writing the poem, the boy notices the old man and the woman are somewhat depressed. Penelope does not say why, but the old man and the woman were obviously having a breakup. At this point the boy tears up the poem he was writing into tiny pieces and threw them away. I think the reason for this was that he didn't have the knowledge of love or life of the old man in his poem.
     In the beginning of the story, the boy has a contorted version of love built up in his mind. Originally, he thinks people have to have about the same looks to be together. (e.g. A- and A-.) When he sees the old man and woman, the first thing he notices is a huge age difference. (About 20 years.) He is quite arrogant and he thinks he knows a lot about life and love. The thing that startled him about the woman was that she was not at all pretty, but she had "the most beautiful expression I've ever seen in my life." The boy had been in love twice himself. Once was "a bit of a trial run," and on the other date, the best part for him was taking the girl home. So from this information, we can safely conclude the boy doesn't know much about love.