psychological aspects

I couldn't help thinking the story could be said to be about a woman who had a father with an anger management problem and then was attracted to a man with the very same problem, with tragic results for him although, fortunately, not so much for her. If she had gone away with him she probably would have had the same experience she and her mother had of being hurt by her father, and the same experience she had had as a child watching someone being hurt. She said she felt she was seeing herself in him. She didn't seem to be terribly upset by his violence, not retreating back into herself or stuttering but handling it calmly, much the way she had always handled her father until their last encounter when she left home. I wondered if seeing herself in him also meant that he was acting out in ways that were inside her, too, that she might do if she weren't so trained in repression of her impulses. He was probably a child of an abusive background, too, before he started getting in trouble with the police. The "happy" ending is his death while she was still enamored of him and could see him as a sad victim who managed to escape his sorry existence through dying, rather than seeing this violence all repeat for her child. That, and her apparent turning to a really nice guy for comfort, keeps it from being as noir as it could have been. I couldn't help thinking she had had a lucky escape from her "soul mate" and could finally find some happiness rather than endless sacrifice and pain. In the case of domestic violence, it's probably better NOT to marry someone who is just like you.