In The Unfinished World: And Other Stories by Amber Sparks, what is the relationship between beauty and decay in three stories in the collection?

In The Janitor in Space, beauty is synonymous with a redemptive loneliness; it comes from rejecting the decay associated with "the accumulated debris of a lifetime in sin and sacrifice." The story follows a janitor who works on a space station; her daily work is mundane, and she thinks that the astronauts she cleans up after are sloppy and careless in their habits.

She remembers her past life with indifference. In her present circumstance, the weightlessness of space simulates a feeling of freedom. Up in space, she no longer has to contend with the shame of her criminal past. Although she has no friends, she is glad to be "free of the burden of people for the first time in her whole flat life." The janitor rejects death as a sort of redemption; to her, death is the "opposite of wisdom, (and) the opposite of mystery." Instead, loneliness (the only thing she owns) becomes a thing of beauty for her in her new life.

In The Lizzie Borden Jazz Babies, beauty is marred by a moral decay that results from misplaced priorities and flawed judgment. Accordingly, the mother and step-father in the story are concerned that grown men have begun to ogle the mother's teenage daughters. Because they find it difficult to accept the girls' burgeoning sexuality, the mother and step-father decide to curb the girls' extracurricular activities; they are no longer allowed to dance the sensual Lindy Hop. Instead, they must content themselves with ballet if they want to dance at all. The adults' flawed judgment and misplaced priorities lead them to shame the girls rather than to educate them about the pleasures and responsibilities that come with sexual awakening.

The girls rebel and decide to take revenge on their parents. They rename themselves the Lizzie Borden Jazz Babies. In 1892, Lizzie Borden stood trial for the axe-murders of her father and step-mother in Massachusetts; she was acquitted in 1893. Both Cat and Patty scheme to dispatch their parents in the same way. However, Cat eventually becomes infatuated with a young man and loses interest in carrying out the murders. Incensed, Patty schemes on her own, but it isn't the same without her twin. The story ends in a surrealistic dream, where Patty cuts down Cat's boyfriend with an axe. The ambiguous ending is stunning, reinforcing the idea that moral decay often corrupts beauty.

In For These Humans Who Cannot Fly, beauty can be derived from decay and death, if only from a matter of perspective. Accordingly, a widower remembers his dead wife by building death houses (Leichenhaus) for a living. In these houses, he has placed five hundred Temporary Resting Containers, where the deceased can rest until they are awakened from their "sleep." Although the widower knows that no one can come back from the dead, he still believes that "every death is a love story." Although its "the goodbye part," he believes that "the love is still there, wide as the world."

It is this love that sustains those who are left behind. From this perspective, the rituals of death are fraught with hope and beauty, not despair and grief. When his wife dies, the widower lays her in a Temporary Resting Container. He ties a piece of cord (connected to a bell) to one of her broken fingers. In the event she awakes, she will only have to move her finger and the bell will ring. Then, the doctors he has hired to be on call at all times will come to her aid. The widower sees the ritual of burying his wife as a comfort, a thing of beauty that encapsulates the love story of a lifetime.