- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
Kennedy introduces the narrator’s strong sense of shame and humiliation from the beginning of the story, when he feels judged by the man who sells his family their Christmas tree. Powerless to lift the tree himself—because of his back injury—the narrator stands beside the “Rotary guy” watching his wife and oldest son drag the tree towards the car. The narrator is quite literally unable to pull his weight—he can’t lift a thing—and he senses the man’s scorn directed towards him, accusing him of “destroying the social fabric by refusing to pull [his] weight.”
The tree seller is probably a member…