Esch's Pregnancy

The question on everyone's mind is, “when will Esch share that she is pregnant,” and “ how will it all turn out?”

One of biggest challenges Esch faces in this novel is the fact that she is pregnant. Almost all of the characters in the novel have some kind of suspicion that Esch might be pregnant but chose not to talk about it. It almost seems like an easier solution to pretend that she isn't pregnant. Although this solution might be easiest for the other characters in the novel, this is a real situation Esch deals with everyday. She is unable to bottle up her feelings and emotions in the form of denial any longer when in chapter 10 she decides to tell Manny that she is pregnant with his child. She almost does this by accident as her decision to open up to Manny is definitely in the spur of the moment. As he is walking away, she decides to stop him in his tracks by telling him “I'm pregnant.”  She probably hopes this will change their relationship. That he will lover her for the child, that it will keep him around instead of him leaving, this is Esch’s last ditch effort to make him Manny love her. Manny asks Esch “How can you say that it is mine when you fuck everyone in the pit?”(204) This is how Manny denies that the child is his. He is convinced that Esch is a slut and that the child is anyone else but his. He probably doesn't want to take responsibility for the child, as we discussed, Manny wants sex without consequences. Above all, I believe he doesn't want to have to spend anymore time with Esch than he has too. If he continues to deny that the child is his, maybe, just maybe he wont have to claim it as his own. 

Im sure all of the readers wish this was a longer novel to find out more about Esch and her baby as well as what her relationship with Manny might come to be. Without more to read, it is almost an unsettling resolution.