A Husband’s Stitch and Eight Bites is really powerful. No one should have control over someone else, especially when it comes to their body and their choices. Both stories show how societal pressures can affect people’s lives in destructive ways. The endings of these stories are very important in showing how the main characters are shaped by these pressures. It is also shown how they ultimately break down because of them. The endings show the impact of these pressures and how these struggles show the harmful effects of living for others instead of yourself. These endings are important to understanding the narrative and the characters, and they drive home the central themes of both stories. In A Husband’s Stitch, the narrator’s life revolves around her husband’s needs and wants. Her actions, from something as small as wearing white during intimate times to the more extreme act of literally stitching herself for him hence the name “A Husband’s Stitch. This shows how much she sacrifices her specific wants to mold herself into what her husband wants. The ending of the story is important because it shows the impact of the sacrifices, both physically and emotionally. She ends up losing her life as a result. She wanted to keep this green ribbon to herself but eventually the husband gets what he wants. She lost herself trying to please her husband. The title A Husband’s Stitch is important when it comes to understanding the theme. The stitch is the final stitch that is added for a husband after childbirth. This is a physical doing that shows how much the narrator is willing to give up for her husband’s wants. The narrator continues to please the husband and neglects what she herself needs and does not allow boundaries at all. Her dying in the end shows importance to the theme of how she gave everything up and it still was not enough but she kept on giving and this ultimately led to her death.This ending is powerful because it speaks to the extreme impact of living for someone else’s expectations. It shows the harm in societal norms. Especially when they force people to sacrifice their own well-being and identity to fit into someone else’s idea of what they should be. The theme of self-sacrifice and possibility of losing yourself for the sake of another is critical to understanding the narrative, and the ending shows how harmful doing this can ve. In Eight Bites, the ending also shows the damage caused by societal pressures and norms. The main character believes that getting weight-loss surgery will solve her problems and make her more happy. She thinks she will be free from the judgment of others, but the ending reveals that this change doesn’t bring her the peace she thought it would bring. Instead, she’s haunted by the ghosts of her past selves, each ghost symbolizing a part of herself that she tried to erase. This ending is important because it shows how much pressure society puts on people to conform to beauty standards and how trends of looking like someone else can negatively impact someone. The ghosts show the different ways she’s tried to fit into these standards. She continuously tried to change things about her body but this did not work as she could never escape the expectations placed on her. A lot of the expectations were self-inflicted as she believed it would work if she continued to change different things.The narrative ultimately shows a huge part of the theme that the problem is not her body. The problem is how she views herself and how society made her view herself. In the end, it is seen that the ghosts show that no matter how much she tries to change, the internal pressure and external judgment will always be there. The theme of self-image that is given to us by societal norms and constant pressure is very damaging. These damaging effects create an obsession with perfection. The problem also is that in society trends constantly change and this leaves the question mark of what is perfect and is it attainable. We see this emphasized through this ending. It teaches that no amount of physical change can fix the deeper issues. The ending symbolizes that there is a big importance of addressing internal struggles rather than looking for external solutions. In the end, both stories make me think about how much work is left to do when it comes to societal expectations. There’s still so much pressure in the world to conform to society’s expectations. The endings are important because they serve as a warning about the dangers of trying to meet impossible expectations, and they remind us that real change comes from within.

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