They have been together so long that they have to reason to leave each other now, but it is clear their lives are no longer satisfying or meaningful. It is good the narrator dies, because she has been dead for a long time anyway, she just will not admit it. She does not seem to have any compassion for Mary Alice either. She describes her cancer as matter of factly as she does her own death, just repeating the facts, but never empathizing with the pain and suffering Mary Alice must feel. Because she has no empathy, she has no real emotion, and that is another element of the story that points to the narrator already being dead inside. She is cold, hard, and not very sympathetic, and it is clear it has not been easy for Mary Alice to live with her. She is the "man" in the relationship, with all of the faults of a man, including not being able to show her emotions or admit to her feelings, and that makes her dead and cold inside as well as outside. In conclusion, nothing in this story is really what it appears, and that keeps...

The grey wolf that gives the story its title is really a minor character. The two people turn out to be lesbians, not a traditional married couple, and the narrator dies before her partner, who is expected to die first because she has cancer. The story takes a lot of twists and turns, but its theme throughout is death and dying, and the fear that instills in all of us. The narrator dies first, which is like a kind of joke if it was not so tragic, and the only one that will endure out of this story is the grey wolf. It is a disturbing story, but it paints the realities of life for the reader. Not everything is what it seems, and the grey wolf, who inspires fear in the narrator, is not nearly as fearful as the narrator's untimely and horrible death. Death and dying is a common theme in literature, but the author uses it differently here, to end a story that was going in many different directions and leading the reader to false conclusions.