Analysis of Temptation of Two

Susan Fox Rogers exhibits two intersecting themes in her short story "The Temptation of Two." Her more palpable moral, one that's explicitly contemplated throughout the story, is the relationship between fear and security, particularly how far one should push themselves. In the end, however, she realizes that "[this] question is flat; safety is not why I go." Instead of providing an arbitrary evaluation regarding the safety of her journeys, she realizes that safety merely represents the internal boundary one must break in order to experience "the post-play feeling, the tantalizing heat that spreads." Furthermore, this epiphany manifests itself again after she briefly kisses her companion Emily. In doing so, she is "swept away by the adventurous possibility of two" because she effaces both her traditional role as the cynic in their relationship and contentment with traveling alone. Rogers consistently envelops her story in boundaries so that when they're traversed in the end she releases a euphoria of new possibilities, thereby proving that limits are meant to be broken.