 The Cookie Lady: Theme of Human Desire to Recapture Lost Vitality and Youth
Question : Describe the theme of human desire to recapture lost vitality and youth in the short story “The Cookie Lady”.
Answer: “The Cookie Lady” by P. K. Dick is a story of a young boy Bubber and an old lady Mrs. Drew, who lures the young and innocent boy with her cookies and steals his youth and life force.
The story explores the theme of Human Desire to Recapture Lost Vitality and Youth as the story tells about the various attempts of the old lady, Mrs. Drew to regain her lost youth.
She feels overjoyed even thinking about regaining her youth again “youth was so much. It was everything. What did the world mean to the old?”
The old lady often bakes cookies to lure Bubber, the young and innocent boy, and charms him by serving these cookies with cold milk as he likes. All these efforts, that old Mrs. Drew made is not just for his company but there are some hidden and dark intentions. Every time Bubber visits her and sits by her, she feels “something happening”. She feels the energy of youth in her body, her thin fragile body filling out with youth again. Her grey hair thickened and darkened “colour coming to the wispy strands”. Her arms filled and her “mottled flesh turning a rich hue as it had been once, many years before”.
But this transformation was not permanent. As soon as the boy left her house, the “matron of perhaps thirty” with “full cheeks and plump arms and legs” had turned into old and withered Mrs. Drew again.
The old lady has become so disappointed as the “tears blurred her eyes”. When she looked at herself in the mirror she found herself old again her “eyes deep – set in a withered face”. The “warmth” of youthfulness left her “as soon as the boy had left her side”.
She waited desperately for the next time. When the boy has come again, her happiness and sinister intentions are shown by her evil smile and words “It makes me feel so young again to have you come visit.”
As the boy informed her that his parents forbades him to visit her and this is “the last time”. The old lady stunned with fear “everything seemed to leap around her, the room twisting furiously.” She has become so anxious and desperate knowing that the boy would never come back to her and “there would be no more time”. It would be her last attempt to regain her vitality from the “plump” boy.
She instructed him to read a book aloud so that he could stay with her as long as possible. The old lady sat close by the boy, “closer then ever” and waiting for the transformation. As she remembered that it was her “last time”, she wanted to become youthful as soon as possible. She needs to touch his arm to absorb his youth vitality to regain her own.
The old lady could feel the “pulsating vibrating youngness” of him, “flowing between her fingers, through her arm”. It began to happen. The youngness “carried into her by the sound of the voice and the feel of the arm”. She could feel the flow of energy, the change and the warm rising feeling. She was “blooming again filling with life, swelling into richness” as she had been years ago.
She noticed her arms, rounded, her nails cleared. Her hair, black and thickened again. She smiled, feeling her strong teeth and gums and red lips. She touched her cheeks, wrinkles had gone and skin “pliant and soft”. On the other side the boy looked tired and drained out, his “face fat and dull, a dead white”.
This time the transformation was full and permanent. After the boy had left for his house she still remained young and strong as she had been years ago.
The touch and sound of the boy trigger this transformation, filling Mrs. Drew with joy renewed sense of confidence. While the boy was left devoid of his energy and vitality. He has become dried out, cold, exhausted. The cookie lady has stolen away the youth, energy and vitality of the young boy and left him at the mercy of strong wind. At the end Bubber is reduced to just a bundle of trash and is blown away by the wind.