Short Stories for Students
National Advisory Board Jennifer Hood: Young Adult/Reference Librarian, Cumberland Public Library, Cumberland, Rhode Island. Certified teacher, Rhode Island. Member of the New England Library Association, Rhode Island Library Association, and the Rhode Island Educational Media Association. Christopher Maloney: Head Reference Librarian, Ocean City Free Public Library, Ocean City, New Jersey. Member of the American Library Association and the New Jersey Library Association. Board member of the South Jersey Library Cooperative. Kathleen Preston: Head of Reference, New City Library, New City, New York. Member of the American Library Association. Received B.A. and M.L.S. from University of Albany.
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Patricia Sarles: Library Media Specialist, Canarsie High School, Brooklyn, New York. Expert Guide in Biography/Memoir for the website About, com (http://biography.about.com). Author of short stories and book reviews. Received B.A., M.A. (anthropology), and M.L.S. from Rutgers University. Heidi Stohs: Instructor in Language Arts, grades 10-12, Solomon High School, Solomon, Kansas. Received B.S. from Kansas State University; M.A. from Fort Hays State University. Barbara Wencl: Library Media Specialist, Como Park Senior High School, St. Paul, Minnesota. Teacher of secondary social studies and history, St. Paul, Minnesota. Received B.S. and M.Ed, from University of Minnesota; received media certification from University of Wisconsin. Educator and media specialist with over 30 years experience.
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Table of Contents Guest Foreword "Why Study Literature At All?" Thomas E. Harden
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Introduction
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Literary Chronology
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Acknowledgments
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Contributors
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Animal Stories Jason Brown
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Black Boy Kay Boyle
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A Boy and His Dog Harlan Ellison
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The Challenge Mario Vargas Llosa
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The Country Husband JohnCheever
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The Destructors Graham Greene
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Don't Look Now Daphne du Maurier
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The Eskimo Connection Hisaye Yamamoto
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Exchanging Glances ChristaWolf
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The Red Convertible Louise Erdrich
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Gooseberries Anton Chekhov
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Resurrection of a Life William Saroyan
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The Last Lovely City Alice Adams
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Small Change Yehudit Hendel
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Night Tatyana Tolstaya
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Town and Country Lovers Nadine Gordimer
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Glossary of Literary Terms
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Cumulative Author/Title Index
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Nationality/Ethnicity Index
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Sub ject/Theme Index
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Why Study Literature At All? Short Stories for Students is designed to provide readers with information and discussion about a wide range of important contemporary and historical works of short fiction, and it does that job very well. However, I want to use this guest foreword to address a question that it does not take up. It is a fundamental question that is often ignored in high school and college English classes as well as research texts, and one that causes frustration among students at all levels, namely—why study literature at all? Isn't it enough to read a story, enjoy it, and go about one's business? My answer (to be expected from a literary professional, I suppose) is no. It is not enough. It is a start; but it is not enough. Here's why. First, literature is the only part of the educational curriculum that deals directly with the actual world of lived experience. The philosopher Edmund Husserl used the apt German term die Lebenswelt, "the living world," to denote this realm. All the other content areas of the modern American educational system avoid the subjective, present reality of everyday life. Science (both the natural and the social varieties) objectifies, the fine arts create and/or perform, history reconstructs. Only literary study persists in posing those questions we all asked before our schooling taught us to give up on them. Only literature gives credibility to personal perceptions, feelings, dreams, and the "stream of consciousness" that is our inner voice. Literature wonders about infinity, wonders why God permits evil,
wonders what will happen to us after we die. Literature admits that we get our hearts broken, that people sometimes cheat and get away with it, that the world is a strange and probably incomprehensible place. Literature, in other words, takes on all the big and small issues of what it means to be human. So my first answer is that of the humanist—we should read literature and study it and take it seriously because it enriches us as human beings. We develop our moral imagination, our capacity to sympathize with other people, and our ability to understand our existence through the experience of fiction. My second answer is more practical. By studying literature we can learn how to explore and analyze texts. Fiction may be about die Lebenswelt, but it is a construct of words put together in a certain order by an artist using the medium of language. By examining and studying those constructions, we can learn about language as a medium. We can become more sophisticated about word associations and connotations, about the manipulation of symbols, and about style and atmosphere. We can grasp how ambiguous language is and how important context and texture is to meaning. In our first encounter with a work of literature, of course, we are not supposed to catch all of these things. We are spellbound, just as the writer wanted us to be. It is as serious students of the writer's art that we begin to see how the tricks are done.
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Seeing the tricks, which is another way of saying "developing analytical and close reading skills," is important above and beyond its intrinsic literary educational value. These skills transfer to other fields and enhance critical thinking of any kind. Understanding how language is used to construct texts is powerful knowledge. It makes engineers better problem solvers, lawyers better advocates and courtroom practitioners, politicians better rhetoricians, marketing and advertising agents better sellers, and citizens more aware consumers as well as better participants in democracy. This last point is especially important, because rhetorical skill works both ways—when we learn how language is manipulated in the making of texts the result is that we become less susceptible when language is used to manipulate us. My third reason is related to the second. When we begin to see literature as created artifacts of language, we become more sensitive to good writing in general. We get a stronger sense of the importance of individual words, even the sounds of words and word combinations. We begin to understand Mark Twain's delicious proverb—"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." Getting beyond the "enjoyment only" stage of literature gets us closer to becoming makers of word art ourselves. I am not saying that studying fiction will turn every student into a Faulkner or a Shakespeare. But it will make us more adaptable and effective writers, even if our art form ends up being the office memo or the corporate annual report.
Studying short stories, then, can help students become better readers, better writers, and even better human beings. But I want to close with a warning. If your study and exploration of the craft, history, context, symbolism, or anything else about a story starts to rob it of the magic you felt when you first read it, it is time to stop. Take a break, study another subject, shoot some hoops, or go for a run. Love of reading is too important to be ruined by school. The early twentieth century writer Willa Gather, in her novel My Antonia, has her narrator Jack Burden tell a story that he and Antonia heard from two old Russian immigrants when they were teenagers. These immigrants, Pavel and Peter, told about an incident from their youth back in Russia that the narrator could recall in vivid detail thirty years later. It was a harrowing story of a wedding party starting home in sleds and being chased by starving wolves. Hundreds of wolves attacked the group's sleds one by one as they sped across the snow trying to reach their village. In a horrible revelation, the old Russians revealed that the groom eventually threw his own bride to the wolves to save himself. There was even a hint that one of the old immigrants might have been the groom mentioned in the story. Gather has her narrator conclude with his feelings about the story. "We did not tell Pavel's secret to anyone, but guarded it jealously—as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that night long ago, and the wedding party had been sacrificed, just to give us a painful and peculiar pleasure." That feeling, that painful and peculiar pleasure, is the most important thing about literature. Study and research should enhance that feeling and never be allowed to overwhelm it. Thomas E. Burden Professor of English and Director of Graduate English Studies The University of Toledo
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Introduction Purpose of the Book The purpose of Short Stories for Students (SSfS) is to provide readers with a guide to understanding, enjoying, and studying short stories by giving them easy access to information about the work. Part of Gale's "For Students" Literature line, SSfS is specifically designed to meet the curricular needs of high school and undergraduate college students and their teachers, as well as the interests of general readers and researchers considering specific short fiction. While each volume contains entries on "classic" stories frequently studied in classrooms, there are also entries containing hard-to-find information on contemporary stories, including works by multicultural, international, and women writers. The information covered in each entry includes an introduction to the story and the story's author; a plot summary, to help readers unravel and understand the events in the work; descriptions of important characters, including explanation of a given character's role in the narrative as well as discussion about that character's relationship to other characters in the story; analysis of important themes in the story; and an explanation of important literary techniques and movements as they are demonstrated in the work. In addition to this material, which helps the readers analyze the story itself, students are also provided with important information on the literary and historical background informing each work.
This includes a historical context essay, a box comparing the time or place the story was written to modern Western culture, a critical overview essay, and excerpts from critical essays on the story or author. A unique feature of SSfS is a specially commissioned critical essay on each story, targeted toward the student reader. To further aid the student in studying and enjoying each story, information on media adaptations is provided (if available), as well as reading suggestions for works of fiction and nonfiction on similar themes and topics. Classroom aids include ideas for research papers and lists of critical sources that provide additional material on the work.
Selection Criteria The titles for each volume of SSfS were selected by surveying numerous sources on teaching literature and analyzing course curricula for various school districts. Some of the sources surveyed include: literature anthologies, Reading Lists for College-Bound Students: The Books Most Recommended by America's Top Colleges; Teaching the Short Story: A Guide to Using Stories from Around the World, by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE); and' 'A Study of High School Literature Anthologies," conducted by Arthur Applebee at the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature and sponsored by the National
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Endowment for the Arts and the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Input was also solicited from our advisory board, as well as educators from various areas. From these discussions, it was determined that each volume shouldhave a mix of' 'classic'' stories (those works commonly taught in literature classes) and contemporary stories for which information is often hard to find. Because of the interest in expanding the canon of literature, an emphasis was also placed on including works by international, multicultural, and women authors. Our advisory board members— educational professionals—helped pare down the list for each volume. Works not selected for the present volume were noted as possibilities for future volumes. As always, the editor welcomes suggestions for titles to be included in future volumes.
How Each Entry Is Organized Each entry, or chapter, in SSfS focuses on one story. Each entry heading lists the title of the story, the author's name, and the date of the story's publication. The following elements are contained in each entry: Introduction: a brief overview of the story which provides information about its first appearance, its literary standing, any controversies surrounding the work, and major conflicts or themes within the work. Author Biography: this section includes basic facts about the author's life, and focuses on events and times in the author's life that may have inspired the story in question. Plot Summary: a description of the events in the story. Lengthy summaries are broken down with subheads. Characters: an alphabetical listing of the characters who appear in the story. Each character name is followed by a brief to an extensive description of the character's role in the story, as well as discussion of the character's actions, relationships, and possible motivation. Characters are listed alphabetically by last name. If a character is unnamed—for instance, the narrator in' "The Eaton ville Anthology''—the character is listed as' 'The Narrator'' and alphabetized
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as "Narrator." If a character's first name is the only one given, the name will appear alphabetically by that name. Themes: a thorough overview of how the topics, themes, and issues are addressed within the story. Each theme discussed appears in a separate subhead, and is easily accessed through the boldface entries in the Subject/Theme Index. Style: this section addresses important style elements of the story, such as setting, point of view, and narration; important literary devices used, such as imagery, foreshadowing, symbolism; and, if applicable, genres to which the work might have belonged, such as Gothicism or Romanticism. Literary terms are explained within the entry, but can also be found in the Glossary. Historical Context: this section outlines the social, political, and cultural climate in which the author lived and the work was created. This section may include descriptions of related historical events, pertinent aspects of daily life in the culture, and the artistic and literary sensibilities of the time in which the work was written. If the story is historical in nature, information regarding the time in which the story is set is also included. Long sections are broken down with helpful subheads. Critical Overview: this section provides background on the critical reputation of the author and the story, including bannings or any other public controversies surrounding the work. For older works, this section may include a history of how the story was first received and how perceptions of it may have changed over the years; for more recent works, direct quotes from early reviews may also be included. Criticism: an essay commissioned by SSfS which specifically deals with the story and is written specifically for the student audience, as well as excerpts from previously published criticism on the work (if available). Sources: an alphabetical list of critical material used in compiling the entry, with bibliographical information. Further Reading: an alphabetical list of other critical sources which may prove useful for the
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student. It includes bibliographical information and a brief annotation. In addition, each entry contains the following highlighted sections, set apart from the main text as sidebars: Media Adaptations: if available, a list of film and television adaptations of the story, including source information. The list also includes stage adaptations, audio recordings, musical adaptations, etc. Topics for Further Study: a list of potential study questions or research topics dealing with the story. This section includes questions related to other disciplines the student may be studying, such as American history, world history, science, math, government, business, geography, economics, psychology, etc. Compare and Contrast: an' 'at-a-glance'' comparison of the cultural and historical differences between the author's time and culture and late twentieth century or early twenty-first century Western culture. This box includes pertinent parallels between the major scientific, political, and cultural movements of the time or place the story was written, the time or place the story was set (if a historical work), and modern Western culture. Works written after the mid-1970s may not have this box. What Do I Read Next?: a list of works that might complement the featured story or serve as a contrast to it. This includes works by the same author and others, works of fiction and nonfiction, and works from various genres, cultures, and eras.
Other Features SSfS includes ' 'Why Study Literature At All?,'' a foreword by Thomas E. Barden, Professor of English and Director of Graduate English Studies at the University of Toledo. This essay provides a number of very fundamental reasons for studying literature and, therefore, reasons why a book such as SSfS, designed to facilitate the study of literture, is useful. A Cumulative Author/Title Index lists the authors and titles covered in each volume of the SSfS series.
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A Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index breaks down the authors and titles covered in each volume of the SSfS series by nationality and ethnicity. A Subject/Theme Index, specific to each volume, provides easy reference for users who may be studying a particular subject or theme rather than a single work. Significant subjects from events to broad themes are included, and the entries pointing to the specific theme discussions in each entry are indicated in boldface. Each entry may include illustrations, including photo of the author, stills from film adaptations (if available), maps, and/or photos of key historical events.
Citing Short Stories for Students When writing papers, students who quote directly from any volume of SSfS may use the following general forms to document their source. These examples are based on MLA style; teachers may request that students adhere to a different style, thus, the following examples may be adapted as needed. When citing text from SSfS that is not attributed to a particular author (for example, the Themes, Style, Historical Context sections, etc.), the following format may be used: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County.'' Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 19-20.
When quoting the specially commissioned essay from SSfS (usually the first essay under the Criticism subhead), the following format may be used: Korb, Rena. Critical essay on "Children of the Sea." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. I.Detroit: Gale, 1997.42.
When quoting a journal or newspaper essay that is reprinted in a volume of Short Stories for Students, the following form may be used: Schmidt, Paul. "The Deadpan on Simon Wheeler." Southwest Review Vol. XLI, No. 3 (Summer, 1956), 270-77; excerpted and reprinted in Short Stories for Students, Vol. 1, ed. Kathleen Wilson. (Detroit: Gale, 1997), pp. 29-31.
When quoting material from a book that is reprinted in a volume of SSfS, the following form may be used: Bell-Villada, Gene H. "The Master of Short Forms," in Garcia Marquez: The Man and His Work. University of North Carolina Press, 1990 pp. 119-36; excerpted and reprinted in Short Stories for Students, Vol. 1, ed. Kathleen Wilson (Detroit: Gale, 1997), pp. 89-90.
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We Welcome Your Suggestions The editor of Short Stories for Students welcomes your comments and ideas. Readers who wish to suggest short stories to appear in future volumes, or who have other suggestions, are cordially invited to contact the editor. You may contact the editor via E-mail at:
[email protected]. Or write to the editor at: Editor, Short Stories for Students The Gale Group 27500 Drake Road Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535
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Literary Chronology I860: Anton Chekhov is born on January 16 in Taganrog, Russia.
1932: Kay Boyle's "Black Boy" is published in the New Yorker.
1898: Anton Chekhov's "Gooseberries" is published.
1934: Harlan Ellison is born on May 27 in Cleveland, Ohio.
1902: Kay Boyle is born on February 19 in St. Paul, Minnesota. 1904: Graham Greene is born on October 2 in Hertfordshire, England. 1907: Daphne du Maurier is born on May 13 in London. 1908: William Saroyan is born on August 31 in Fresno, California. 1912: John Cheever is born on May 27 in Quincy, Massachusetts. 1920: Yehudit Hendel is born in Warsaw, Poland. 1921: Hisaye Yamamoto is born in Redondo Beach, California. 1923: Nadine Gordimer is born on November 20 in Springs, a small mining town outside Johannesburg, South Africa.
1934: William Saroyan's "Resurrection of a Life" is published. 1936: Mario Vargas Llosa is born. 1951: Tatyana Nikitinichna Tolstaya is born. 1954: Louise Erdrich is born on June 7 (some sources say July 6) in Little Falls, Minnesota. 1954: Graham Greene's "The Destructors" is published. 1954: John Cheever's "The Country Husband" is published. 1956: John Cheever's "The Country Husband" wins an O. Henry Award and is later included in the 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Stories of John Cheever. 1958: Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Challenge" is published.
1926: Alice Adams is born on August 14 in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
1969: Jason Brown is born.
1929: Christa Wolf is born on March 18 in the village of Landsberg an der Warthe (now the Polish city of Gorzow Wielkopolski).
1969: Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" is published and wins the Nebula Award of Science Fiction Writers of America for Best Novella.
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1970: Daphne du Manner's "Don't Look Now" is published.
1988: Yehudit Hendel's "Small Change" is published.
1974: Christa Wolfs "Exchanging Glances" is published as "Blickwechsel" in Germany in 1974 in a collection titled Gesammelte Erzahlungen. The story appears in English translation in 1993 in a collection named after and including Christa Wolfs most controversial novella, "What Remains" and Other Stories.
1989: Daphne du Maurier dies on April 19 in Par, Cornwall, England, from "stubborn selfstarvation."
1980: Nadine Gordimer's "Town and Country Lovers" is published. 1981: William Saroyan dies of cancer on May 18 in Fresno, California. 1983: Hisaye Yamamoto's "The Eskimo Connection" is published in the Japanese-American magazine Rafu Shimpo. 1984: Louise Erdrich's "The Red Convertible" is published and becomes a bestseller.
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1991: Graham Greene dies on April 3 in Vevey, Switzerland. 1991: Tatyana Nikitinichna Tolstaya's "Night" is published for Western audiences by the Paris Review after its Russian publication in 1987. 1992: Kay Boyle dies on December 27 in Mill Valley, California. 1994: Jason Brown's "Animal Stories" is published. 1999: Alice Adams's "The Last Lovely City" is published shortly before her death in 1999. 1999: Alice Adams dies on May 27 in San Francisco, California.
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Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank the copyright holders of the excerpted criticism included in this volume and the permissions managers of many book and magazine publishing companies for assisting us in securing reproduction rights. We are also grateful to the staffs of the Detroit Public Library, the Library of Congress, the University of Detroit Mercy Library, Wayne State University Purdy/Kresge Library Complex, and the University of Michigan Libraries for making their resources available to us. Following is a list of the copyright holders who have granted us permission to reproduce material in this volume of Short Stories for Students (SSfS). Every effort has been made to trace copyright, but if omissions have been made, please let us know. COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN SSfS, VOLUME 14, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING PERIODICALS: African Insight, \. 13, 1983. Copyright 1983 by Auburn University. Reproduced by permission.— The American Benedictine Review, v. 24, December, 1973. Reproduced by permission.—The Explicator, v. 58, Spring, 2000. Copyright © 2000 Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Reproduced with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-1802.—Extrapolation, v. 18, May, 1977. Copyright © 1977 by The Kent State University Press. Reproduced by permission.—Papers on Lan-
guage and Literature, v. 21, Summer, 1985. Copyright © 1985 by The Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Reproduced by permission.—Southern Humanities Review, v. 6, Winter, 1972. Copyright 1972 by Auburn University. Reproduced by permission./v. 12, Winter, 1978 for "Politics in Graham Greene's 'The Destructors'" by Jesse F. McCartney. Copyright 1978 by Jesse F. McCartney. Reproduced by permission of the author.—Studies in Short Fiction, v. 19, Summer, 1982; v. 27, Fall, 1990; v. 31, Winter, 1994. Copyright 1982, 1990, 1994 by Newberry College. All reproduced by permission. COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL INSSfS, VOLUME 14, WAS REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING BOOK: Shallcross, Martyn. From The Private World of Daphne du Maurier. Robson Books, 1991. Copyright © 1991 Martyn Shallcross. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission. PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS APPEARING IN SSfS, VOLUME 14, WERE RECEIVED FROM THE FOLLOWING SOURCES: Adams, Alice, photograph. © Jerry Bauer. Reproduced by permission.—Apartheid sign, photograph. Getty Images. Reproduced by permission.— Boyle, Kay, photograph. New York World-Telegram, Sun Collection, Prints and Photographs Divi-
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sion, The Library of Congress.—Cheever, John, photograph. The Library of Congress.—Chekhov, Anton, photograph. The Library of Congress.— Christie, Julie, Clelia Matania, in the play "Don't Look Now", photograph. The Kobal Collection. Reproduced by permission.—du Maurier, Daphne, photograph. Getty Images. Reproduced by permission.—Ellison, Harlan, photograph by Christer Akerberg. Reproduced by permission of Harlan Ellison.—Erdrich, Louise, photograph. © Jerry Bauer. Reproduced by permission.—Gordimer, Nadine, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Greene, Graham, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Produce stand at free market in Soviet Moscow, photograph by Vittoriano Rastelli. Corbis.
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Reproduced by permission.—Russian Red Army, arriving in war-torn Berlin by horse-drawn carriages, photograph. Getty Images. Reproduced by permission.—Saroyan, William, photograph. © Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.— Stinson Beach surfers, photograph by Morton Beebe. Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—Tolstaya, Tatyana, photograph by Jerry Bauer. © Jerry Bauer. Reproduced by permission.—Unidentified Englishman, called a "Teddy Boy," photograph. © Hulton Deutsch/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.— Vargas, Llosa (Jorge) Mario (Pedro), photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Wolf, Christa, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.
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Contributors Bryan Aubrey: Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English. Original essays on The Last Lovely City and Resurrection of a Life. Liz Brent: Brent has a Ph.D. in American culture, specializing in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses on the history of American cinema. Original essays on Animal Stories, The Eskimo Connection, Night, and Small Change. Jennifer Bussey: Bussey holds a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor's degree in English Literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature. Entries on A Boy and His Dog, The Challenge, The Country Husband, The Destructors, Gooseberries, The Last Lovely City, The Red Convertible, Resurrection of a Life, and Town and Country Lovers. Original essays on A Boy and His Dog, The Challenge, The Country Husband, The Destructors, Gooseberries, The Last Lovely City, The Red Convertible, Resurrection of a Life, and Town and Country Lovers. Marcey Carroll: Carroll has a bachelor of arts degree in English from Oakland University. Original essay on The Eskimo Connection. Erik France: France is a librarian and teaches history and interdisciplinary studies at Uni-
versity Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan. Original essay on Animal Stories. Joyce Hart: Hart has degrees in literature and creative writing and focuses her published writing on literary themes. Original essays on Black Boy, The Last Lovely City, and Night. Lois Kerschen: Kerschen is a writer and public school district administrator. Original essay on Resurrection of a Life. Rena Korb: Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. Entry on Black Boy. Original essays on Black Boy, The Challenge, Exchanging Glances, The Red Convertible, and Small Change. Laura Kryhoski: Kryhoski is currently working as a freelance writer. Original essay on The Red Convertible. Daniel Moran: Moran is a secondary school teacher of English and American literature. Original essay on Don't Look Now. Doreen Piano: Piano is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Bowling Green State University. Original essay on Gooseberries. Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton: Piedmont-Marlon has a Ph.D. in English. She teaches in a college in Texas and writes frequently about the modern
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short story. Entry on Exchanging Glances. Original essay on Exchanging Glances. Susan Sanderson: Sanderson holds a masters of fine arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer. Entries on Animal Stories, Don't Look Now, The Eskimo Connection, Night, and Small Change. Original essays on Animal Stories, Don't Look Now, The Eskimo Connection, Night, and Small Change. Chris Semansky: Semansky's stories, poems, and
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essays appear regularly in literary journals. Original essays on Black Boy, Exchanging Glances, and Town and Country Lovers. Cody Walker: Walker teaches writing and literature courses at the University of Washington. Original essay on A Boy and His Dog. Ray Warren: Warren has a master of fine arts degree in writing from Vermont College and writes young adult fiction. Original essay on The Challenge.
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Animal Stories "Animal Stories," Jason Brown's story of ayoung man grappling with his mother's imminent death from a brain tumor, has received widespread acclaim as the work of a strong and up-and-coming author. In 25 and Under/Fiction, an anthology containing "Animal Stories," Brown notes that he wrote this story when he was twenty-two and his mother was in the hospital for a successful operation. "My relationship with her was bad enough that I had not gone to visit her. The guilt drove this story on," he remembers.
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The story is told by the character Jamie as a recollection of his mother's recent stay in the hospital after she is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Memories from further in the past blend in and out of the moments that Jamie spends in the hospital room with his mother. These memories provide critical background information on his family life and on the state of his adult life, including his failures in school, at work, and in his love life. The memories serve as a distraction to the fact that Jamie's mother, whose hold on reality is tenuous at best, is dying a horrible death and refuses to allow the doctors to treat her. Also serving as a distraction, as well as a prompt to his reminiscing, are the nature and animal videos playing almost nonstop on the television in his mother's hospital room.
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Author Biography Jason Brown, born in 1969, grew up in Portland, Maine, and received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University. Later he attended Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Truman Capote Fellow. "Animal Stories" appears in Jason Brown's debut collection of thirteen short stories entitled Driving the Heart and Other Stories, as well as in an anthology entitled 25 and Under/Fiction. The Georgia Review first published "Animal Stories" in its Summer 1994 issue. In 25 and Under/Fiction, Brown notes that he was so confused at the time he wrote "Animal Stories" "that I could barely make a sandwich." He was twenty-two, and his mother had been in the hospital for a successful operation, but he failed to visit her because they did not have a good relationship. Currently, Brown teaches writing at Stanford. In addition to the Georgia Review and 25 and Under/Fiction, Brown's stories have appeared in the 1996 edition of Best American Short Stories and in Mississippi Review, Story, Epoch, TriQuarterly, and Indiana Review.
Plot Summary "Animal Stories" opens with Jamie rushing to the hospital because he has just found out that his mother has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He notes that he drives recklessly, which he gets from his mother. ' 'Any man's mother is a source of grief until she dies," he says. Jamie arrives at the hospital and helps his mother operate a television remote control. She is bald and tries to wear the remote control as a hat. A doctor comes in to see how much Jamie's mother has forgotten since the previous day. His mother is sharing a room with another patient, Sharon, who is hospitalized because she overdosed on drugs. His mother's situation moves Jamie into a reverie about his life, his lack of friends and a job, and the fact that he used to have a girlfriend who wanted him to change. He notes that by the time his mother has the tumor, "it is too late for me," indicating that his life has already reached its fullest point. From his description of himself, he is overweight, and the few friends he has are crazy. In lieu of a job, he has developed an interest in nature. He
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compares himself to a tree that is shedding its leaves at the end of summer, much as he is shedding jobs, cars, and possessions. The doctor, after examining his mother, states that the tumor is "fulminate," indicating that it is growing rapidly and a biopsy is needed to gauge the extent of its malignancy. The doctor notices the nature show on the hospital room's television. Jamie relates two things his mother did within the past year that indicated something was amiss with her health: she walked in on her ex-husband and his new wife at their house and demanded to know the identity of the wife; and, soon afterwards, she flew to London suddenly, leaving her boyfriend while he was taking a nap during their vacation in Nova Scotia. She called Jamie while she was in London and suggested to him that she was thinking about getting a divorce because she thought her husband was seeing another woman. Jamie then remembers the summer of 1977, when he and his family lived in Waterville and his father had just moved out of the house. During the previous winter, Jamie's mother had made a habit of wandering around the town placing one-word notes in neighbors' mailboxes. After his father left, Jamie's girlfriend Alice and his friend Tom, moved in with Jamie and his mother. "Mom spent the summer teaching us how to drink gin," he recalls. Back at the hospital, his mother asks Jamie to tell the doctor that she does not want to undergo a biopsy. He urges her to reconsider, but she claims she doesn't want to know about the tumor and doesn't want to take the time for the procedure. A nature show about pygmy shrews plays on the television. Jamie remembers that his mother has written a book (or perhaps she has only started one; the story isn't clear) about how animals remember. In 1979, his mother developed an interest in animals and changed her name to Meadow Star. Jamie comments that he has been trying to forget his past and the things he has done, but it is difficult. Before entering the hospital, his mother had been teaching him how to do this. "To have forgotten and not know one has forgotten, Mom tells me, is the happiness of an animal," Jamie says. At the hospital, Sharon complains about the nature show, and Jamie's mother changes it to a show called Animal Imposters. Jamie's mother asks where the bathroom is, and while Jamie helps her find it, he remembers when his schoolteachers tried to diagnose in him what they thought was a learning
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disability. "I was born with serious intent and not without means, but somewhere along the line I failed to acquire an adequate degree of clarity," he muses, adding that he stopped worrying about improving himself in 1982 and soon thereafter "stopped caring so much." Jamie begins to remember more about the summer of 1977. He and Alice made love three times a day, "to stay within commuting distance of her sanity;'' and Tom made salads to eat along with all the gin they drank, while Jamie's mother talked about how she was leaving her husband and not the other way around. Jamie's father, David, came by the house several times during that summer to work in the garden. His mother, by then, was "unrecognizable"; she had colored her hair red and was wearing brightly colored clothes from Goodwill. She also was drunk most of the time. She, Jamie, Alice, and Tom spent most of the summer in the basement during the day, due to the extreme heat. Jamie remembers that his mother often blames the tumor on that summer.
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almost nothing but celery in order to lose weight, and his mother forbade the eating of chicken because she started believing in reincarnation. Jamie remembers learning that Tom's mother unsuccessfully tried four different ways of committing suicide and that they all used to go to the Goodwill store to buy clothes, becoming "collages of other people's lives." At the hospital Jamie's mother confuses time, thinking that Jamie has just taken a biology test— something he has not done since 1983. The doctor comes in as the nature video ends, and Jamie's mother assures him that she will be out of the room very soon. She steals the hospital's bedside lamp and offers her clothes to Sharon, who picks through them. Later, in the car, Jamie is not sure that his mother understands where she is going, but he is certain that she is glad to be out of the hospital. Jamie comments, "What doesn't pass out of our lives, even if it is good, ends up killing us. Finally there is something that won't pass like a disease or a tumor that takes us out of life.''
At the hospital, Jamie muses as to whether his mother has this tumor because she "can't forget" and, as a psychic friend believes, her soul is "older than the rocks in China, which means she has a lot to forget." A show about the three-toed sloth is on the television. The doctor comes in to tell Jamie and his mother that if she does not agree to the biopsy and subsequent treatment, she should expect "a total loss of self-awareness, followed by a painful sinking into idiocy and death." She does not seem to care. Sharon's drug dealers come into the room to give her pills, as a show on the tree creeper plays on the television.
He stops the car in front of his mother's house, the one in which they spent the summer of 1977, and notices that it is in disrepair. His mother asks about a trip to Vienna that he knows they did not take, but he answers her as if the trip really did take place. ' 'Her own past has been replaced by the most pleasant memories from other people's lives," he thinks. He means to touch her face, because he knows she is dying, but she jumps out of the car before he has a chance and disappears into the house. From the back of the house he can see a small light come on.
Jamie remembers August 27, 1977, when his father came to the house to work in the garden for the last time; he mowed down all of the flowers he had been tending that summer. David advised Jamie that "it doesn't matter how you feel about things" and that he should not listen to his mother unless he wanted to end up like her. David's actions plunged the household into deep sadness, and Jamie thinks that the house, to someone from the outside, must have looked abandoned. He never speaks of that summer with his mother.
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A bit later the doctor comes back to the room to advise Jamie and his mother that if she does not agree to the biopsy, she must leave the hospital. Jamie thinks more about the summer of 1977 and how sad they all were. Alice and Tom ate
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Alice Alice is a former girlfriend of Jamie's, who once agreed to marry him if he would change. During the summer of 1977, Alice moves in with Jamie, Jamie's mother, and Tom. According to Jamie, she has an IQ of 165 and, while they lived together in his mother's house, she needed to have sex with Jamie at least three times a day to stay sane. At the time of Jamie's recounting the story, she is no longer his girlfriend.
David David is Jamie's father, a physician who is divorced from Jamie's mother. His reason for hav-
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ing left her is never spelled out, but Jamie's mother's strange behavior in 1976 and 1977 was most likely a contributing cause. He has remarried. Jamie says that his father is "a man of inaction" and seems to have been deeply unhappy while living with his family. However, even after leaving his family, he came over repeatedly during the summer of 1977 to tend the garden while Jamie's mother watched him. At the end of the summer, he mowed down the flowers he had worked on and never returned.
The Doctor The doctor comes a number of times to see Jamie's mother in her hospital room but seems more interested in the nature videos playing on the room's television than in his patient. He tells her that she must agree to a biopsy or leave the hospital.
Jamie When the story opens, Jamie is at his mother's bedside, distraught because she has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He is an overweight young man, the only child of his parents, most likely in his thirties when he recounts the story. He has few friends. He states,' 'I'm like a nut magnet'' because most of the people he knows are crazy or ' 'look like they just escaped from somewhere." Jamie is unemployed but does not appear to be terribly worried about this, claiming that this gives him time to think and to have a number of interests, including nature. He is disconnected from his surroundings and claims to spend time trying to ' 'forget things" and discover, as he says, "who I was." When he was in school, teachers attempted to diagnose what learning disorder he had, but it was almost impossible because the symptoms continuously shifted from stuttering to the inability to tie his own shoelaces to other problems. Jamie notes that in 1982 he decided to stop trying to improve his life, and soon afterwards, "I stopped caring so much." Based on a comment he makes to his mother, he apparently stopped attending school in 1983, which was the last time he took a test. In 1977, after Jamie's father had left the family, Jamie's girlfriend Alice and another friend, Tom, moved in with Jamie and his mother. Jamie and his mother never talk about how unhappy everyone was that summer, instead they talk about nature and politics. He remembers, though, that the household was drunk most of the time, and, because the weather was so hot, they rarely left the basement.
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Meadow Star See Mom
Mom Mom is Jamie's mother, and when the story opens she is in the hospital, having been diagnosed with a brain tumor. She refuses to allow the doctors to operate on her, and as a result, she is dying. She is also having trouble remembering such things as how to use a television remote control and what year it is. Since 1977, when her husband left her, she has not had a very strong grip on reality, and she is most likely suffering from some kind of mental illness. She refuses to move out of her house that is falling down around her. According to Jamie, she has forgotten most of her own life, replacing her past with "the most pleasant memories from other peoples' lives." Mom does various things in the story that show her fragile mental state. Years after her divorce from David, she walks in on him and his wife and asks,' 'Who is this woman?'' Later, while on vacation, she suddenly leaves her boyfriend and flies to London. From there, she calls Jamie and tells him that she is considering divorcing David, noting that she believes he is seeing another woman. During the summer of 1977, after Jamie's father leaves the family, Alice and Tom move in with Jamie and Mom, and Mom teaches the household how to drink gin. She dyes her hair red, wears brightly colored blouses from Goodwill, and is often drunk. According to Jamie, that summer she taught the household to believe that sadness was their "only friend." In 1979, she begins to go by the name of Meadow Star. It is also around 1979 that she develops a love for and an interest in animals, according to Jamie,' 'because they can't remember in the same way we do.'' As well, Jamie claims that this is when she considers writing a book about animal memory, and he refers to it in his retelling of her story— although, it is not clear whether the book was actually ever finished or published.
Sharon Sharon is the woman in the hospital bed next to Jamie's mother's bed, who has been admitted after a drug overdose. She is often very nasty and cynical.
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Tom Tom is Jamie's overweight friend, who moves into the house during the summer of 1977. No one trusts Jamie's mother with the cooking that summer, so Tom takes over, making mostly salads. Tom has a sad background, including a mother who has tried to commit suicide in four different ways, failing at all of them.
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father are divorced. Jamie remarks that in his mother's book about animal memory she argues, "Tumors may grow because people can't forget," as if getting rid of memories would help one prevent tumors. But his mother has a lot of memories to forget, he says, noting, "A psychic friend of the family once said that my mother's soul is older than the rocks in China."
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Themes Memory and Forgetting Both Jamie and his mother wrestle with their memories of the past in a way that almost minimizes present time. Although the scenes in the hospital are told in present tense, Jamie frames the story of his mother's stay in the hospital as if it were being told as a memory. Near the story's beginning, Jamie refers to the day he found out about his mother's brain tumor as being in the past when he remarks, ' 'By the time this happens, it is too late for me,'' and when he closes the story he ends with, ' "This is my entire life, everything that I remember." Woven through the memory of his mother and her brain tumor are other memories of Jamie's life, including the time when his father left the family, Jamie's failures in school and at work, and what happened during the summer of 1977. Memories are delicate and untrustworthy things in "Animal Stories." At the story's beginning, the issue of Jamie's mother's ability to remember events is raised, even those things that have happened just since the previous day. Jamie refers to his mother's brain tumor as "eating her memories." Ironically, while Jamie claims to be working on "trying to forget things," even to the point of enlisting his mother's help in teaching him "little tricks about forgetting," the entire story he tells is of past events. Part of the summer of 1977 is spent learning how to drink gin so that he, his friends, and his mother can wake up the next day having forgotten the previous day, but Jamie still remembers much of the sadness of that summer. Jamie connects his mother's brain tumor with the increasingly odd behavior she began exhibiting around 1976 and 1977, when she would place small, one-word notes in their neighbors' mailboxes. More recently she has forgotten that she and Jamie's
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Jamie's family consists of him and his parents, but it is not a picture of happiness and harmony. In fact, he notes, "There is nothing to replace the failure of our parents." In 1977, Jamie's physician father, David, left the family for reasons that are not explicitly stated, but his departure probably had something to do with his wife's increasingly bizarre behavior. For example, according to Jamie,' 'Sometime in 1977 God had told Mom: watch out for doctors, they just want to touch you." After David leaves, Jamie's mother is unable to serve as the head of the household, and the family disintegrates into a pattern of self-destruction. Jamie's girlfriend Alice moves in, as does his friend Tom, and the four of them create a sad pseudo-family that falls into excessive drinking and depression. Even though David comes by on occasion to work in the garden, the household is hardly able to function. Jamie's mother cannot be trusted to cook, so Tom takes up the job but not with much success. Eventually Alice and Tom primarily eat only celery, and the four members of the household spend most of their days in the basement of the deteriorating house, away from the heat of the day, coming up into the rest of the house only after dark. They rarely leave the house. When they do go out, they sometimes visit Goodwill, emerging from the store as ' 'walking collages of other people's lives.'' Eventually Jamie's parents are divorced. Despite all of the sadness in his relationship with his family, Jamie is attached to his mother in a tender, yet painful, way. Though he remarks,' 'Any man's mother is a source of grief until she dies," he obviously cares for her. He stays with her in the hospital, helping her to the bathroom and with the television's remote control. When she creates a memory of having visited Vienna, Jamie plays along with her, not wanting to bother her with unnecessary facts. He starts to gently touch the side of his mother's face, "because," he says, "I know she is dying," but she quickly jumps out of the car when she sees her house.
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Topics for Further Study This short story relates events from a number of years and dates. Create a timeline for the events of the story. Note the gaps in time and imagine what events might have taken place then. Write an additional scene for the story that takes place during one of these gaps. Watch one or more animal documentaries, either on television or on video. List at least three animal behaviors that you think are similar to behaviors exhibited by humans and explain why they are similar and where you have seen humans act this way. List at least three animal behaviors that you think are unlike human behaviors and explain why you think they are
Disease and Sickness The story is focused on Jamie's mother's brain tumor and on how it has affected their lives. Most of the present time frame of the story takes place in a hospital, where, Jamie notes, "people lose themselves." The atmosphere of the hospital is not very warm: there are "humming contraptions with beeping lights," and Jamie is afraid that "around each corner might lurk a cluster of diseases waiting to bore under our skin." In addition, the doctor, who sees Jamie's mother, acts distant and distracted, sometimes paying as much, or even more, attention to the nature videos running on the room's television than to his patient. He eventually forces her to leave the hospital because she will not cooperate with his treatment. Sharon, the woman sharing the hospital room with Jamie's mother, is recovering from a drug overdose. Even though the hospital is supposed to be a place where people come to heal, Sharon is visited by strange people, probably her drug dealers, who slip her pills and comment on how much various medicines in the room are worth. Jamie's father is a doctor, but he is nowhere to be found during his ex-wife's illness. In fact, one of first signs of Jamie's mother's illness comes when
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dissimilar. If you have a pet, you may use this as your subject instead of animals found in a documentary. Using the library or the Internet, do research on brain tumors. What are the different kinds of brain tumors and how are they treated? Do they always result in the patient losing memories and the ability to discern reality? Do medical experts understand what causes brain tumors? Investigate divorce statistics for the United States from 1970 through today. Has the rate of divorces increased or decreased? How has the rate of divorce changed for your state or city?
she believes that God has told her to avoid doctors. Soon after, Jamie's father leaves his family.
Depression and Sadness Jamie displays many signs of deep sadness and even depression throughout the story. Though he describes himself as ' 'a happy man,'' he reports that he is "shedding things, like jobs, cars, and old clothes," and he no longer sees his girlfriend Alice. During the summer of 1977, he, along with Alice, his mother, and his friend Tom, drank heavily and rarely left the house. The house eventually fell into disrepair and became the house that the neighbors wondered about. During that summer, he and the others seemed to work on being sad, as taught by his mother, who encouraged them to "savor" their sadness. "It was, she assured us, our only real friend, and we believed her.'' He also reports that by 1982, he had quit trying to improve his life and that "shortly afterwards I stopped caring so much."
Nature and the Environment While in the hospital, Jamie's mother constantly watches nature videos and documentaries. Many are about animals that are endangered, that are being damaged by environmental pollutants, or
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that are simply unusual. In 1979, according to Jamie, his mother changed her name to Meadow Star, developed an interest in animals, and decided to write a book on how animals remember things. "Mom loves animals because they can't remember in the same way we do," says Jamie, and she believes that this forgetting is the reason animals are happy. He also notes that in 1984 he developed an interest in nature. He often compares human behavior with that of animals, usually concluding that animals are better fit for their environment than are humans.
Style Use of Time Brown freely switches back and forth between different years in the story, even within the same section. For example, one section begins with Jamie referring to the summer of 1977, when "we stayed inside and drew the shades." A few paragraphs later, but still in the same section, he is back in the recent past, and his mother's doctor is demanding that she either accept the biopsy procedure or leave the hospital. While Jamie speaks of his mother's stay at the hospital using the present tense, a few paragraphs into the story he makes it clear that this episode is in the past; he notes, "By the time this happens"—that is, finding out about his mother's brain tumor—"it is too late for me." As well, he closes the story by stating, ' 'This is my entire life, everything that I remember." The main point of reference in the past is the summer of 1977, when Jamie's father left the family, and Jamie's girlfriend and a friend moved into the house with him and his mother. Jamie also mentions that his mother believed in God from ' 'the 7th of February, 1976, to the 10th of September, 1977," adding, "That winter we had the biggest snowstorm in twenty years," but he is not clear whether he means the winter of 1976 or 1977. Jamie mentions other dates, including 1979, when his mother developed an interest in animals and decided to take the name Meadow Star; 1982, when he claims to have "stopped being in such a hurry to improve my life"; and 1984, when he reports becoming interested in nature. There is no clear evidence as to when Jamie's mother was in the hospital, but it must have been sometime after 1984.
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Irony Brown uses irony in subtle ways. The story is essentially Jamie's memories of the past, but he claims, on a number of occasions, to be working toward forgetting the past. For example, during the summer of 1977, Jamie remembers that his mother taught everyone in the household to drink gin.' 'We drank until what happened would not be remembered the next day," he says, but obviously, in his telling of the events of the summer, he has failed to forget. He also believes that memories can be harmful, and that "when desperate, they will eat anything that we pretend to know." As well, he claims, ' 'Lately, I've been trying to forget things. Mom has tried to teach me little tricks about forgetting," but he eventually discovers that this is impossible, "like trying not to get wet while you're swimming." Furthermore, Brown sets the story in the town of Waterville, New York, a place Jamie says is without water. In fact, he claims that during the summer, residents visited friends and relatives in a neighboring town just to take baths.' 'The town was named Waterville," Jamie muses, "because whoever lived there thought constantly about water."
Nature Videos Interspersed between the story of Jamie's mother in the hospital and memories of past events are breaks in the narrative where monologues from various nature videos are presented. These videos echo his mother's interest in animals as well as her admiration for the way animals remember events differently from humans. On a few occasions, Jamie compares the behavior of the animals with the behavior of humans, usually coming to the conclusion that animals are better equipped to deal with adversity and change.
Tone The tone of the story, narrated in the first person by Jamie, comes across as flat and almost emotionless, even though the subject matter is full of sadness and suffering. Jamie appears the most emotional at the very beginning of the story, when he says that he "drove like a lunatic" to get to his mother's bedside and that he is known for "erratic bursts of self-destructiveness and unpredictable lapses in concentration." After that, he describes his rather painful life with a relatively unemotional quality. For example, when his mother displays evidence that her brain is not working correctly, his response is to calmly help her relearn how to use a television
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remote or to gently remind her that she has already divorced her husband.
and Proud of It." Some believed that the show was a clear sign of the dissolution of values in American society, prompting William Bennett, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Bush administration, to decry the series.
Historical Context Brown wrote this story in the early 1990s, a period of great social and political change in the United States. For example, personal computers and everyday use of the Internet were becoming more commonplace. By the early 1990s, the number of deaths from AIDS began increasing at an alarming rate, and calls became louder for more efforts to combat the disease. In the international arena, in November 1989, thousands of East Germans stormed the Berlin Wall, a symbol of communist control and power for nearly thirty years. This launched a nearly worldwide rejection of communism as a state political philosophy; and throughout the early 1990s, numerous Soviet-controlled countries, such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, began shedding their communist leaders and experimenting with democratic elections and increasingly capitalistic economies. Concern for the environment grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in various pieces of legislation designed to clean up and protect water, air, and land resources. In 1990, U.S. President George Bush signed into law the Clean Air Act of 1990, which amended the Clean Air Act of 1970. Bush's approval of the legislation marked a radical departure from the environmental policies of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. In November 1992, President Bush lost to Bill Clinton, an Arkansas governor previously unknown on the national political scene. To many, the elections of Bush in 1988 and Clinton in 1992 signaled an era during which Americans selected presidents who were simply the least objectionable rather than choosing inspirational leaders. Clinton's election, though, marked the end of the Republican party's twelve-year hold on the office of president. In January 1990, the television series The Simpsons began its hugely popular run. The Simpsons were a fictional suburban family overwhelmed by the world, whose patriarch, Homer, dispensed advice to his children on how to be mediocre. The show so horrified some sectors of society that many schools banned the wearing of Simpsons tee-shirts, especially the one that proclaimed ' 'Underachiever
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Critical Overview Critical response to Brown's short stories has, on the whole, been very positive. John Elliot, writing a review in The Daily Telegraph, proclaims Brown's Driving the Heart and Other Stories a ' 'consistently fine first collection of stories." Elliot praises Brown's deft hand at creating stories that are "intimate without falling into sentimentality." A review of Brown's collection in Publishers Weekly states that he "excels at portraying the life struggles of those with ravaged psychic resources, [and] unique people and their alienated offspring." The review also highlights "Animal Stories", admiring the skill with which Brown writes about mental illness, as well as his use of "bleak humor" to describe Jamie's dying mother. While Brown's stories can be read as fatalistic and full of despair, Jenifer Berman, writing in the New York Times, argues that they are ' 'linked by a generosity of spirit." In her review of Brown's collection, Berman points to Jamie in "Animal Stories,'' as well as to characters in other stories, as evidence that the author has created individuals who ' 'act as custodians for one another—and in doing so attempt to save themselves." She considers Brown a "pure and accomplished talent." In his review of Driving the Heart and Other Stories for the Boston Book Review, Brian Lennon' s praise for Brown's writing is a bit more reserved. While Lennon gives the collection's opening story, ' 'Driving the Heart," very high marks, his response to the rest of the stories is less exuberant. He asserts, "if some of the other stories... dwell too passively within the (male, middle-class) narrator's anomie . . . they aren't necessarily less interesting." Matthew Humphrey in The Guardian praises the appearance of "Animal Stories," as well as another of Brown's stories, "The Dog Lover," in the short story anthology 25 and Under/Fiction. He notes that "The Dog Lover" includes a situation in which a parent passes along his own suffering to his son; this condition appears, as well, in "Animal Stories," when Jamie's mother attempts to teach him about sadness and encourages him to forget the
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past. Humphrey speaks to Jamie's sorrow, as well as to the collection's "intriguing weight of sadness," noting that much of the melancholy in 25 and Under/Fiction comes from Brown's two stories. In Kirkus Reviews, however, Brown's collection receives an unenthusiastic appraisal. According to the review, the stories are like "new wine that needs aging: overwritten, ponderous, and crammed with the sorts of platitudes... that only undergraduates could find profound." The example used to highlight these "platitudes" comes from the every end of "Animal Stories;" Jamie is looking over his life and says, "It seems that what we know makes us sad and what we don't know is who we are."
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The animal videos running in her room, some brought to the hospital by Jamie, are a constant connection to a world she finds fascinating and a way to replace the memories she is losing because of her brain tumor."
Criticism Susan Sanderson Sanderson holds a masters of fine arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer. In this essay, Sanderson examines how Jason Brown uses the behavior of the animals in the nature videos, appearing in his short story, to explore the behavior of the story's characters. One of the unique things about Jason Brown's "Animal Stories" is the inclusion of animal and nature videos, watched by Jamie's mother and others in her hospital room. The videos provide a bit of comic relief in the story of Jamie's mother's impending death, as well as something Mom can react to. She is continually fiddling with the remote, changing the videos, and responding to their content. The action in the videos gives the other characters—the doctor, Sharon, and Jamie—a moment's distraction from the oppressive atmosphere of the hospital. In fact, commenting on the story in 25 and Under/Fiction, Brown remembers visiting his father's house during a particularly difficult period in his life to watch nature shows and says, "I thought they were the funniest things on earth," he remembers. "Everything seemed absurd to me at the time." The videos in the story can also be seen as much more than a pause in the approach of death. Again remarking on the story in 25 and Under/ Fiction, Brown notes that he was exceedingly careful in his construction of "Animal Stories." "I wrote the story one line at a time and set the order later. I would sit for hours at my job renting canoes
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and think of one line," he recalls, adding that the entire piece took three months to pull together, bit by bit. With such authorial vigilance, the placement of the videos in the story, as well as their content, cannot have been haphazard, and certainly deserves a closer look. Examining the videos reveals that the animals' activities and behaviors in the videos are reflected in the activities and behaviors of the humans in the story. Both Jamie and his mother have expressed an interest in animals and in nature: his mother first in 1979, when she changed her name to Meadow Star; and Jamie, in 1984, after he had quit working and decided he had the time to think about things such as nature. In fact, he even likens himself to a tree in autumn, shedding jobs and possessions like a tree sheds its leaves. Jamie's mother loves animals because, according to her, "they don't remember in the same way we do." The animal videos running in her room, some brought to the hospital by Jamie, are a constant connection to a world she finds fascinating and a way to replace the memories she is losing because of her brain tumor. Most of the videos are about endangered or rare animals, but all are concerned with the tactics these animals have developed to survive, both successfully and unsuccessfully. The story of Jamie's family is one of survival; each member has developed ways to survive disappointment and sadness. For example, the story is not clear about why Jamie's physician father, David, left his family, but the timing of Jamie's mother's increasingly bizarre behavior may have had something to do with it. Between 1976 and 1977, his mother—strangely
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What Do I Read Next? Perry Klass's Love and Modern Medicine: Stories, published in 2001, is a collection of eleven short stories, some very funny, that feature characters struggling to cope with family crises. Many of the protagonists are highly capable women and mothers who find their home lives much more challenging than their work lives. Three stories were O. Henry Award winners. 25 and Under/Fiction, edited by Susan Ketchin and Neil Giordano, presents fifteen short stories—two by Jason Brown—written by new literary voices, all under the age of twenty-five. The 1997 anthology includes stories on belief
enough, the only character in the story without a proper name—hears messages from God about avoiding doctors and wanders the streets, leaving obscure, one-word messages in neighbors' mailboxes. Soon thereafter, Jamie reports, his father moved out, possibly the only way he felt he could deal with his wife's diminished mental capacity. In fact, Brown inserts a video with the telling title The Threatened Pygmy Shrews after he has given a brief synopsis of Jamie's mother's fall into apparent mental illness, her alcoholism, the eventual diagnosis of her brain tumor, and the family's dissolution. The video chronicles the environmental perils challenging the shrews' survival. It notes, "industrial fallout in the rain acts as a narcotic for the animals, causing them to become disoriented and irresponsible." Because of this, the shrews have lost their natural ability to protect themselves and have fallen prey to cars, dogs, and different kinds of predators. In a similar way, Jamie's family falls prey to such "predators" as illness and melancholy. David eventually separates from and divorces Jamie's mother, and she, along with Jamie, creates a sort of pseudo-family with two of Jamie's friends for one summer. The four damaged people live together in a way not unlike the injured shrews: "disoriented and
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and religion, heroin and alcoholism, families and madness, and more. Like Jason Brown's first short-story collection, Ethan Canin's first story collection, Emperor of the Air: Stories, was widely applauded by critics. Canin was in his late twenties and attending medical school when this book was published in 1989. In 1990, Maya Angelou published a book of poetry, / Shall Not Be Moved, covering a variety of subjects, including the relationship between mothers and sons.
irresponsible." Jamie's mother teaches everyone how to drink gin, and they spend much of the summer ' 'around the kitchen table drinking slowly, not saying much, sinking into a smaller life." Tom, Jamie's friend, must take over the task of cooking for the family because Jamie's mother cannot be trusted, "for fear that she would destroy the house." Their transformation into injured animals becomes complete when they end up living in the darkness of the basement during the daytime to escape the heat and the sunlight of summer. They emerge only at night. The paint on the house peels, and the grass in the front yard grows to five feet. Jamie imagines that the neighbors probably wonder, ' 'What could have possibly happened to those people?" Another video, entitled Animal Imposters, especially reflects how Jamie sees his life. Bracketed around the video's appearance in the story is Jamie's explanation about what kind of person he believes himself to be. The video gives examples of animals and plants that are not quite what they seem to be, such as the angler fish that looks like an old rock, a snake that can fake death, and a plant that looks like a tulip to lure insects but is actually carnivorous. Jamie feels that, like the creatures in the video, he is an imposter. "If you knew me," he says, "then you would know that nothing is less like me than the
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things I've done." For example, he states that anyone seeing him standing in line at the grocery store might think he is a successful college graduate. "But my past is pocked by sores, such as an inability to spell my own name," he says, referring to his traumatic school days. He also remembers his mother, before she became ill, telling him that he should only be himself. But he believes that he is more adept at being someone other than himself, "living out scenarios that I read about in books." The nature show's imposter theme is also reflected in the behavior of Jamie's mother and the two friends who live with Jamie and his mother during the summer of 1977. That year saw the four housemates make changes in their appearances as well as in their behaviors: when they weren't drinking or hiding in the basement, they occasionally left the house to shop at Goodwill, emerging "laughing, dressed in stripes, checks, and dotted patterns .. . walking collages of other people's lives." Jamie also comments that Alice and Tom ate mostly celery that summer, in an effort to lose weight.' 'Every day there was less of them," he recalls. As well, Jamie remembers that, at one point that summer when his father was still coming to the house to work in the garden, his mother was "unrecognizable with her hair dyed red and with one of her new orange or purple blouses bought from Goodwill." His father treated her as if they hadn't yet been introduced, not like the woman to whom he had been married for years. Similar to an animal bent on survival, she had altered both her behavior and her looks. By the end of the story, she has even co-opted the "most pleasant memories" of another person. Ultimately, though, Jamie believes that the way animals behave is preferable over the way humans behave. When compared with people, animals act in a near-rational manner, and they ' 'seem to have a way of seeing what's necessary and acting on that vision," he says. Even given their failures and struggles, animals seem to ' 'get better at surviving'' than do humans. Humans look too much to the past, while animals are most concerned with the hereand-now, he argues. "We pretend we are anything else," as evidenced by people's interest in collecting antiques or in dressing up as characters from a by-gone era. "We don't eat, we grow thin and solemn, and we think about our lives," activities that only seem to bring grief, he asserts, and contribute nothing toward survival. Survival is a primary focus of "Animal Stories," both in and out of the nature videos. The
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videos serve Jamie and his mother almost as guides through a particularly difficult phase of their lives, the different animal stories steering them through death as well as life. When Jamie drives his mother back to her house, nothing matters except that she is comfortable and happy. He does not argue with her about her false memory of Vienna, and he does not try to talk her out of living in her broken-down house because he knows that these things are what she needs right now, at the end of her life. Almost like an animal, "she has darted out of the car with her suitcase,'' thankful that she is out of the hospital and headed directly toward safety and her house. Source: Susan Sanderson, Critical Essay on "Animal Stories,' ' in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
Erik France France is a librarian and teaches history and interdisciplinary studies at University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan. In the following essay, France discusses the theme of toxicity in Brown's story. Most of the characters in "Animal Stories" are physically and emotionally damaged. Jamie, the narrator, provides glimpses and examples of environmental poisoning and self-destructive human behavior. By contrasting these with anecdotes and observations about nonhuman animal behavior, he underscores the unique capacity of humans to realize that they are going to die, which makes people more aware of loss and therefore more likely to feel great sadness. Except when faced with environmental poisons inflicted on them by humans, the survival instincts of many animals give them more adaptability and resilience than most of the people introduced in the story. The changes in Jamie's mother, suffering for years from an undetected brain tumor that severely deranges her perceptions, and in Jamie himself, emphasize—by their deterioration and loss—the importance of memory and hope in human identity, consciousness, and motivation. In the end, what makes a person? What is truly important in one's life? Jamie's mother's changes in circumstance and outlook also point to sadness, grief, and attempts to deal with pain and suffering through self-medicating coping patterns. Like Jamie's mother, most of the characters find life too complicated and painful to deal with in any way that can keep them functioning as productive members of society. Except for David, Jamie's father, they simply cannot adapt to change like many less self-aware animals. Their failure to
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the kind of effects caused by atmospheric and groundwater chemical contamination.
Using the metaphor of 'what to do with sadness,' Brown shows that Jamie and his mother keep their poisons in themselves, whereas David lets the toxicity of sadness pass 'like a shooting star' and becomes healed."
adapt partly explains Jamie and his mother's particular fascination with the animal behavior stories they watch on videotapes or read about in books. A major underlying theme of the story emerges, highlighting the impact of human-produced toxins— those released into the environment and effecting all animal life (including human) and those, like alcohol and drugs, ingested or injected by people. These toxins induce major disorientation and destructive chemical reactions that erode or destroy memory, identity, and life itself As the story unfolds, one quickly learns that Jamie's mother is dying from a brain tumor and has already lost many of her normal human memory functions. Many years before, she divorced Jamie's father, David, a doctor. David probably began having an affair soon after Jamie's mother's creeping dementia started in 1976. One discovers that Jamie suffers from "erratic bursts of self-destructiveness and unpredictable lapses in concentration," which make him a dangerous driver, among other things. He links these characteristics to his mother. If one carefully puts clues together, the theme of toxicity emerges as a direct cause for dysfunctional behavior. For instance, in one of the animal behavior anecdotes interspersed throughout "Animal Stories," Jamie informs the reader that "industrial fallout in the rain acts as a narcotic" for pygmy shrews, "causing them to become disoriented and irresponsible." Many of the shrews are killed by cars. This fact is a reminder that Jamie drives in a disoriented and irresponsible manner. In grade school, Jamie "had a kind of roaming retardation in degenerative form." If readers take Jamie at his word, this ' 'condition'' may have been caused by birth defects—
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The time and place setting of "Animal Stories" indicates a toxic setting. Jamie explains that he and his family lived in the town of Waterville, New York, "outside of Buffalo." The actual Waterville can be located on a map closer to Utica in the interior of the state. Brown's placement of the town near Buffalo suggests its proximity to a highly contaminated site called the Love Canal, situated, like the fictional Waterville, not far from Buffalo. Jamie notes that in the winter of 1976, "we had the biggest snowstorm in twenty years, and that spring all the cows died of a mysterious disease." At the same time, and like the pygmy shrews poisoned by unspecified chemical fallout carried by rain in England, his mother became disoriented and irresponsible. Instead of walking in front of cars like the pygmy shrews, Jamie's mother put messages ' 'from God in people's mailboxes" and nearly burned her house down while trying to cook. Not mentioned in the story, documented toxic contamination in fact became evident in the school and neighborhood adjacent to the Love Canal in the same year, 1976. The Niagara Gazette, an area newspaper, uncovered evidence of chemical seepage, at that time, into residential basements in Niagara, New York. This evidence eventually led to a number of government investigations that revealed a wide array of toxic contaminants that included dioxin, a deadly carcinogen or cancercausing agent. By 1979, government officials closed the school and evacuated most residents from the area. Jimmy Carter, the president at the time, then proposed the federal Superfund Program to study, contain, and attempt to clean up toxic waste sites throughout the United States. In "Animal Stories," Jamie's mother, having begun, in 1977, to lose her memory and orientation (she could not even remember that Jimmy Carter was the president), changed her name, in 1979, to Meadow Star and developed a "preoccupation with animals." Jamie tells the reader that in the hot summer of 1977, "people outside were dying of heatstroke." His father left that summer. Jamie, his mother, his girlfriend Alice, and his friend Tom subsequently spent much of their time in Jamie's mother's kitchen drinking gin, "slowly, not saying much, sinking into a smaller life. We drank," Jamie narrates, ' 'until what happened would not be remembered the next day." They also spent much time in the basement trying to keep cool: before David moved out, he would occasionally join his wife and Jamie for a
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drink and "talk about politics." The unhealthy intake of enough gin to blot out memory combined with spending so much time in Jamie's mother's basement suggests the contaminated basements near the Love Canal and points to the underlying theme of toxicity. Brown further develops the theme through many of Jamie's other comments and ruminations about the story's principal characters. Jamie's father's family "came from a Pennsylvania mining town where they were all miners or miners' wives." This small fact evokes the kinds of diseases such as brown lung and black lung that infected mining towns and that may have motivated David to become a doctor. As for his mother's family, Jamie states that they "cannot be trusted—they are all in the business of killing themselves. Sometimes people in her family do get fatal diseases, but it is usually something so intangible as to arouse suspicion." In 1977, Jamie narrates, "God had told Mom: watch out for doctors, they just want to touch you.'' This may be an allusion to her disinterest in sex or an echo of a troubled pregnancy and Jamie's early developmental problems. Later readers learn that she suspected that David had been seeing another woman; this was probably why she divorced him. In any event, David is perhaps the only character who adapted to the changes wrought in 1977 and moved on to a new life; he remarried and lives in a new house. The Love Canal, by its very name, provides a metaphor for the family divide between Jamie and his mother, who show little resilience in the face of change and who remain in their toxic setting, and David, who escapes. The actual Love Canal, by its traumatic history, evokes the terrible damage caused by human-made toxins. The handling of the other characters reinforces the theme of both environmental and ingested toxins. One learns that Sharon, the patient who shares a hospital room with Jamie's mother, overdosed on drugs. Two drug dealers bring her a bag, and she soon "starts slipping little pills into her mouth." Jamie narrates that one of the dealers "fingers the tube leading into my mother's arm and comments that her body is worth about four hundred dollars in narcotics." In the summer of 1977, Tom tells his fellow gin-drinkers how his mother had tried but failed to kill herself four different ways. "What doesn't pass out of our lives," Jamie observes, "even if it is good, ends up killing us. Finally there
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is something that won't pass like a disease or tumor that takes us out of life." David is more able to adapt to trauma than Jamie's mother is; Jamie, on the other hand, remains stuck in her mode. David has a stronger self-preservation instinct. He opted to flee for his life on August 27,1977. He asked Jamie, "Do you want to end up like your mother?'' Though Jamie said he did not want to, his links to his mother are too strong to break. Perhaps Jamie and his mother's bodies are frailer, already contaminated, less able to adapt physically. They are disoriented and damaged by the emotionally and physically toxic environment and cannot break free. Tellingly, Brown uses the word "narcotic" to connect the environmental toxins effecting both Jamie's mother and the pygmy shrews. Narcotic effects disorient, confuse, and ultimately hurl them on a course toward destruction. Using the metaphor of "what to do with sadness," Brown shows that Jamie and his mother keep their poisons in themselves, whereas David lets the toxicity of sadness pass "like a shooting star'' and becomes healed. Like those fortunate animals that "seem to have a way of seeing what's necessary and acting on that vision,'' David saw and did what was necessary to survive. Source: Erik France, Critical Essay on ' 'Animal Stories," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
Liz Brent Brent has a Ph.D. in American culture, specializing in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses identity, introspection, selfimprovement, and what's important in life, as presented in Brown's short story. In Jason Brown's "Animal Stories," Jamie, the narrator, faced with the approaching death of his mother from a brain tumor, becomes introspective, attempting to assess and define who he is and what's important in life. Jamie explains very briefly how he came to be a person who does not have a clear sense of self and who makes no effort to improve his life. He states that, ' 'I was born with serious intent and not without means, but somewhere along the line I failed to acquire an adequate degree of clarity." In other words, he lacks the vision, or insight, to formulate a clear sense of identity of what's important to him. He explains that, at some point, he ' 'stopped being in a hurry to improve... [his] life.'' He then notes,' 'Shortly afterwards I stopped caring
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so much." Jamie is a man who has essentially avoided serious self-reflection, as a result of which he lacks a clear self-concept of what matters. Jamie explains that since learning of his mother's illness, he has been "trying to think." But Jamie is not a person inclined to self-reflection. He comments, "Lots of strange things have happened that I don't understand. If I ever have any money, I'll hire someone to explain them to me." If he had the money, he would go to a psychiatrist or therapist to gain a clearer understanding of who he is and to delve into the deeper reasons for how he has chosen to lead his life. However, he has just stated that he "never will" have money, so the reader may conclude that he truly has no intention of ever going to a therapist to learn more about, or improve, himself. His tendency to avoid introspection resonates with the doctor's prognosis that his mother's tumor will eventually lead to "a total loss of self-awareness," by which she will "lose" herself. The doctor notes that this is "worse than death." Jamie himself seems to be fighting a total loss of self-awareness in regard to his own life and sense of identity. Jamie astutely observes that, by the time his mother's tumor has reached an advanced stage,' 'it is too late for me. I already have several chins, and if I were to die tomorrow, only about four people would notice and none of them, except my mother, would be women." When Jamie states that "it is too late for me," one can speculate that he has already resigned himself to not changing or improving. Jamie's struggle with his sense of identity is indicated in part by his unspecified learning disability. This disability makes him incapable of spelling his own name. Being able to write your own name is symbolic of having a firm sense of who you are as an individual. Jamie has so little sense of his own identity that he is incapable of even articulating his own name. Not only does he have trouble getting a grip on his own identity, but his mother, too, has trouble identifying who he is. His unclear sense of identity resonates with her loss of ability to recognize him. He explains that, during the summer before the tumor was diagnosed, his mother seemed to regard him as a "new friend," and "sometimes she looked at me as if I were someone else's son." Jamie also finds thinking about who he is to be problematic because he is not sure on what basis to define himself. He does not feel comfortable defining himself by his past or what he has done with his life. He explains, "One of the biggest mistakes I make is trying to think about who I am by remem-
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bering the things I have done." Later, he again states that "the things . . . [he has] done" do not represent an accurate picture of who he is; he claims,' 'If you knew me, then you would know that nothing is less like me than the things I've done." Jamie's mother had always told him "that being myself was the most important thing I could do." Jamie on the other hand does not feel that he is very good at being himself; he mentions that he has been better at living a fantasy life through other people, such as characters in books. He refers to a video show on Animal Imposters, which is about animals who make themselves appear to be something other than what they are—such as a predatory animal that disguises itself as a flower to catch insects, or a predatory fish that looks like a harmless rock to catch other fish for food. These disguises resonate with Jamie's sense of himself as someone who does not know how to be himself but is better at pretending to be someone else. The theme of being an imposter, or taking on the identity of others, is echoed in Jamie's description of the times he and his mother and friends went to Goodwill to buy used clothing, which they wore and became "walking collages of other people's lives." Jamie, who does not have a clear sense of his own identity, is more comfortable borrowing the identities of other people, through books, clothing, or fantasy. For his mother, likewise, once the tumor begins to affect her memory, ' 'her own past has been replaced by the most pleasant memories from other people's lives." Jamie's tendency to avoid self-reflection seems to have been learned from his father, whose impulse to avoid thinking is indicated in the statement that while working in the garden he would "bury his thoughts with the azaleas." Jamie has learned from his father not only to bury his thoughts but also to bury his feelings. At one point, his father tells him, ' 'Jamie, it doesn't matter how you feel about things." Jamie's unclear sense of self and lack of motivation to strive for self-improvement is also learned from his father's example. He observes, "My father was a man of inaction; it is the most valuable thing I learned from him." While his mother told him to always be himself, his father, he says, ' 'taught me not to worry about what I am not." While on the one hand, this may indicate a lesson in self-acceptance, in the case of this narrator, it seems to have taught him not to bother striving to improve himself or his life in any way. His father told him, "You can either be you or someone else," which is really a piece of non-advice since it's rather obvious and seems to
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carry no particular wisdom. His father added, "In the end it really doesn't matter." Jamie states, "I can't understand why he said things like that," but it seems that the lesson he derived from his father's statement was to acquire an attitude of behaving as if nothing really does matter. His mother's imminent death also leads Jamie to think about what's important in life. He notes that "you can't blame most people for not thinking, because they work instead," but adds that since he has no job and his mother has a tumor, "it's time to think about what's important in life." In so doing, he considers his mother's various attempts to understand what's important. At one point, confused by the remote control device, his mother dismantles and examines it "as if it were a mystery she is trying to get to the bottom of." Jamie, likewise, is trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, or meaning, of life. Religion is one avenue through which many people find meaning in life, and Jamie's mother believed in God for a brief period of a year or two. During this time, she wandered around the neighborhood ' 'leaving notes from God in people's mailboxes about what was important in life." These notes listed things she felt were important: gloves, fresh milk, and heat. All three of these items refer to creature comforts, such as nourishment, protective clothing, and physical warmth. Jamie, however, does not seem to consider God or religion as a means of understanding what is needed or essential. He seems to be looking beyond mere physical needs as defined by his mother in her notes from God. After the tumor is diagnosed, Jamie's mother seems to recognize as well that what is important is not just physical needs. She addresses these concerns in a book she writes about how animals remember. Jamie implies that his mother thinks animals understand what's important in life because "they can't remember in the same way we do." Jamie observes that animals, unencumbered by complex thought and memory, "seem to have a way of seeing what's necessary and acting on that vision." Regardless of what unexpected circumstance animals are faced with, they maintain a clear vision of what matters most. For animals, what matters may be just "pecking through bark for worms, or, in the case of the hermit crab, skittering across the ocean floor in search of an abandoned shell suitable for a new home." Animals, then, are able to stay focused on their needs and do what must be done to meet them. Jamie, by contrast, has no clear vision of what's necessary and little motivation to take any kind of action.
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By the end of the story, Jamie seems to prefer his lack of self-awareness, or tendency not to think, to his attempt at self-reflection."
By the end of the story, Jamie seems to prefer his lack of self-awareness, or tendency not to think, to his attempt at self-reflection. He notes, "I have come to love the things I do not know about my past," because "they are like possibilities for the future, which, to any person, is just as important to survival as food." The suggestion here is that the things he remembers, which for him are mostly disappointments, only cause him to feel sad and hopeless. Jamie admits that he is probably ' 'hiding certain things'' about his past, by not remembering them, but, echoing the advice of his father, comments, "why should that matter?" Jamie's general attitude of passivity about his life is captured by his conclusion that life is defined by missed opportunities: "In the end it's all about little possibilities that vanish, like snow." This conclusion reads as a sort of statement against self-reflection and selfimprovement—Jamie chooses to cling to the hope that the things he does not remember about himself and his life are somehow less sad and less disappointing than the things he does remember. Jamie concludes that what's important in life is forgetting the past to keep hope alive. Jamie's efforts to clarify his sense of identity and gain a clearer vision of the important things only result in his resignation to avoid introspection. In the end, he does not bother trying to improve himself and continues to live as if he doesn't care because he has come to truly believe that "in the end it really doesn't matter." Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on "Animal Stories," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
Sources Herman, Jenifer, Review of ' 'Driving the Heart" and Other Stories, in New York Times, May 2, 1999.
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Elliot, John, "Books: A Canter and a Gallop, John Elliot on Two American Collections," in Daily Telegraph, January 22, 2000. Humphrey, Matthew, "Young Guns. Great Stories from the 25-and-Under Set," in the Guardian, June 25, 1997. Ketchin, Susan, and Neil Giordano, eds., 25 and Under/ Fiction, Center for Documentary Studies in association with W. W. Norton and Company, 1997, pp. 218-19. Lennon, Brian, Review of "Driving the Heart" and Other Stories, in Boston Book Review, April 1, 1999. Review of ' 'Driving the Heart'' and Other Stories, in Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1999. Review of "Driving the Heart" and Other Stories, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 246, February 22, 1999, p. 64.
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Further Reading Gunther, John, Death Be Not Proud: A Memoir, Harper Perennial, 1998. Gunther wrote this book, originally published in 1949, to document the valiant struggle his son waged against a brain tumor that ultimately killed him at age seventeen. Levy, Alexander, The Orphaned Adult: Understanding and Coping with Grief and Change after the Death of Our Parents, Perseus Press, 1999. Written by a psychologist in private practice for more than twenty years, this book examines what happens to adults when their parents die and how this event can facilitate the passage into true adulthood. Roth, Philip, Patrimony: A True Story, Vintage Books, 1996. Originally published in 1991, Roth's book about his father's life and his eventual death due to a brain tumor received that year's National Book Critics Award.
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Black Boy Kay Boyle drew a great deal of attention from literary stalwarts from her earliest publications in European journals and magazines. Later reprinted in the essay, "The Somnambulists," in 1929, William Carlos Williams wrote in transition that Boyle's stories were "of a high degree of excellence." He also noted that people with a "comprehensive" but ' 'disturbing view of what takes place in the human understanding at moment of intense living," will not succeed with the American readership.
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Boyle's uniqueness was reflected not only in her style, but also in her subject matter. In the 1920s, Boyle's cause—aptly reflected by her avant-garde style—was the liberation of art from literary traditions. By the following decade, Boyle was turning away from the text and to the world in which it was perceived. Her best-known works of the 1930s and 1940s concern serious issues, such as racial oppression and Nazism. The story "Black Boy," first published in 1932 in the New Yorker, contains a very real social message. At the time of its creation, Boyle says, "stories were written in protest, and also in faith, and they were not unlike fervent prayers offered up for the salvation of man." Through works such as "Black Boy," Boyle addresses the issue of racial discrimination in the United States. Yet Boyle makes it succeed on levels that extend beyond that of social fiction.
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Author Biography Kay Boyle was born to a wealthy family in St. Paul, Minnesota, on February 19,1902. While a child, she traveled with her parents throughout the United States and Europe. Boyle developed an early appreciation for art, literature, and social values. In her adolescence, Boyle began writing short stories and poems. While still a teenager, Boyle moved to New York City. There she got a job as an assistant to the editor of Broom magazine. Within a short period of time, Boyle's own work began appearing in that publication as well as in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Boyle married a French engineer, a man who shared her dislike for societal conventions and injustice. The couple moved to France, partly because Boyle believed that country was kinder to its leftwing political thinkers and its writers. The couple settled in Paris, where Boyle's literary contacts led to her acquaintance with many other expatriate writers, including Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. Soon, her literary associates were asking her to contribute to new publications. She also edited a journal called This Quarter. In 1927, she began publishing short stories in an avant-garde magazine called transition, and she published regularly in that journal for the next several years. By the 1930s, Boyle's work was appearing frequently in numerous American magazines, including the New Yorker. The stories from this period were collected in her first American book, Short Stories. She continued to work on novels and poetry, and many of her best-known novels were published in that decade. She also worked on translations, a children's book, and edited a short story anthology. Her personal life was less steady. By 1943, she was married to her third husband and had lived in many locations throughout Europe. Her experiences in Europe in the pre-World War II years influenced many of the short stories she wrote during this period. After the end of World War II, Boyle lived in the former West Germany, where she served as a foreign correspondent for the New Yorker. Her short stories from this period were informed by her experiences in the then-occupied, war torn nation. In the 1950s, Boyle fell victim to the American communist scare and McCarthyism. She lost her job with the New Yorker and returned to the United States. For a time, the Nation was one of the few magazines that would print her work. In 1961, she received her second Guggenheim Fellowship (the
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first was in 1933, the year after "Black Boy" was published). In the decades following, she taught at various colleges and continued her social involvement through her work for feminist and pacifist causes. Boyle died in Mill Valley, California, on December 27, 1992.
Plot Summary "Black Boy" begins with an unnamed narrator remembering an accident she had when she was about 10 or 12 years old and living with her grandfather in a seaside city. The girl likes to ride her horse along the beach while her Grandfather Puss likes to ride in the chairs along the wooden boardwalk, which are pushed by young black boys. Puss would fetch his granddaughter from the beach and then choose one of the many boys to push him in one of the chairs. He asks the boys their names but isn't really interested in knowing them. The girl has developed a friendship with one of the black boys. She often comes down to the beach— where the boy sleeps—early in the morning, and the two of them eat dog biscuits and talk. The boy talks about magical things—kings and camels and the Northern Lights. If he were king, the boy says, he wouldn't stay around here. One day, Puss comes to find his granddaughter so they can take a chair to look at an electric sign. He sees her sitting with the black boy. Once Puss and the narrator are up on the boardwalk, he says that he doesn't think it is a good idea for her to be friends with the boy because the boy might harm her. When she asks how, Puss suggests the boy might steal her money. The girl protests, saying that all they do is sit and talk. When Puss asks what they talk about, she claims that she doesn't know. The next morning when the girl wakes up, she remembers her grandfather's words. She decides to go for a horseback ride and not visit the black boy for a few days. She thinks that when Puss sees her riding on the beach, he will stop feeling ill at ease. On the beach, however, the narrator sees her friend sitting in their accustomed place under the boardwalk. The boy stands up to pat the horse, then takes it for a short ride, sitting easily. The boy says he has thought about being a jockey but doesn't care for their lifestyle as they have to watch what they eat. The girl gets on her horse again. She plans to jump over the dock. She tells her friend to watch.
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The girl and the horse race under the boardwalk to get a good start on the jump, but suddenly the girl's dogs rush down the beach, barking wildly and chasing a cat. They get under the horse's legs, and the horse gets frightened and jumps sidewise into an iron arch. The girl is thrown from the horse and loses consciousness. In a dreamlike state, she imagines that she hears someone crying. The black boy has come to the girl and holds her in his arms, murmuring soothing words. He carries the narrator back to her house and she nestles against the boy, seeking comfort. At the narrator's house, Puss comes out to meet them; without saying a word, he hits the black boy in the mouth.
Characters Black Boy The black boy and the narrator are friends. The black boy has a job pushing people in chairs to see the sights along the boardwalk. He lives on the beach and is quite poor. Despite his poverty, he has an active fantasy life. With his imagination, he can create a beautiful world in which he can be anything he wants to be. He is a bright and self-confident boy, whose caring nature and optimism belies the racist beliefs held by 1930s American society.
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world of civilization rather than the natural world. He holds racist beliefs and does not trust the black boy whom his granddaughter befriends, even though he makes no effort to get to know the boy.
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Narrator The narrator of the story is a girl about 10 or 12 years old. Her mother is dead, and the narrator lives with her grandfather, Puss, in an oceanside town. She spends a lot of time on the beach, sometimes riding her horse and other times talking to her friend, the black boy. The narrator is very observant and perceptive. She notices details about people and things that surround her, and she also clearly sees her grandfather's distasteful treatment of minorities. She is open-minded, going along with the black boy's fantasies and seeing the beauty in what his words describe.
Puss Puss is the narrator's grandfather. He has fussy and particular tastes. One of his favorite activities is hiring a boy to push him and his granddaughter in a chair along the boardwalk. He likes to look at the shops along the way. He is more at home in the
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Prejudice and Racism The prejudice that Puss has for African Americans is one of the major components of the story. Even before Puss speaks of his dislike for the black boy whom his granddaughter has befriended, his racism is apparent. He sees all the boys who make a living pushing chairs along the boardwalk as interchangeable. At this point in the story, Puss's racism evidences itself in his complete disregard for these black boys who nevertheless perform a service he finds valuable. When Puss realizes that his granddaughter has become friends with one of these boys, he lets her know in no uncertain terms that he does not want her to be friends with the boy because he ' 'might do you some kind of harm." He is hard-pressed, however, to explain what kind of harm that might be. He proposes that the black boy might "knock you
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Topics for Further Study Conduct research to find out more about the harsh economic circumstances under which many African Americans lived in the 1930s. Write up your findings in a paragraph or two. Boyle's prose and descriptions are very evocative. Imagine that you are an artist invited to illustrate an important scene from this story. Which scene would you pick and why? What stylistic choice would you make in rendering the scene? Analyze the black boy's commentary. How honest are his comments? What do his statements reveal about him? Why do you think this? Critics do not always agree on Boyle's use of metaphor; some think her metaphors are overdone while others think they are evocative. Explain your opinion of Boyle's metaphors in "Black Boy." Many critics have commented upon Boyle's vivid descriptions. Reread "Black Boy," taking careful note of how she describes the setting and characters. Write a fictional paragraph and try to use a descriptive style that imitates Boyle's.
down and take your money away." Puss's fears, however, are clearly unfounded. Earlier, the narrator had attested to her safety when she noted that wherever she went, her dogs always followed behind her. Ironically, it is the dogs that cause the narrator's accident when they scare the horse, which then throws the girl. Puss refuses to acknowledge the boy's helpfulness and compassion. Instead, his racist attitude causes him to physically attack the black boy. Boyle also comments on the social injustice of racism through the black boys themselves. All of the people who push the chairs are black boys. They have a hard, thankless job that is more suited to
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animals than humans. Through details like these that surround the black boy, Boyle shows the boys' poverty.
Childhood Although the story is written from the point of view of an older narrator looking back on a childhood incident, it presents the child's perception. The narrator beholds the world with a childlike fascination and credulity. For instance, the waves of the ocean became lazy women tiptoeing across the sand. The narration also reflects the purity of childhood. Instead of looking down at her friend because of his race, she compares his neck favorably to that of a white man. She embraces her friendship with the black boy, sensing that he can provide love and comfort. This would be unimaginable to the adult as typified by Puss, who could not look beyond the boy's race and social circumstances. The narrator, who maintains the more mature voice of the adult throughout, nevertheless remains true to the childlike persona. At the end of the story, as she recalls lying on the grass after her accident, her perceptions are those of a lonely child. She imagines her dead mother holding her and the wind crying over her pain. She feels "rocked in a cradle of love, cradled and rocked in sorrow." When the black boy refers to her as his "little lamb," he subtly emphasizes her youth and her need for a guiding adult figure.
Imaginary World The idea of an imaginary world figures prominently in the story. The black boy invents an entire world in which he has lived. In this world, he "could be almost anything I made up my mind to be." For instance, he could have been a jockey, only he chose not to because they have to watch their diet so carefully. He also dreams up prettier surroundings. Instead of the boardwalk creaking above, he creates a time when all sorts of wild and exotic animals came down to the ocean edge. Although he acknowledges that this is a "mirage," he also claims, "I seen camels, I seen zebras, . . . I might have caught any of one of them if I'd been inclined." Although the boy's claims cannot be proven, there is truth to some of them. He may not have been a jockey, but he does ride the girl's horse with surprising ease. The boy is extremely effective in his creation of the imaginary world, his escape from the impoverished, gritty world in which he really lives. Even the narrator is swayed, finding that
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every one of his words ' 'seemed to fall into a cavern of beauty."
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flower." Another black boy who pushes the carts has a face "dripping down like tar in the sun." All of these descriptions emphasize the extreme darkness of the skin color of these boys who work on the boardwalk.
Style Language Point of View The story is told from the first-person point of view. The narrator is a grown woman looking back on an incident that took place when she was about 10 or 12 years old. The reader is only privy to what goes on in the mind of the narrator. Yet, because the narrator has a keen perception of the world around her, the story clearly indicates the mores and values of the time period. Though the story is brief, the narrator fills it with vivid detail. The narrator's account of her grandfather's attitudes toward the black boys who push the chairs is particularly illuminating. While it shows the prevailing racist attitude of the time, the girl juxtaposes herself against her grandfather, showing her own openmindedness.
Symbolism and Imagery Boyle makes use of a great deal of symbolism and imagery in the story. The slow movement of the waves of the Atlantic Ocean is evoked through her comparison of them to "indolent" ladies who "gathered up their skirts in their hands and, . . . came tiptoeing in across the velvet sand." The dogs "wheeled like gulls." The narrator's horse is likened to a shy bird. The black boy is also described in comparison to other key elements of the story. His neck is long and shapely, more so even than a white man's. His fingers ' 'ran in and out of the sand like the blue feet of a bird." This phrase is perhaps most important because it has both a positive and a negative slant. On the positive side, Boyle compares the boy to an animal, and she infuses animals with worthy attributes throughout the story. On the negative side, Boyle also implicity equates the boy with the narrator's horse, since both of them are likened to birds. This comparison reinforces the idea that on the boardwalk above, the boy, doing the work of a horse, is regarded as little more than an animal that provides a physical service. Boyle also uses intense imagery to refer to the character's blackness. The boy was "as thin as a shadow but darker" and his face was "black as a bat's wing, nodding and nodding like a dark heavy
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Boyle uses rich language in writing the story, and her characters mimic this language. The narrator uses vivid metaphors and well-crafted descriptions, and the black boy's speech reflects a desire for true beauty. He describes a magical scene in which there used to be all kinds of animals come down here to drink in the dark.. .. They was a kind of a mirage came along and gave that impression. 1 seen tigers, lions, lambs, deer; I seen ostriches drinking down there side by side with each other.
The narrator responds to the boy's language: ' 'every word the black boy spoke seemed to fall into a cavern of beauty." When the narrator's grandfather wants to know what the two children converse about, however, she only replies, "I don't know. It doesn't sound like much to tell it." She understands that she and her friend are creating a better world but a made-up world just the same.
Historical Context The Great Depression The Great Depression, the period between the stock market crash of October 1929 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, was the worst economic crisis in American history. During that time, millions of Americans lost their jobs and sank into poverty. By 1932, the United States was solidly in the midst of the Great Depression, Industrial output fell to about half that of 1929, resulting in massive layoffs. About 12-15 million Americans were unemployed at the peak of the crisis. Wages had fallen by almost one third. More than 5,000 banks closed their doors.
Urban Living Conditions The depression hit many cities very hard. City governments, religious groups, and charitable organizations tried to provide direct relief to the needy, and neighbors relied on each other for help. Men and women waited in breadlines for bowls of
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Compare fc Contrast 1930s: Sixty percent of African Americans between the ages of 5 and 20 attend school. 1990s: In 1997, 13.4 percent of African-American students drop out of high school. 1930s: The annual median income for whites is $1,325, while the median income for African Americans and other minorities is $489. 1990s: In 1998, the annual median household income for whites is $42,000 and for African
soup and pieces of bread. Hunger was so widespread that one out of every five children in New York City suffered from malnutrition. Homelessness was also a serious problem in the cities. Some people lived in shantytowns, which were collections of makeshift shelters built out of packing boxes, scrap lumber, and other pieces of junk. They used newspapers as blankets.
Popular Culture in the 1930s Despite the hard times, Americans still sought entertainment. Many people played at home, listened to the radio, and attended movies. Radio shows that featured heroes who triumphed over evil, and gangster films, zany comedies, musicals, and cartoons all allowed people to forget their troubles, if only briefly. New forms of popular literature also arose during the decade, such as comic books featuring superheroes. Popular books of the period also offered a chance to escape. Many Americans managed to hold onto their automobiles, and millions of Americans took to the road for vacations.
The New Deal In the presidential elections of 1932, voters overwhelming supported Democratic candidate Franklin Roosevelt. He received 23 million popular votes in comparison to incumbent Herbert Hoover's 16 million popular votes. The Democrats also won
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Americans it is $25,500. In 1995, 9.9 million African Americans—29.3 percent of the African-American population—live in poverty. 1930s: In 1930, the population of Atlantic City, New Jersey, is 66,198. Atlantic City is a popular vacation resort. 1990s: In 1998, the population of Atlantic City, New Jersey, is 38,063. Voters legalized gambling in 1976, and today Atlantic City is best known for its casinos.
decisive victories in both houses of Congress. Roosevelt was thus poised to initiate his New Deal program, which involved a series of relief and recovery measures aimed at helping the American people and stimulating the economy. Roosevelt's administration increased confidence in the banking system, provided direct relief for the poor and hungry and employed jobless men and women, among other significant actions. The New Deal attempted to correct those inequalities that had such adverse affects on minorities. For instance, the Public Works Administration instituted the first nondiscrimination and quota clauses for hiring. Thus, Roosevelt became very popular with minority and African-American voters, who felt that at last someone in government cared about their special needs.
African Americans and the Depression African Americans faced especially difficult times as economic troubles added to the problems they already experienced with racial discrimination. African-American workers were often the first to be laid off. In northern cities, as much as 25 to 40 percent of African Americans were out of work by 1933, and in southern cities, unemployment rates rose as high as 75 percent. When African Americans were employed through federal job programs, many received lower wages than did their white counterparts. African Americans also were excluded from
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certain New Deal programs. Only one in four African Americans received any public aid during the Depression. If they did, they often received significantly lower payments than white families did. Because of a lack of political organization and strength, African Americans had little means to influence and improve this state of public affairs. Throughout the depression, the majority of African Americans remained poor and uneducated.
Critical Overview "Black Boy," which was originally published in the New Yorker in 1932, was collected along with 13 other stories in 1933's First Lover and Other Stories. Sandra Whipple Spanier wrote in Kay Boyle, Artist and Activist that nearly all of the stories in the volume "evidence the author's long-standing concerns with fresh language, the individual quest for identity, and the need for—and failures of—love." Spanier added that "a few chart new territory, moving away from the personal expression of personal experience toward communication of broader social concerns." This shift is particularly relevant as Boyle's work from the mid-1930s onward increasingly reflected the author's interest in and understanding of the events that shaped the international community as the world went to war. Toward the end of her career, Boyle stated that she had come to believe that it was the duty of a writer to chronicle the world as she knew it and particularly its key issues. "Black Boy," as much as Boyle's more well-known fictions focusing on Nazism in Europe, concerns itself with pressing social inequities, ones that needed to be addressed. At the time of its publication, many reviewers held a favorable opinion of First Lover and Other Stories. In the 1920s, Boyle had been concentrating on avant-garde fictions, and Karl Schriftgiesser of the Boston Transcript found these new stories to be "the matured work of an avowed experimentalist who has standards and subjects that are worth experimenting with." Reviewers tended to comment on Boyle's careful attention to words and expression. Boyle had already established a reputation for herself as a wordsmith, which led some critics to expect a great deal from any new work from her. As Gladys Graham wrote in the Saturday Review of Literature, "Miss Boyle has set herself too high a standard for continuous realization." Louis
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Kronenberger of the New York Times, however, believed the stories to show that Boyle had "not yet quite mastered her art." Still, Kronenberger recognized Boyle's uniqueness as a writer, stating: If without losing any of her lightness and grace and sensibility, Miss Boyle can bring into play more of the toughness that already seems latent in her work, and can use words a little more gravely, she should become as significant as she already is individual.
In 1946, Thirty Stories—a work that included stories produced during a period of 20 years—was published, and again, Boyle's use of language was a major focus. Rosemary Paris, reviewing this collection for Furioso, believed that Boyle did not manage to deepen and broaden her "initial very real ability" despite the fact that her subject matter was "the resounding materials of the contemporary world." Paris did find that "there are stories in this volume which come near the crystallization of substance and style which makes a good work of art" and specifically commended "Black Boy" as "very delicate and moving." However, Paris also used this story as an example of Boyle's sometimes overwhelmingly strong voice and manipulation of words. She writes that Boyle at times is an "undisciplined" writer, pointing out her inability to "resist the uncontrolled and unrelated imagery on which she relies for effect.'' Struther Burt, in contrast, who reviewed the collection for the Saturday Review of Literature, believed that Boyle's work showed "a unique gift for striking metaphor, granted as a rule only to poets." Although he recommended Boyle's European stories over her American stories, he still found these earlier stories to be "interesting as a study in the emergence of an artist; an artist with a beautiful command of language . . . and a passionate, impelling drive."
Criticism Rena Korb Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, Korb discusses how the personalities of the main characters are reflected through Boyle's choice of descriptive language. In the early 1930s, Kay Boyle was producing short stories at an astonishing rate. Over the course of that decade she published three short story collections in
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What Do I Read Next? Boyle's short story "White as Snow" (1933) is another story of a child's introduction to racial prejudice. Like "Black Boy," it is told from the point of view of a white child who does not understand discrimination, in this case against her African-American governess. Hugh Ford's Four Lives in Paris (1987) explores four American expatriates who lived and created in Paris in the 1920s. Along with his discussion of Boyle, Ford presents the composer George Antheil, social and political critic Harold Stearns, and New York editor Margaret Anderson. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1884) chronicles the voyage of Huck Finn, a poor white boy,
addition to numerous other works. Despite her prodigious writing, she rarely talked about her work. "Black Boy," first published in 1932 and collected in First Lover and Other Stories the following year, was one of the few stories that she spoke about to friends, chronicling the difficulties she had getting it published. Several magazines rejected it, including Harper's, which nonetheless told her that some of its passages were "magical." Boylefinallysucceeded in selling the story to the New Yorker. Later on, she also expressed satisfaction with the story because "it is completely simple, and moral without moralizing." Indeed, "Black Boy" is a brief tale about a preadolescent girl who becomes friends with a black boy who makes his living pushing people in chairs along the oceanside boardwalk. Despite her grandfather's warning that the black boy might want to do her harm, she continues to visit the black boy on the beach. One day, she is thrown from her horse and knocked unconscious. The boy picks her up and holds her comfortingly, but when he returns her home, the grandfather strikes him in the mouth. To maintain the simplicity of the story and its overarching message, Boyle relies on effective
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and his companion Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River. Huck learns to overcome racial prejudices during his journey. The Color of Water (1996) is a memoir by James McBride of growing up in a large, poor family with an African-American father and a white mother. He also recounts his efforts to find out more about his mother's path in his own quest for self-understanding. Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) addresses the issue of white America's responsibility for racial oppression. It tells the story of an AfricanAmerican man imprisoned for the accidental killing of his white employer's daughter.
language. Through her words, she draws clear portrayals of her characters and her setting. All of the characters—even the nonhuman ones—are evocatively described through careful metaphor. The waves of the sea are "indolent as ladies," the boys who push the chairs on the boardwalk have faces that drip "down like tar in the sun," even the narrator's horse is "as shy as a bird." Such language focuses attention on the fundamental characteristics of the story's elements while bringing them sharply to life. The details that surround the narrator, the black boy, and Grandfather Puss further identify the milieu in which these people are comfortable and shed light on their manner of regarding the world. Of the three characters, the black boy—who lives the most circumscribed life due to harsh economic realities—has the widest worldview. He is at home in the natural world, sleeping on the beach and spending hours with his eyes on the sea. He is identified with animals; the narrator notes that' 'his fingers ran in and out of the sand like the blue feet of a bird." Yet, his vision is not limited to the world in which he lives. He vividly imagines an Atlantic City that is not a hotbed of tourism but populated by exotic animals allowed to roam wild. His vision of
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these animals represents the boy himself and his longing for change. He says, "If I was a king, I wouldn't put much stock in hanging around here." It also demonstrates his self-sufficiency in his ability to create a better world for himself when none is forthcoming. Though he speaks with incorrect grammar, the boy is knowledgeable about myriad topics such as biblical kings, mirages, and the Northern Lights. He knows how to ride a horse "easily and straight." His preference for riding a horse bareback again shows his comfort in the natural world, and his rejection of the trappings of civilization befits him, for civilization has already rejected him. Despite his bleak circumstances, the boy still has the capacity for awe and respect. He regards the narrator's horse with eyes filled with a ' 'spark of wonder'' and when he rides the horse he was "quick with delight" but still had ' 'no thought of smiling." He takes his task of riding the horse seriously. Grandfather Puss's focus in life is exceedingly narrower. For instance, despite living in close proximity to the ocean, he chooses to remain on the boardwalk or in his house, only visiting the beach when the tide has gone down. Even then, he does not venture far. ' 'For a minute, he put one foot in the sand, but he was not at ease there," relates his granddaughter. His perception is bounded by the world above, on the boardwalk "over our heads" where "some other kind of life was in progress." That world contains the trappings of modernity, such as transportation in the form of rolling chairs and women in high-heeled shoes. Puss enjoys the chair ride because he likes to look at the store windows and the electric signs. His granddaughter comments to herself,' 'there was no hesitation about whether he would look at the shops on one side, or out on the vacant side where there was nothing shining but the sea.'' He also enjoys the dominance he has over the black boys who push the chairs. He might look for a "nice skinny boy" who would "put some action into it." Puss's reaction to the black boys who work on the boardwalk demonstrates a prevailing racist attitude of American society—which is further subtly alluded to in the fact that only black boys work pushing chairs. Puss regards the boys as little more than animals pulling a load. Though he asks the boys their names, he only does so "without turning his head" to actually look at them. His prejudice also extends beyond the African-American race. In casual conversation he remarks to his granddaugh-
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The details that surround the narrator, the black boy, and Grandfather Puss further identify the milieu in which these people are comfortable and shed light on their manner of regarding the world."
ter,' 'I saw another little oak not three inches high in the Jap's window yesterday." As befits her superior socioeconomic position, the girl can straddle both the world of her grandfather and the world of her friend, but she is not fully part of either. While she enjoys taking her horse to ride in the ocean waves, unlike her friend, she uses a saddle. She also spurs the horse on "with the end of my crop,'' which is in stark contrast to the boy, who would "never raise a hand to one [a horse], unless he was to bite me or do something I didn't care for." On the beach one morning, the girl notes that the ocean wind was "filled with alien smells." She enjoys sitting on the sand, but she makes the choice about when to descend to this world. At other times, she ascends as if from hell to heaven, where she is served by the black boys who pull her and Puss along in a chair with red velvet cushions—cushions fit for the king that the black boy will never be. The important difference between the narrator and her grandfather is that she does not share his racist opinions. Her observations show that she sees the people around her as just that—as people and not as people of a certain color. She describes the neck of the black boy as ' 'longer and more shapely than a white man's neck." However, she is still unable to ignore the prevailing attitude of black and white in the world. Her prose is full of references to color: Her grandfather wears a white moustache, she can see her friend sitting on the beach at night in the "clear white darkness," even the dangerous beams of the boardwalk into which the horse smashes are "tough" and "black." The message in the language is clear: racism is a pervasive and destructive element of society, affecting even those mem-
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bers who are open-minded. Indeed, even the narrator's neglect to name her friend, instead choosing always to refer to him as the "black boy" underscores this basic truth of her world. The inherent racism of society is also manifest in her desire to be superior to the black boy at horseback riding. Never before had she indicated an interest in jumping over the dock; previously she had only spoken of riding the horse in the waves and on the beach. Once she sees the skill with which her friend handles the horse, however, she feels a stir of jealousy. For the first time, she points out the fallacy of her friend's words. When he claims that he was going to be a jockey but changed his mind, she draws attention to the inconsistency of his story with the simple phrase, "Jockeys make a pile of money." Despite this momentary flash of jealousy, the narrator is openhearted toward the black boy. When her grandfather declares that he does not want her to continue the friendship, she feels the ' 'burden of his words." She decides her best course of action is to stay away from her friend for a few days. She wants to make sure that Puss sees her' 'riding high'' down the beach. Then she will be able to pick up her friendship with the black boy. Ironically, it is the effects of racism that lead her to the one place where she feels truly at peace. After she is thrown from her horse and loses consciousness, she feels ' 'rocked in a cradle of love, cradled and rocked in sorrow." It is her friend, the black boy, who gathers her in "long swift fingers of love untying the terrible knot of pain that bound my head.'' She puts her' 'arms around him and lay close to his heart in comfort." The black boy is equated with other symbols of comfort: her dead mother and a soft wind. His compassion is shown through his words: "Oh, my little lamb." The girl's peacefulness is extremely short-lived because when the black boy returns her from the beach, to the real world, the two children again come face to face with racism. Instead of thanking the black boy for helping his granddaughter, or even finding out what happened, Puss "struck him squarely in the mouth." Source: Rena Korb, Critical Essay on "Black Boy," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
Joyce Hart Hart has degrees in literature and creative writing and focuses her published writing on literary themes. In this essay, Hart discusses the various
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methods the author uses to portray the overall themes of division and separation. From the title of "Black Boy" to the final scene in Kay Boyle's short story, the reader is conscious that this is a story about prejudice. But Boyle creates this tale of prejudice not by harping on the evils of racism but by building images of separation and division in every scene in her story. With her careful creation of metaphor and allusion, she subtly weaves her theme into her descriptions of nature and the mannerisms and thoughts of her characters. She sets both her characters and her readers on a collision course with that invisible dividing wall between white people and African Americans that exists in the narrator's world. Through a closer reading of Boyle's story, readers can appreciate not only the impact of that collision but also the artistic ability of the author in creating the setting around the conflict. Beginning with the first sentence of "Black Boy," Boyle places in the mind of the reader the concept that this is the story of divisions: "At that time, it was the forsaken part, it was the other end of the city." It is to this forsaken part of the city that the narrator heads, taking the reader with her as she rises early in the morning before most of her neighbors crowd the sidewalks and the beach. The forsaken beach becomes a sanctuary for the narrator, separating her from the noise and busyness of city life. But it is only the first of many separations. The beach itself is divided. There is the hard-packed sand close to the water where the narrator can enjoy a fast ride on her horse. There is also the softer ' 'drifts of dry sand'' where the narrator must retreat when the tide and the wind are high. The softer sand makes the narrator slow her pace, and even when she does this, the dry sand, driven by the wind, blows into her face and stings her. The distinction between the two types of beach environment is clearly marked not only with their various characteristics but also with the narrator's preference. Further division of the beach is apparent when the narrator describes the wooden promenade, or boardwalk, that runs the length of the beach. It is to this promenade that most of the city people head, including the narrator's grandfather. The grandfather has no patience with the sandy nature of the beach. This difference in character separates him from his granddaughter who loves the more natural setting. The grandfather prefers the man-made, wooden structure overhead, where, in the narrator's words,' 'some other kind of life [was] in progress.'' Here it is clear that the typical city person—women
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wearing high heels and the narrator's grandfather in his ' 'pearl fedora,''—come out only in fair weather with their minds and heads turned toward the shops on the promenade rather than toward the ocean and the open horizon. The boardwalk separates them from nature to the point that there is very little awareness that the beach even exists.
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The next division is very obvious. The white people are on one side of the transparent socioeconomic wall, wearing their hats and dresses and eyeing the most suitable drivers of the boardwalk's wheeled chairs. The black boys, of course, are on the other side. The wall of division is so thick at this encounter between the two groups of people that the grandfather looks at the young African-American men as if they were horses: "There's a nice skinny boy. ... He looks as though he might put some action into it." Boyle's depiction of this scene is reminiscent of slave owners eyeing new arrivals at an auction, belittling the human aspects of the slaves to justify their own inflated sense of selfworth. Further examples of this attitude are seen when the grandfather addresses the young man who is pushing the chair by making up names for him. It can also be deduced from the reading that the division between the world of his granddaughter and the young man, in the grandfather's mind, is so wide that he has no consciousness that his granddaughter might know the young man, which she does, although she does not admit it. The fact that she does not admit it signifies that there is also a division within her. Not only does she not tell her grandfather that she prefers the world that exists under the boardwalk on the beach, she also does not convey her attraction to the young man. She is aware of the wall that separates her world from the world of the young man, but she does not attempt to plow through it, at least not in the presence of her grandfather. Although the narrator is aware of the divisions that separate her life from that of the young AfricanAmerican man, she is not totally aware of how deeply those divisions cut into her. She describes the young man in terms of a "shadow'' and ' 'a dark heavy flower''; and in another passage, he becomes "black as a bat's wing" with "his face dripping down like tar," while his fingers are "like the blue feet of a bird.'' Readers might question if these nonhuman features are descriptive phrases that the narrator would use in depicting someone from her white world. Or is the narrator seeing the young man as the so-called other, the exotic one, the one
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only place in this story where the divisions temporarily fade away,"
removed to the outer limits of the prescribed definition of members of the dominant culture, the one who is considered "not normal?" The young man also appears to be affected by these internalized, psychological divisions as he dreams of being a king, dreams of being anything but the young man who must tolerate people like the narrator's grandfather. Later, he confesses to the narrator of seeing mirages of wild animals coming down to the ocean to drink. Boyle has the young man make references here to animals from both the African continent (lions, tigers, and ostriches) as well as from the North American continent (lambs and deer). In addition, the animals also represent a mixture of predator and prey. In the fantasies of the young man, these animals from mixed continents and crossed purposes are able to drink the water "side by side with each other." These imagined scenes are very much separated from the daily scenes that fill the young man's normal life. It is also interesting to note that the young man and the narrator meet under the boardwalk, right under the dividing line between the ocean and the structures of the city. In this space, neither in nature nor in sight of the eyes of black or white people, there exists a sense of suspension of all the definitions, a deterioration of all the divisions. The place under the boardwalk becomes a sort of mythological netherworld for the two main characters, the only place in this story where the divisions temporarily fade away. Another fascinating passage that shows the degree of separation between the lives of the two youths is Boyle's mention of dogs. The narrator states that she is free to go wherever she wants to go
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because she has her family dogs to protect her. In contrast, the young boy is not protected by a set of dogs, and it could be argued that he is less free than the dogs to wander through the obviously segregated society in which he lives. The reference to the narrator's dogs who shake "the taste of the house out of their coats" before running across the beach comes in stark contrast to the young man who has no house to go to or come from and who eats dog biscuits with worms in them, a food that, more than likely, would never be given to the narrator's dogs. It is at this point in the story that the grandfather discovers that the narrator has befriended the black boy. Boyle has the grandfather not only verbally express his dislike of this situation, she subtly alludes to the degree of separation between the grandfather's life and that of the young boy by first having the grandfather touch his white mustache, then "put his kid gloves carefully on his fingers." The mentioning of the word white emphasizes the color of the grandfather's skin as being different from the young man's, whereas the putting on of the gloves symbolizes a variety of possibilities. Kid gloves are expensive, for one thing, too expensive for a young man who lives on the beach to own. So there is the economic distancing. There is also a sense of separation in that the grandfather layers himself, protects himself from having to touch or feel the presence of the young man. The narrator is slightly disturbed by her grandfather's having pointed out the chasm that exists between the world of white people and black people. But like all Romeo-and-Juliet-type stories, when authority figures create artificial barriers between two people, the two people, in retaliation, attempt to build bridges. Not persuaded by her grandfather's argument that she must stay away from the young man, the narrator rides her horse over to where the young man is sitting on the beach. She rides on a leather saddle. In response to being offered the chance to ride the horse, the young man states that he's not used to riding in a saddle: "I ride them with their bare skin," he says. With this statement, Boyle once again shows the separation that exists between the narrator and the young man. The narrator is more comfortable riding on an expensive saddle, while the young man, whom Boyle keeps in the realm of the exotic, is the nature boy, the wild man. His life is filled with no frills, no extra comforts. He rides the horse with ease, sharing some second nature, intui-
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tive understanding with the animal. When he returns from his ride, he tells the narrator, in an ironic foreshadowing: "Some folks licks hell out of their horses.... I'd never raise a hand to one." There is then the final scene in which the bridge that the young woman and young man have tried to build across the chasm comes crashing down. It is at this point of the story that the young girl wants to demonstrate how she can overcome obstacles. She wants to ride her horse over the jetty, much as she wants to ride her own sense of justice over the prejudiced beliefs of her grandfather. She tells the young man that she is going to take her horse under the boardwalk to get "a good start.'' Remember that it is under the boardwalk where the two young people have met, where they have talked, where they have hidden themselves in that netherworld. It is from this point that the narrator believes that she can gain enough energy and power to rise above the obstacles that lay in her way. But dogs suddenly appear out of nowhere, little creatures much smaller than the horse. Little like the narrator's references to her Grandfather Puss. And it is the little creatures that upset the horse that throws the narrator into an iron arch. The laws of society hit very hard when one is thrown against them. The consequences of that collision is that the narrator passes out. Only in a state of unconsciousness does the narrator allow herself to be loved by a black man. It is possible that at the time this story was written, it was unthinkable that a white woman could love a black man. Or maybe this is another of Boyle's statements. Maybe it is only through unconsciousness that the barriers between the narrator and the young man could be totally disintegrated. No matter which statement is true, the narrator, while unconscious, releases her true feelings toward the young man:' 'I put my arms around him and lay close to his heart in comfort." Just as powerful as the iron arch and at least as damaging, the young man is thrown into the fist of the narrator's grandfather. There was no need to add any more information. The reader's imagination could fill in the blanks. For a young black man to be found holding the body of a young white woman, at the time of this story, was unfathomable. There were no excuses. All language would fail, like the narrator on her horse, to clear its way over the barriers. Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on ' 'Black Boy," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
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Chris Semansky Semansky's stories, poems, and essays appear regularly in literary journals. In the following essay, Semansky analyzes the contradictions at the heart of Boyle's short story.
By naming the pier generically rather than putting it in, say, Atlantic
Boyle's concern in "Black Boy" is with social justice and the contradictions inherent in American society. She addresses these contradictions not only in the story' s setting, characters, and plot, but also in its style. However, she offers no resolution to the problem of bigotry or economic inequality. Rather, the acts of remembering and expressing themselves serve as symbolic markers for the necessity of social change. Boyle presents these contradictions through her use of juxtaposition. By placing the world above the boardwalk, populated by "rolling chairs, and women in high heels," alongside the world under the boardwalk and on the beach, where the narrator and the black boy play, Boyle highlights the differences between them. Symbolically, the boardwalk, home of the "Million Dollar Pier," represents the world of commerce and social conventions where Puss is most comfortable. By naming the pier generically rather than putting it in, say, Atlantic City, Boyle emphasizes the setting's symbolic and universal nature. What's morally important in the story are the ideas the characters and setting evoke. Literally a surface structure, the boardwalk teems with human-made things: chairs, shops, electric signs, the empirically verifiable world of commodities. This is where adults go to see and be seen, to conduct business and pursue pleasure. The world underneath the boardwalk, on the other hand, is the world of children and their innocence. The narrator and the black boy sit here among the "Great crystal jelly beasts" and "the wastes of sand," talking. Symbolically marked by its physical relation to the boardwalk, the world underneath the pier also represents instinct and nature, the organic and wild, as opposed to the artificial. The galloping horse and baying dogs run here. Literally, the beams the two sit near hold the pier up. Symbolically, this place represents the world of exploited labor, where the black boy fantasizes about what he would do if he were not working on the boardwalk. The boy's dreaming, his belief that his life could be otherwise, is what enables the world above to continue as it does. Seen in this light, the boardwalk—the world of the white man—could not exist without what lies underneath it.
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City, Boyle emphasizes the setting's symbolic and universal nature, What's morally important in the story are the ideas the characters and setting evoke."
Boyle's characters come close to embodying racial and class stereotypes. In his pearl fedora and ' 'belly pouting in his dove-gray clothes,'' the grandfather "was not at ease" on the beach, preferring the boardwalk's world of shops and monetary transactions. Puss's attitude towards people is stereotypical of a capitalist. He treats the black boy as if he were one more thing to be bought and controlled. His exchange with the boy regarding the boy's name illustrates the power of money to abuse and degrade others. By responding to whatever name Puss calls him, the boy literally becomes whoever Puss wants him to be. Even the grandfather's attitude towards his granddaughter is centered on money. He cautions her against spending time with the black boy, saying, "He might knock you down and take your money away." Puss's bigotry extends to other people as well, as he uses the epithet "Jap" to describe a Japanese person. In her study of Kay Boyle and her fiction, Kay Boyle: Author of Herself, Joan Mellen notes that Black Boy is one of Boyle's largely autobiographical stories of the 1930s and that Puss is modeled on her paternal grandfather, Peyton ' 'Puss'' Boyle, the family patriarch, a proud capitalist, and an overbearing man. The story is based on an actual incident that took place in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the family lived for a time. Boyle's relationship with her grandfather was mixed: she reviled his politics and the way he treated others but was dependent on him financially. Mellen sums up Boyle's attitude toward Puss (and her father) by quoting her: "I knew from my father and my grandfather what I didn't want to be, and the kind of person I really didn't have any respect for at all."
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Although the narrator describes the black boy in more positive terms, he is still marked by the kind of racial stereotyping common in the early 1930s, when the story was written. Alternately, the black boy symbolizes the oppressed and victimized working class, the force of nature, and idealized love. The boy works joylessly, pushing paying customers up and down the boardwalk in a rickshaw-like chair. The girl describes him: He never wore a smile on his face, the black boy. He was thin as a shadow but darker, and he was pushing and sweating, getting the chair down to the Million Dollar Pier and back again, in and out through the people. If you turned toward the sea for a minute, you could see his face out of the corner of your eye, hanging black as a bat's wing, nodding and nodding like a dark heavy flower.
Describing the boy's physical features in animal and plant terms foregrounds the girl's view of him as a black boy, someone closer to the natural world than the whites, someone mysterious, raw, instinctual, fully "other." The girl says: "His hair grew all over the top of his head in tight dry rosettes. His neck was longer and more shapely than a white man's neck, and his fingers ran in and out of the sand like the blue feet of a bird." His exotic appearance is matched by his fantastical story of seeing camels, zebras, and tigers down by the water, but when he tells the girl that he ' 'could be almost anything I made up my mind to be" and that he once wanted to be a jockey but gave up the idea because "[t]hey have to watch their diet so careful,'' readers see him as the child he is, with a child's innocence and hope for the future. The boy gradually becomes more humanized to the girl as well, after riding her horse barebacked with skill and grace and tenderly stroking its mane. Her love for the boy is obvious in the way she describes his response to her accident. As the story's narrator, the girl seeks to make sense of her past and her experience with the black boy and her grandfather, now dead. The actual setting of the story, then, is the girl's mind. Boyle pulls off her technique of juxtaposing the symbolic and the real in her characters and setting because the lens through which the story is told is memory itself. Imagery of light and darkness pervades the story, underlining the way in which remembered details emerge and subside in the process of remembering. A typical Boyle image, which juxtaposes opposites, comes when the girl describes seeing the black boy on the beach, "sitting there in the clear white darkness." Boyle similarly packs symbolic imagery into the girl's memory of the beach:
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It may be that the coast has changed there, for even then it was changing. The lighthouse that had once stood far out on the white rocks near the outlet was standing then like a lighted torch in the heart of the town. And the deep currents of the sea may have altered so that the clearest water runs in another direction, and houses may have been built down as far as where the brink used to be. But the brink was so perilous that every word the black boy spoke seemed to fall into a cavern of beauty.
Boyle symbolically evokes the uncertainty of the girl's memory, of any memory, in these images. Her impressionistic rendering of the girl's recounting of her experience with the black boy emphasizes the point that details are largely interchangeable and, in any case, not reliable. What are important are the girl's emotional response to the boy's words, and her moral response to the injustice of racial prejudice. By transforming the details of her own history into a work of art, Boyle transcends mere autobiography and creates an enduring portrait of a young girl's passage from innocence to experience. Source: Chris Semansky, Critical Essay on "Black Boy," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
Sources Burt, Struther, Review of Thirty Stories, in Saturday Review of Literature, November 30, 1946, p. 11. Graham, Gladys, Review of "First Lover" and Other Stories, in Saturday Review of Literature, March 25, 1933, p. 501. Kronenberger, Louis, Review of "First Lover" and Other Stories, in New York Times, March 26, 1933, p. 7. Mellen, Joan, Kay Boyle: Author of Herself, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1994. Paris, Rosemary, Review of Thirty Stories, in Furioso, Summer 1947, pp. 81-82. Schriftgiesser, Karl, Review of "First Lover" and Other Stories, in Boston Transcript, March 25, 1933, p. 1. Spanier, Sandra Whipple, Kay Boyle, Artist and Activist, Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. Williams, William Carlos, "The Somnambulists," inlmaginations, edited by Webster Schott, New Directions Press, 1970, pp. 338^13.
Further Reading Bell, Elizabeth S., Kay Boyle: A Study of the Short Fiction, Twayne Publishers, 1992.
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Black Bell's book discusses Boyle's short stories. She also collects interviews with the author and critics' opinions of her work. Holt, Patricia, Publishers Weekly, Vol. 218, No. 16, October 17, 1980, pp. 8-9. Holt's essay, based on an interview with Boyle, provides an overview of the author's life. "Kay Boyle," in Current Biography: Who's News and Why, 1942, edited by Maxine Block, H. W. Wilson Company, 1942, pp. 101-04.
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This work provides a contemporary viewpoint of Boyle. McAlmon, Robert. Being Geniuses Together, Garden City, 1968. Boyle's friend, the writer Robert McAlmon, recalls the expatriate scene in Europe during the 1920s. The book includes supplementary chapters by Boyle. Mellen, Joan, Kay Boyle: Author of Herself, Farrar, Strass and Giroux, 1994. Mellen provides an in-depth portrait of Boyle as well as her literary endeavors.
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A Boy and His Dog Harlan Ellison 1969
Published in Harlan Ellison's 1969 short-story collection, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, "A Boy and His Dog" is one of the author's favorite works. Critics also appreciated the story, and it won the 1969 Nebula Award (awarded by Science Fiction Writers of America) for Best Novella. Six years later, it was adapted as a Hugo Award-winning film, with Don Johnson starring as Vic. "A Boy and His Dog" is considered one of Ellison's most compelling stories, and the author expanded it into a novel in 1989. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic America, where Vic and Blood (his telepathic dog) must fight to survive. The story's violence, explicit sexuality, and coarse language shock many readers, although these elements support Ellison's harsh presentation of the future world. Set in a bleak environment and carrying dark themes, it is often read as a cautionary tale about what the future may hold.
Author Biography Harlan Ellison is a prolific editor and writer of novels, short stories, essays, and screenplays. His fiction includes crime stories, mysteries, mainstream fiction, and science fiction. Although he is most strongly identified with science fiction, he balks at being categorized. Ellison maintains that his
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June have sex repeatedly before Vic and Blood check to see if the roverpak is gone after the fire.
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When Vic returns to the boiler room, Quilla June knocks him unconscious and escapes. When Vic awakens, he is enraged and heads for the dropshaft that will take him to her underground hometown of Topeka. When he reaches the bottom, an automated green tram (called a ' 'sentry") shackles him and takes him to an office. There, a group of people led by a man named Lew tell him that he was lured to Topeka because too few of their men are able to father children. Vic agrees to help them repopulate the city, but he wants Quilla June first.
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Vic is told to walk around the city for the next week, so that the residents can get accustomed to him. Topeka is a picturesque city where older people rock on front porches, kids play hopscotch or throw sticks for their dogs, men tip their hats at ladies, and families visit the community swimming pool. The lawns are manicured, the streets are quaint, and people enjoy being social. Vic feels confined by the politeness and picture-perfect lifestyle. Determined to escape, he finds out where his guns are being kept and where there is another way out of Topeka besides the dropshaft. At the end of the week, Lew and two other men—one of whom is Quilla June's father—take Vic to Quilla June. When they get to the house, Vic and Quilla June go to the bedroom, where she starts crying and apologizing. Vic's vindictive streak fades, and he asks if she wants to escape with him. She says yes, and Vic kills her father and the other man, and they run out of the house past Lew and Quilla June's mother. After retrieving Vic's guns, they run for the escape route, but Quilla June stops to shoot some of the people chasing them. She even tries to kill her mother. Above ground, they find Blood waiting. Blood is famished because there is no food for miles around, and his wounds from the fight with the roverpak at the YMCA need attention. He warns them that the roverpak knows they are alive. Vic is concerned about how to take care of and feed Blood, but Quilla June wants to find safety. She thinks that because she and Vic have said they love each other, Vic will make her his first priority. At the end of the story, however, she is gone, and Blood has just eaten a huge meal. Although it is not stated explicitly, it is clear that Vic has killed Quilla June to feed Blood.
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Blood is Vic's telepathic dog. Vic and Blood have been together for three years, each helping the other survive in post-apocalypse America. Blood is a "skirmisher," which is a dog that is bred for intelligence, telepathic ability, and an acute sense of smell. He is descended from a German shepherd named Ginger, who detected drugs for the Los Angeles Police Department, and a puli named Ahbhu, who was the product of an experiment to develop telepathy in dogs. Crossbreeding such dogs resulted in skirmishers, who were used in the iast world war for their telepathy and their ability to smell trace amounts of fuel, poison gas, and radiation. Although Blood can sense the presence of certain kinds of people (especially women and dangerous gang members), he is a typical skirmisher in that he has lost his ability to hunt. As a result, he must rely on Vic to find food for him. Blood is highly intelligent and well-educated. He teaches Vic reading, history, math, and culture. He and Vic often tease each other, as old friends do. At the same time, he is a product of his harsh environment, and thus can be fierce and violent. His relationship with Vic is important, and he is threatened by and suspicious of outsiders like Quilla June.
Quilla June Holmes Quilla June is the girl sent to the surface to lure a young man back to Topeka. She is a teenager who is described as having a pretty face, thin build, medium height, long reddish hair, blue eyes, and a soft voice. Her family originally came from Oklahoma before the war, but now they live underground in Topeka. She is brave because she agrees to go to the surface alone, knowing that "downunders" like herself are routinely raped and killed. Quilla June seems timid and gentle at first, but her true nature soon becomes clear. Once she and Vic have sex, she is insatiable. Her capacity for violence is first revealed when she knocks Vic unconscious with a gun. When Vic kills her father and another man in front of her, she cries and vomits, but then she recovers and laughs as she shoots at and kills her fellow townspeople. Before she and Vic make their final escape to the surface, she even tries to kill her mother.
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Despite her violent streak, Quilla June desperately wants to be loved. When she escapes Topeka with Vic, she tells him she loves him and repeatedly asks him if he loves her. She seems satisfied when he says yes and then assumes that she will be Vic's top priority. Her naivete about devotion leads to her demise. She insists that Vic leave Blood behind while they seek safety, but Vic kills her in order to feed Blood.
Lew Lew is the head of the group of aging men who use Quilla June to lure Vic underground to Topeka. He is set in his ways but also sees the necessity of getting someone to help repopulate the city. Lew is not intimidated by Vic's rough ways and profane language, but he insists that Vic behave properly while he is in Topeka. His fundamental inability to understand Vic, however, is evident when he is surprised by Vic's violent escape from Topeka to return to the surface of the Earth.
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Media Adaptations "A Boy and His Dog" was adapted to film in 1975 by LQ/JAF Production Company. The adaptation was written and directed by L. Q. Jones, and the film starred Don Johnson as Vic. This film won the 1975 Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation.
Themes Division
Vic Vic is the narrator of the story, a teenage survivor of the apocalypse, who bands together with Blood to survive the violent world in which he lives. He is a "solo," a person who is not a member of a roverpak. Because of the realities of his environment, Vic is violent, unfeeling, and impulsive. Vic knows that Blood is more intelligent than he is, and he accepts Blood's role as a teacher. Although he claims that their relationship is fair and balanced, he maintains his role as the leader of their twosome and insists on being obeyed. He dismisses Blood's sound advice, such as when Blood warns him not to follow Quilla June underground. Instead, Vic allows his rage to dictate his actions. This decision is not surprising, because Vic is guided by his base needs and feelings; when he feels the desire for sex, he follows that impulse, and when he is threatened, he follows his violent impulse. In the end, the only human emotion Vic seems capable of feeling is loyalty, and he feels this toward Blood. Despite his violent tendencies, he tells the reader that he has never hit Blood. He has no context for understanding (and thus for giving or receiving) human love, and he feels little tenderness toward Quilla June. When faced with a situation in which Blood needs to be fed, Vic makes a practical decision and kills Quilla June to feed him.
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The societies described in "A Boy and His Dog" are marked by strong divisions. Above ground, there are solos, who do not belong to any roverpaks, but instead fend for themselves, often with the aid of a dog. The numerous roverpaks are similar to gangs. They are violent, unforgiving, and intolerant of being challenged. The cinema is referred to as "neutral ground," indicating the territorial nature of the rest of the surroundings. Vic puts himself in danger with a roverpak by preventing them from getting Quilla June and then by killing several of them. This episode demonstrates the violent nature of the divisive world, and it is clear from Vic's narration that this type of clash is common. In fact, one of Blood's functions is to help warn Vic of approaching roverpaks so that he can stay out of their way. The downunders represent another division of society. Although they are not internally divided, they live in tight-knit communities that avoid interaction with others. When Vic is in Topeka, he must spend a week wandering the city to allow the residents to become accustomed to him. The downunders are also important in the story because their existence (which is so different from that of the people living on the surface of the Earth) shows the reader that the Earth itself is divided into different realms.
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Topics for Further Study Read about dystopian literature. Other dystopic works include George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World, and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Why do you suppose some authors consider the future such a dark and frightening place? Can you relate to the human fear of the unknown future? Why or why not?
them to create a work of imaginative fiction. In "A Boy and His Dog," the story springs from the reality of the widespread destruction that would come from a nuclear war. Take a scientific fact (or facts) and create a premise for a science fiction story or film. Write it in the form of a proposal letter to a publishing house or a movie producer.
Imagine how the story would be different if Blood were not a dog but a different animal. Choose an animal and give it a history, a way of relating to Vic, and a name. Write a synopsis of the story in which you replace Blood with your new animal character.
Vic is a product of his violent environment. Choose a group of people who live in a harsh environment (such as prison), and research how these environments negatively shape the people who live in them. Prepare a presentation for your class in which you describe your findings. If possible, include information about programs to help bring positive influences into these people's lives.
Science fiction involves taking a scientific principle or a set of scientific facts and extending
Violence Violence is a major feature of "A Boy and His Dog." In describing the dwindling and mutating population on Earth, Vic relates a horrifying reality: The War had killed off most of the girls The things getting born were seldom male or female, and had to be smashed against a wall as soon as they were pulled out of their mother.
The story contains many violent scenes, such as when Vic prepares to rape Quilla June, when Vic and Blood fight the roverpak, and when Vic and Quilla June shoot their way out of Topeka. Describing the scene with the roverpak at the YMCA, Vic relates, Blood leaped, right over the crossbar of the guy's rifle held at ready, and sank his fangs into the rover's throat. The guy screamed, and Blood dropped, carrying a piece of the guy with him. The guy was making awful bubbling sounds and went down on one knee. I put a slug into his head, and he fell forward.
In addition to the violent scenes, the characters' attitudes clearly reflect the violent world in which they live. Vic always carries at least two guns, a
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knife, and a spike. He casually discusses sexual encounters, but the reader soon realizes that he is talking about rape. Quilla June allows Vic to kill her father before she herself tries to kill her mother. When Vic and Blood seek entertainment, they go to the cinema, where they enjoy violent and pornographic films. They both enjoy films that are bloody and extreme. Vic describes the film Raw Deal by remarking, "Gangsters, mobs, a lot of punching and fighting. Real good."
Style Dystopia Almost every element of "A Boy and His Dog" brings the dystopic setting to life. Dystopia is the opposite of Utopia; it is a depiction of a world (usually in the future) that is bleak, emotionless, and harsh. Ellison utilizes descriptions of the physical world in addition to language, attitudes, and culture to fully relate the story's dystopic setting.
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Ellison's descriptions of the physical landscape create a gloomy picture of post-World War III Earth. Vic mentions the "crumbled remains of the curb," the "melted stub of a lamppost," the "weedovergrown craters," and the "empty corpses of blasted buildings.'' Inside the YMCA, Vic notices a stench coming from a pile of dead bodies that were never buried after the war. Almost immediately, Ellison demonstrates Vic and Blood's severe language and attitudes. These characteristics are consistent throughout the story, reflecting their reaction to the hopeless world in which they live. They are products of their environment, so they speak with profanity and relate to each other harshly. Distrust is central to their world, which is evident in the way the characters interact with one another. Vic and Quilla June have no chance of ever achieving true intimacy, and it is hardly surprising that they betray each other. Vic and Blood are loyal friends, yet they often treat each other with disrespect and meanness. The culture of Ellison's dystopic world is cruel, violent, and divisive. In the absence of law, everyone knows that there are no consequences for violence, so they continue to victimize one another. Quilla June knows that she is being followed by someone who will rape her, and Vic knows that the roverpak searching the YMCA building will kill him if they find him. Vic is so accustomed to his violent world that when he stays in Topeka, he is bored and disgusted. He comments, "Inside a week I was ready to scream.... The clean, sweet, neat, lovely way they lived was enough to kill a guy."
Historical Context American Involvement in the Vietnam War The Vietnam War began with a gradual escalation of U.S. forces in Southeast Asia during the 1950s and early 1960s and lasted until 1975, with the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front fighting the South Vietnamese and the United States military. America became involved out of fear that if Vietnam became communist-controlled, communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia. At home, the war was unpopular. Demonstrations, sit-ins, and anti-war songs became common in 1960s America.
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In 1968, Richard Nixon defeated Lyndon B. Johnson in the presidential election, promising ' 'peace with honor." As he failed to make progress in peace negotiations, Americans at home became increasingly cynical. This attitude was reflected directly and indirectly; while protestors continued to voice their disapproval, others wrote songs, fiction, and drama reflecting America's deepening concern and cynicism. Despite the difficulties surrounding the war, Nixon won reelection in 1972. In January 1973, all participants in the Vietnam War signed the Treaty of Paris. Among the terms of the Treaty of Paris were the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam (which occurred by the end of March) and a cease-fire. The war's casualties were immense; three to four million Vietnamese lost their lives, close to two million Laotians and Cambodians were killed after being drawn into the conflict, and more than fiftyeight thousand Americans died. The war cost the United States well over $130 billion. Despite the terms of the treaty, conflict persisted in Vietnam and, in 1975, North and South Vietnam were unified under communism.
Science Fiction Science fiction is a genre in which the author uses scientific facts to create fictional premises and worlds in far-off places or in the distant future. This type of fiction is generally adventuresome, fastpaced and highly imaginative, and contains obvious villains and heroes. Science fiction often incorporates elements of mythology, folklore, and medieval life. Science fiction is a relatively new genre, having begun toward the end of the nineteenth century and gained widespread popularity in the 1950s. Today, it has a sizeable readership and has become popular in television and film. As science advances, so do the possibilities of science fiction. While early science fiction often considered alien life forms, space travel, and human evolution, today's science fiction delves into issues of artificial intelligence, genetics, and computer technology.
Critical Overview Critics consider Ellison an important contributor to science fiction, despite his stance that he is not a
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Compare fc Contrast 1960s: The Vietnam War is the first war that is brought into American homes via television. Instead of reading about battles and fallen soldiers in the newspaper, Americans tune into the news to see actual footage. This is shocking and disturbing, and it helps fuel the anti-war movement. Today: American television audiences routinely view violence around the world. Wars, uprisings, riots, police chases, and stand-offs are common, and Americans expect to see footage of such events. 1960s: In 1968, Stanley Kubrick produces the classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on the novel by Arthur C. Clark. The film centers on space travel, extraterrestrial life, and a computer named HAL.
science fiction writer. A prolific author and editor, Ellison is praised for his contributions to the genre and for his work in elevating it in the eyes of the reading public. Thomas Dillingham of Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume Eight: Twentieth-Century American Science Fiction Writers comments, There can be little doubt... that Ellison has been an important force in the field, publicizing good writing, insisting on the dignity of his own and his colleagues' work, and writing some very fine stories himself.
In St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, a contributor observes that Ellison's body of work' 'is more multifaceted than that of perhaps any other science-fiction author, and because of the variety of things he does . . . he continues to be an important force in science fiction.'' "A Boy and His Dog" is ranked as one of Ellison's strongest and most memorable stories. In Extrapolation, John Crow and Richard Erlich describe it as a ' 'cautionary fable employing satire and
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Today: Steven Spielberg teams up with Stanley Kubrick Productions to produce the film A. I. This film centers on artificial intelligence and concerns an android boy who is programmed to love. He finds himself caught between the human world and the android world. 1960s: Because the Cold War still threatens world peace, the specter of World War III generates fear. Tension between the United States and the Soviet Union continues to fuel the arms race, and much emphasis is placed on which "superpower" has greater nuclear capability. Today: The break-up of the Soviet Union during the early 1990s signaled the end of the Cold War. As a result, the threat of World War III seems more distant and unlikely to most Americans as they anticipate world events of the twenty-first century.
mythic patterns to define a future world that in some respects may already be with us." Commentators often address the story's violence, characterization, and setting. George Edgar Slusser of Science Fiction Writers notes that in this and other stories, ' 'man, as the victim both of oppression and of his own violent instincts, is condemned to hopeless struggle." Commenting on Vic and Blood's rolereversal and dependence on each other, he adds, "Fascinating here is the chain of bloody dependencies established, a chain based on reversals of station." Commenting further on the relationships between the characters, Joseph Francavilla, in Phoenix from the Ashes: The Literature of the Remade World, emphasizes the loyalty between Vic and Blood. He explains: Part erotic witch and part earth mother, Quilla June is by the end of the story the sole representative of downunder and Vic's only hope for permanent, heterosexual love. Yet he rejects this possibility, a sacrifice on his part since women are rare and precious commodities above, and kills Quilla June for food to save the starving Blood.
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Francavilla is also struck by the dramatic setting of post-apocalypse Earth. He writes,' 'Ellison's post-holocaust landscapes are unique, not only because they are symbolic hells . . . but also because there is no indication, promise, or hint that the world will be rebuilt." He further observes that in these settings, time seems to have stopped. In ' 'A Boy and His Dog," this element of frozen time is especially pronounced because the landscape above is timeless in its own way, while the downunder setting of Topeka is timeless in a completely different way. While one is destroyed and hopeless, the other is a seemingly perfectly preserved version of pre-World War I America. Responding to the shocking sex, violence, and language in the story, many critics argue that these disturbing elements are appropriate in context. A St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers contributor, for example, notes that the story is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, adding: Roving gangs and roving independents, called "solos," occupy the surface of the planet; these young toughs, mostly male, are the same sort as those who roam inner-city streets today. Their language must be realistic and accurate to carry the story.. .. And without the obscenities and the violence, the reader would be less able to contrast the destructive aggressiveness of the surface group to the equally destructive non-participation of the below-grounders.
' 'A Boy and His Dog'' is in many ways typical of the author's work. Ellison's writing is often dark, disturbing, and controversial. In Bloomsbury Review, Tom Auer remarks, Ellison's prose is powerful and ingenious but often angry, sometimes sinister, occasionally gloomy, and often with an edge that can cut quickly to and through the heart of his subject, and that of his reader for that matter.
Criticism Jennifer Bussey Bussey holds a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor's degree in English Literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, Bussey explores the significance of the role reversal that characterizes the relationship between Vic and Blood in Ellison's story. As indicated by the title, ' 'A Boy and His Dog'' is about the relationship between the two main charac-
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Through Vic's reversion to an animal state as a result of his environment and Blood's acceleration to a highly evolved state as a result of genetic manipulation, Ellison makes a strong statement about the power of external and internal influences,"
ters in the story, a teenager named Vic and his telepathic dog named Blood. Among the many unusual qualities of this story is the role-reversal that characterizes this human-canine relationship. Ellison inverts what the reader understands as the dynamic between a person and a dog, making the human the more impulsive character and the dog the more thoughtful one. The author's use of inversion in the story reflects the dramatic changes that have taken place on Earth since the War demolished it physically, socially, and culturally. Ellison's presentation of inversions also suggests that perhaps the present is not as stable as the reader might think. The relationship between Vic and Blood shows how something that is taken for granted in the present— the dynamics between people and their pets—might be inverted in the future. Because Vic is human, the reader expects him to be levelheaded, dominant, caring, and intelligent. He should be Blood's guide, providing for his needs and taking charge of navigating them through the human world. Instead, Vic is impulsive, instinctual, uneducated, and weakened by his base drives. Ellison relates Vic's animal nature on the first page when Vic tells Blood to find him a woman because he needs sex. When Blood teases him, Vic is too blinded by his sexual drive to respond good-naturedly; he is mad at Blood for not immediately responding to his needs. For Vic, sex is not a mutual, loving act; it is rape, and his only concern is fulfilling his need, without regard for the woman he finds. Vic is also violent, sometimes in reaction to being physically threatened, and sometimes in reaction to having his lifestyle threatened. He, Blood,
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What Do I Read Next? Ellison's 1993 Mefisto in Onyx is a novel combining crime novel characters with supernatural elements. When a district attorney suspects that a convicted man is innocent, she persuades a man who can read minds to uncover the truth. Critics praise the book for its pace, originality, and characterization. Robert A. Heinlein's classic science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a man brought up by
and Quilla June are threatened by the presence of the roverpak in the YMCA, so Vic reacts by hiding and killing as many of them as he can. This is an example of the basic "fight or flight" instinct, and Vic never chooses flight. In his environment, there is no way to run away from a situation safely, so he has learned to respond to danger with violence. Later, when his carefree, roaming, crude lifestyle is threatened by the leaders of Topeka, he responds like a caged animal. In essence, he wants to return to his native habitat. Blood, as a dog, could be expected to be an instinct-driven, submissive, and obedient creature who constantly seeks his master's approval. Instead, Blood is the intelligent one in the relationship. He is educated, clever, clear-thinking, and wise. While Vic is impulsive and short-sighted, Blood is levelheaded and strategic, thinking through his plans and choices. He is Vic's instructor, teaching him reading, math, history, and culture. Blood is more intuitive than Vic is, and he has a better understanding of their society. Blood tries to act as Vic's advisor. When Vic is irrational, Blood attempts to reason with him and guide him to make better decisions. He warns Vic that he does not trust Quilla June and that Vic should not pursue her underground. Although he is rational, Blood is also able to be fierce when necessary. His complex nature is best revealed in the scene in which he and Vic fight the roverpak at the
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Martians who arrives on earth as a foreigner. This Hugo Award-winning novel continues to intrigue readers with its plot, characters, and controversial topics. George Orwell's 1984 (1949) is a classic novel describing a dystopic future in a new region called Oceania. The main character, Winston, is in danger because he questions the all-powerful, all-seeing Big Brother.
YMCA. Blood attacks by going for the throat, but he also devises a plan to try to fool the roverpak into thinking they (Vic, Blood, and Quilla June) are all dead. In considering the role-reversal in the relationship between Vic and Blood, an important distinction must be made. Vic has reverted to an animallike state as a result of his environment, while Blood has evolved to a more rational state as a result of genetic engineering. Vic is genetically the same as present-day readers, but his extreme environment makes him very different. On the other hand, Blood is nothing like present-day dogs. He is evolved by design. Ellison supports the dynamics of the rolereversal in his characterization of Quilla June. Although she lives in a seemingly pleasant city underground, she has a very violent nature. Ellison makes the point that the artificiality of the picket fences and gumball machines of the recreated preWorld War I city can mask, but not erase, the horrors of the war that sent them all underground in the first place. The environment, then, is not restricted to the immediate and visible world, but includes the realities of the history that created it. Through Vic's reversion to an animal state as a result of his environment and Blood's acceleration to a highly evolved state as a result of genetic manipulation, Ellison makes a strong statement about the power of external and internal influences. The story becomes a twist on the long-standing
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psychological debate about the dominance of "nature" or "nurture." The debate most often centers on the question of whether nature (genetics) or nurture (environment) affects creatures more powerfully. Ellison's story focuses more on the fact that neither alone is enough to yield a self-sufficient creature. These two characters are brought together because each needs the other. Neither is fully capable of functioning alone. In spite of his animal-like survival skills, Vic needs Blood to help warn him of danger and to provide intelligent counsel. And for all his intellect and keen sense of smell, Blood still needs Vic to find food for him and to care for his wounds. Beyond the practical aspects of their relationship, Ellison demonstrates that the bond between Vic and Blood is forged in part by the same force that brings people and animals together today— loyalty. Even in the extreme environment and bizarre circumstances of the story's dystopic setting, there is something vaguely familiar in the inverted relationship between Vic and Blood. Source: Jennifer Bussey, Critical Essay on "A Boy and His Dog," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
Cody Walker Walker teaches writing and literature courses at the University of Washington. In the following essay, Walker tracks the ways in which Ellison's story suffers from misogynistic and adolescent posturing. When Marlon Brando, in the 1953 film The Wild One, is asked what he's rebelling against, he answers, "Whaddaya got?" It's an iconic moment in twentieth-century art: a young man casting off societal constraints. In Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog," Vic adopts this spirit of amorphous protest. He rails against "squares" with "nice whitewashed fences"; he turns manicured poodles into dog chow. What he doesn't do is demonstrate the advantages to be found in the rebellious stance. Vic gains freedom of a sort, but he remains frozen in his own misogynistic and adolescent postures. It's a trade-off with which Ellison appears comfortable. Ellison's work has long trumpeted the outsider, the dissenter, the man neither caste- nor clockconscious. By calling his 1988 short story collection Angry Candy, Ellison allied himself with another self-proclaimed rebel, the poet e. e. cummings. The allusion is to cummings's "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls," a satiric poem in
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There's no interesting irony or cathartic terror or unsettling surrealism—what remains is Ellison, very much present, saying 'look what I can get away with."'
which upper-class ladies exercise their "comfortable minds" by bandying "scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D." The ladies' social consciences are eased by knitting sweaters. The moon, meanwhile, offers protest, rattling in the sky "like a fragment of angry candy." Ellison's characters confront orthodox thought just as angrily as cummings's moon does. In '"Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," Ellison's hero is accused of being a non-conformist. ' "That didn't used to be a felony,'' he replies. "It is now," the totalitarian figure shoots back. "Live in the world around you." But Ellison's characters are rarely able to live in the worlds around them. "A Boy and His Dog" illustrates the problem neatly. Vic devotes much of his time "aboveground" searching for sex—a search that, more times than not, is unsuccessful. Lured "downunder," he learns that the townspeople of Topeka plan to employ him as a stud service. For someone whose taste in movies runs to ' 'Big Black Leather Splits,'' this development is, as Vic says, "too good to be true." But rather than continue to revel in his good fortune, he finds that within a week he's "ready to scream." For Ellison's Topeka is full of cummings's Cambridge ladies—conservatives too self-content to notice a wider world around them. Vic sees them as "squares of the worst kind," "lawanorder goofs," Better Business Bureau bumblers who rake lawns, collect milk bottles, and listen to oompah bands in the park. Existence for the Topekans is a collective experience; Vic is, by definition, a solo. He's also, by Ellison's reckoning, a natural man, a figure who acts on instinct and who feels kinship with the mountains and forests and moon. He balks at the Topekans' ' 'artificial peas and fake meat and makebelieve chicken and ersatz corn''; he denounces the
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"lying, hypocritical crap they called civility." Vic imagines himself on the side of the truth-teller, the outlaw, the man who can't be bullied or bought. Trapped in the tin can of Topeka, among people with comfortable minds, he sets forth to free himself, brass balls and rattle in hand. In the introduction to his story "The Crackpots," Ellison writes disparagingly of the "faceless gray hordes of sidewalk sliders who go from there to here without so much as a hop, skip or a jump." That hopping and skipping sound like child's play is no accident; Ellison's prescription for society's ills usually involves a return to adolescence. The' 'aboveground" scenes of "A Boy and His Dog" resemble a teenage boy's fantasy, complete with movies and gymnasiums and naked girls. (The fantasy is even educational, as Vic notes the manner in which Quilla June puts on her bra. ' 'I never knew the way chicks did it," he confesses.) Gestures toward youthfulness abound: Vic and Quilla June have sex on a wrestling mat; goods are exchanged by the barter system; the Metropole Theater is run by a rascally roverpak named Our Gang. And, of course, there's the story's conclusion. Boys do love their dogs. The conclusion demands attention. A young woman who has been objectified throughout the story (as ' 'that girl" or ' 'that Quilla June'') is killed and cooked and made into dog food. (L. Q. Jones, who wrote and directed the screen version of Ellison's fantasy, turns Quilla June's predicament into a terrible joke. "She said she loved me," Vic tells Blood. The dog replies, "Well, I'd say she certainly had marvelous judgment, Albert—if not particularly good taste." Boy and dog laugh; credits roll.) Ursula K. Le Guin, in her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction, writes that patterns of misogyny in science fiction are "often so brainlessly repetitive as to debase stories otherwise inventive and imaginative." In "A Boy and His Dog," Vic imagines women to be sub-human and disposable ("All the ones I'd ever seen had been scumbags that Blood had smelled out for me, and I'd snatchn'grabbed them"). Some of Ellison's best-known stories—' 'The Prowler in the City' 'and ' 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream''—feature women in appalling situations. Even a relatively mild work, "The City on the Edge of Forever" (Ellison's Hugo Award-winning Star Trek script), turns on the need for a female sacrifice. On the DVD version of A Boy and His Dog, the director talks about reactions to the film after its 1975 release. "The first time out," Jones says,
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"women's groups went bonkers." While it would be folly to suggest that the movie shouldn't be seen or the story shouldn't be read (Ellison has long spoken forcefully against censorship), it's fair to consider the strategies of either work in terms of artistic effect. The problem with the level of misogyny in the story is that it's not in service of anything greater than itself. There's no interesting irony or cathartic terror or unsettling surrealism— what remains is Ellison, very much present, saying ' 'look what I can get away with." And ' 'look what I can get away with" is an adolescent posture. ' 'Look what I can get away with'' also contains a dash of self-congratulation, and that's a deadly ingredient for protest art. The most effective works of social protest are often the quietest: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska to name a few. Too much hullabaloo and muscle flexing turn the focus away from the target and toward the one doing the targeting. (Ellison's novella All the Lies That Are My Life was published with six afterwords by six different writers; the narcissism of the venture is almost comic.) "Strange Wine,'' the 1976 Ellison story that Le Guin selected for The Norton Book of Science Fiction, shows Ellison in a more restrained, less smug, mode. Willis Kaw lives on Earth but believes himself to be an alien. Plagued by earthly troubles and longing to return home, Willis commits suicide—only to find that he is indeed an alien and that his home planet is a place of true torment. (Earth, it turns out, is known throughout the galaxy as "the pleasure planet.") An interesting study of relativism, "Strange Wine" shows Ellison working with familiar themes, but without the self-congratulatory tone that can be so crippling to his art. In the introduction to his Collected Poems, cummings writes that "it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves that the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs." Along with a love for compound-word coinages, cummings and Ellison share a presumption about their readerships that is dangerously exclusionary. Cummings expects support as he knocks down old ladies; Ellison wants cheering as he battles the "squares." To react otherwise would be to incite the moon's wrath or be labeled a Topekan. But life is more complicated than either of these positions allows for, and art has a responsibility to address those complications. Ask a Cambridge lady the right question and you may find a passion for zoology, or printmaking, or higher
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mathematics. Explore a place like Topeka (either the current city, or Ellison's "downunder" version) and you're likely to encounter some free spirits in the mix. (Quilla June is certainly a free spirit, but Ellison so exaggerates her lust for sex and blood that she becomes cartoonish rather than complex.) Yes, the world needs more harlequins, more rattlers, more hoppers and jumpers, but it also needs more people who can ask questions, who don't presume to have everything and everyone figured out. There's nothing squarer than thinking inside of a box. Introducing the second edition of Paingod and Other Delusions, his 1965 story collection, Ellison writes, "I'm the same as you: the deaths of a hundred thousand flood victims in some banana republic doesn't touch me one one-millionth as much as the death of my dog did.'' Ellison, in fact, is not the same as any of his readers, and much of his fiction—"A Boy and His Dog" included—celebrates those who recognize and claim their own uniqueness. Unfortunately, the celebration often turns smug. Vic knows himself to be an individual, but he puts this knowledge to a boastful and uninteresting end. Stuck in his adolescent fantasy, he murders Quilla June and expects thanks from readers and dog alike. A mature reader is likely to ask, "What else do you got?" But Vic's pockets are as empty as his posturing. Source: Cody Walker, Critical Essay on "A Boy and His Dog," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
John Crow and Richard Erlich In the following essay, Crow and Erlich explore mythic elements in Ellison's novella and the subsequent film adaptation. Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, as novella and film, is a cautionary fable employing satire and mythic patterns to define a future world that in some respects may already be with us. The "boy" is Vic (Don Johnson) and the "dog" is Blood (voice by Tim Mclntire); their world is the American Southwest in 2024, shortly after World War IV and the near-total destruction of the human race. Vic is a "solo" operating with his dog, Blood, competing for survival and sex with other solos and their dogs and, also, with "roverpaks," small tribes formed in the wake of the destruction of all other social order. Blood, however, is not the ordinary Canisfamiliaris of our world. By means of biological engineering, carried out to produce "skirmisher dogs" for the military, dogs have become more intelligent and, also, capable of telepathic communication with
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humans. Their sense of smell has been modified to be ultra-sensitive to humans so that they can locate enemies. Consequently, many of them, including Blood, have lost the ability to find their own food. But these dogs find men to forage for them. The men cooperate partly because dogs are useful in the fight for survival, but primarily because the newmodel dogs are as competent at tracking down females as they are at locating enemies—a highly valuable skill in a world with a diminishing female population. Even among dogs of this new type, though, Blood seems extraordinary. Not only is he the sharpest' 'tail-scent'' around, he is also intellectually more sophisticated than Vic and emotionally more mature than any of the humans we see in the world of 2024. In Blood, we have one of the variations in mythic patterns and folk motifs that make both Ellison's novella and Jones's film so fascinating and disturbing. At first glance, Blood seems much like the wise magic animal of folk and fairy tales who comes to the aid of the hero when the hero is at an impasse. But Blood goes beyond this role to become Vic's link to the lost pre-war civilization, teaching him reading, arithmetic, recent history, and ' 'Edited English'' grammar. He becomes the culture-bearer of the bombed-out wasteland, superior to Vic in everything but the necessary skills of animal survival. The normal relationship of human and animal is inverted. This inversion and others that follow acquire significance when we see them against the structural pattern of the story. The pattern is the basic descent-containment-reascent pattern of initiation, which in primitive societies is usually a formalized ritual designed to bring a boy into manhood. It is also appears in myths of the hero, where the hero undertakes the task of renewing the wasteland. Through the many variations of the pattern, the task confronting the protagonist remains the same: to maintain conscious "human" control over the unconscious "animal" instincts and responses, thereby overcoming fear, fatigue, inattention or disobedience, or the temptation to indulge appetites such as hunger or the sex drive. Since the sexual appetite presents such a powerful and persistent temptation to the hero, the feminine becomes a symbol of the danger of losing consciousness and regressing to instinctual, unconscious motivation. On the other hand, the feminine can function as mediatrix of the life force that brings renewal to the wasteland. In myth, the feminine has either positive or negative
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In myth, the feminine has either positive or negative value according to whether she overwhelms the hero and renders him ineffectual by depriving him of human consciousness or joins him in the task of rejuvenating the wasteland."
value according to whether she overwhelms the hero and renders him ineffectual by depriving him of human consciousness or joins him in the task of rejuvenating the wasteland. All the elements of this mythic situation are present in both the film and the novella: the bombed-out wasteland incapable of the renewal of life; the feminine sexual lure into the descent, represented by Quilla June Holmes (Suzanne Benton); a hero divided between using good sense and pursuing his sexual desires; and the necessity for rebirth (the goal of initiation). The need for rebirth is implicit in the first part of the narrative in the images of the wasteland—the radiation-scorched plain—and, symbolically, in the preoccupation of all males with tracking down the few females who remain above ground. The impossibility of rebirth is implicit in the brutality and violence of the sexual relationship in Vic's world. With a few exceptions, the women in this world hide from men, and, if found, are brutally raped and sometimes killed. As the film opens, Blood and Vic have tracked down a female only to find her already the captive of a roverpak. A long-distance shot gives us Vic and Blood's view of the departing rovers, and we hear in the distance a young boy's voice exclaim excitedly, ' 'Did you see how she jerked when I cut her?" Vic finds the woman stabbed to death and expresses his view of the pity of it all: ' 'Ah, why'd they have to do that? She was good for three or four more times yet." Masculine and feminine are alien and hostile to one another; rebirth in such a world is impossible.
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Cheated by the roverpak out of his own chance for rape, Vic takes Blood to a "beaver flick," where Blood picks up the scent of a woman, disguised as a solo. Vic and Blood track her to a bombed-out YMCA, stand off a roverpak whose dogs have also picked up a female scent, and discover a woman from the downunder who is not only desirable but willing—very willing. Quilla June Holmes is an escapee (apparently) from the State of Topeka, one of the subterranean retreats of American middle-class civilization, and she has never had such a good time. From Vic's point of view she has only one flaw: she is concerned about love, offending Vic's sense of propriety and wounding his ego by suggesting that he does not know a thing about it. Their discussion of love introduces into the film the concept of relatedness between masculine and feminine that could promise a renewal of the wasteland. Unfortunately, at this point Quilla June bashes Vic over the head with a flashlight and disappears back into the downunder, leaving behind the keycard that opens the access shaft to the underground. This sets up the descent of the hero into the underworld, for Vic, much to Blood's disgust, loses whatever good sense he once possessed: lured on by his desire to get even and his desire for Quilla June, Vic decides to follow her downunder. The pattern seems true to the usual psychological significance of mythic descents. The loss of "human" intellect reduces the hero to the animal level, and he descends into the womb of the Earth Mother to struggle with the unconscious forces of instinct, passion, and, quite possibly, death. As Blood remarks sarcastically, Vic is acting like a putz, phallic man, ruled by his lower rather than his higher human nature. The argument between Vic and Blood makes clear the baseness of Vic's macho motivation. To pursue Quilla June, Vic leaves Blood, hungry and badly wounded from the fight with the roverpak, to fend for himself. The inversion between man and animal is starkest at this point. The next inversion follows closely. The underground that Vic discovers is anything but a region of the spontaneity, disorder, and passion of the Earth Mother. Vic descends through a hell not of chaos, but of machinery, pipes, cables, and wires. Cryptic labels, valves, color-coded gadgets of various types add to the clutter of an extensive life-support system for the underground city, all of which disappear as Vic leaves the shaft and enters the city itself. The downunder is innocent of any sign of highly developed scientific technology. It is America circa 1915— River City in parody, complete with marching bands,
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community picnics, overalls, straw hats, and gingham dresses. The only anomalies are a public address system with a Big Brother voice, giving recipes, homespun advice, notices to the public—and Michael. Michael is a big, husky hayseed who enforces rigid order for the ruling Committee; and as we discover later, he is a humanoid robot, backed up by several immediately available replacements. The Committee is comprised of a female secretary (Helen Winston) and two mean-minded, dessicated old men (Jason Robards and Charles McGraw). They recognize only one crime: "Lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority''; and they assign only one punishment: death by "natural" causes— which means summary execution by Michael. This underground world is, in short, the antithesis of the underground of myth and fairy tale. It is a sterile, rigidly structured, time-denying society, as mechanistic as the life-support machinery concealed in the shafts surrounding it. But there is a sense in which locating this ossified society in the underground world of unconsciousness conforms with the usual significance of mythic undergrounds. For we become most unconscious in our habitual acceptance of cultural forms, in the sacrifice of human intellect by failing to question these forms— until, little by little, our social behavior becomes as automatic as breathing. A character of Ellison's describes the process in mechanistic terms: "Men often become too much like their machines... Then they blame the machines for dehumanizing them." And "machinery," is not only technological gadgets but also social forms. Civilized society produces traditional forms as constraining as the tabus of the most primitive culture; and it can produce its own rigid orthodoxies, and orthodoxy, in George Orwell's words, "means . . . not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconscious." Orthodoxy is the highest value in Topeka. Consequently, the underground world is even more of a wasteland than the world above ground. In the downunder consciousness is repressed; and any attempt to become conscious, to examine the system, becomes "Lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority" and a prelude to absolute unconsciousness at Michael's hands. Accordingly, rebirth is as impossible in the downunder as it is in the wasteland above, a situation that becomes apparent when the captured Vic discovers that he has been lured down below by Quilla June to perform stud service on the young female population, the
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males having lost their fertility in the sterile mechanistic world. Vic is delighted to oblige, but his "service'' is a good deal less pleasant than he expects. The film, in an improvement on the novella, shows Vic, mouth taped shut, strapped to a table and connected to an aseptic machine of gleaming chrome and glass. Down the hall stretches a seemingly endless line of conventionally gowned, sad-faced "brides." Each ' 'bride'' is brought to a flowery arch at the entrance to the room where Vic is captive, a clergyman in full vestments intones a marriage ceremony, the machine hums and clicks—and Vic ejaculates, his semen neatly transported into a test tube. Quilla June rescues Vic, not so much because she likes what he does, but mostly because she has planned a coup to take over the downunder and intends to manipulate Vic into using his fighting ability to help her succeed. The Committee aborts the coup; and Michael brutally executes Quilla June's co-conspirators, a small band of ineffectual boy friends. After Vic finally destroys this Michael, he and Quilla June escape up to the surface, where they find the deserted and starving Blood near death from hunger and from the wounds he sustained helping Vic defend Quilla June. Quilla June, fearing pursuit, demands that Vic leave Blood and continue their escape. But Blood needs food immediately; and Vic, who has recovered a human consciousness during the struggle below, decides to provide it from the most obvious source in the barren landscape. The film closes with Vic and Blood setting off into the sunrise to look for Overthehill—a place where "food grows right out of the ground!" The final image implies what Ellison makes explicit at the end of his novella: "It took a long time before I stopped hearing her . . . asking me: do you know what love is? Sure I know. A boy loves his dog.
The film, like Ellison's novella, demands consideration of just how consciously our own society is proceeding into its technological future. It also has in its political implications a strong condemnation of any complacent "silent majority" who would deny time and change by a mechanistic application of outworn values. Both Ellison's story and Jones's film present a two-level world: on the surface we have "man in a state of nature," a la Thomas Hobbes, a life of "perpetual war of every man against his neighbor''; in the downunder we have a
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mechanized incarnation of Hobbes' Leviathan—a totalitarian society where people have renounced freedom, individuality, and, most of all, consciousness, for stability and order. This Hobbesian dichotomy presented in a mythic structure suggests the horror of a world not future, but present, a world where our surface struggles move in patterns dictated by our unconscious subservience to traditional forms. Jones's film, like Ellison's novella, cautions us that the blighted wasteland of 2024 may become reality, the result, not so much of man's unrestrained animal nature as of his social, political, and technological machinery. As Susan Sontag observed in "The Imagination of Disaster": "The dark secret behind human nature used to be the animal—as in King Kong. The threat to man, his availability for dehumanization, lay in his own animality. Now the danger is understood as residing in man's ability to be turned into a machine." Vic's discovery at the end of the film that' 'a boy loves his dog'' places the center of value in Blood, the intelligent animal with a capacity for love. Blood waits for Vic even in the face of starvation: the dog loves his boy. Blood's love surpasses merely unconscious, "phallic," love; it far surpasses the power-hungry manipulation of passion represented by Quilla June. And in the end, Vic's love matches Blood's. The end of the film is appropriately grotesque, but in the world of 2024 it is the best resolution we can hope for: Blood's breakfast fire glowing dimly in the foreground, he and Vic walk off together into the sunrise, joined by consciousness and love. Source: John Crow and Richard Erlich, "Mythic Patterns in Ellison's A Boy and His Dog,'' in Extrapolation, Vol. 18, No. 2, May 1977, pp. 162-66.
Sources Auer, Tom, "The Latest Dangerous Visions of Harlan Ellison: The Slayer of Great Beasts Strikes Again (& Again)," in Bloomsbury Review, May/June 1994. Crow, John, and Richard Erlich, "Mythic Patterns in Ellison's 'A Boy and His Dog,'" in Extrapolation, Vol. 18, No. 2, May 1977, pp. 162-66.
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cummings, e. e., A Selection of Poems, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. Dillingham, Thomas F., "Harlan Ellison," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8: Twentieth-Century American Science Fiction Writers, Gale Research, 1981, pp. 161-69. Ellison, Harlan, ed., Dangerous Visions, New American Library, 1967. , Paingod and Other Delusions, Pyramid, 1965. Francavilla, Joseph, "Mythic Hells in Harlan Ellison's Science Fiction," in Phoenix from the Ashes: The Literature of the Remade World, edited by Carl B. Yoke, Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 157-64. Le Guin, Ursula, and Brian Attebery, eds., The Norton Book of Science Fiction, Norton, 1993. Slusser, George Edgar, "Harlan Ellison," in Science Fiction Writers, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982, pp. 357-68. Sullivan, C. W., Ill, "Ellison, Harlan (Jay)," in St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, edited by Jay P. Pederson, St. James Press, 1996, pp. 299-302.
Further Reading Dowling, Terry, ed., The Essential Ellison: A Fifty-Year Retrospective, Morpheus International, 2000. This comprehensive volume provides an overview of Ellison's prolific writing career, beginning in 1949. Because it contains both fiction and nonfiction in its twelve hundred pages, it is an excellent resource for students of Ellison's work. Friedman, Norman, The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War, United Sates Naval Institute, 1999. In this historical overview, Friedman reviews the events leading up to, during, and ending the Cold War in a way that demonstrates how they are interrelated. The bulk of his analysis is spent on the 1950s and 1960s, although significant occurrences in the 1980s and early 1990s are also discussed. Roberts, Garyn G., ed., The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Prentice Hall, 2000. This anthology combines the works of many of the foremost authors of science fiction, such as Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, and H. G. Wells, with those of some unexpected authors, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley, and Charles Dickens. By presenting a wide array of authors and styles, the editor seeks to demonstrate the universality and long-standing appeal of science fiction and fantasy.
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The Challenge In 1958 (at the age of twenty-two), Mario Vargas Llosa won first place for his short story "The Challenge'' in a fiction contest sponsored in Peru by Revue franfaise. His prize was a trip to Paris, a city he had longed to visit and to which he later returned to seriously pursue writing.
Mario Vargas Llosa 1958
Among the themes common in Vargas Llosa's fiction is that of establishment of power by means of violence. Although "The Challenge" was written very early in his career, this idea is already forming. In the story, the Gimp demonstrates his strength, power, and believability by killing the man he challenged, Justo. That the Gimp wants his opponent to surrender rather than be killed has less to do with the theme of power than with the particular character of the Gimp. The sense of disillusionment often portrayed in Vargas Llosa's work is also present in "The Challenge"; when Justo loses the fight, his father is left with the hollow victory of knowing that his son fought bravely.
Author Biography Mario Vargas Llosa was born on March 28,1936, in Arequipa, Peru. His family was well to do, and when his parents separated shortly after his birth, Vargas Llosa accompanied his mother to live with her parents. Her father was a diplomat, so many of
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Vargas Llosa and his wife left for Spain, and when Vargas Llosa's grant ended, the couple moved to Paris so he could continue working on his novel about his years in the military academy. Vargas Llosa had loved Paris since his first visit in 1958; that trip was a prize he won in a fiction contest for his short story "The Challenge." Vargas Llosa's first novel, The Time of the Hero, was published in 1963 and catapulted Vargas Llosa into the ranks of writers associated with the ' 'boom'' in Latin American literature. This novel, based on Vargas Llosa's military academy experiences, was condemned by military leaders, and one thousand copies were burned. This controversy only increased public interest in the book.
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Vargas Llosa's formative years were spent moving from place to place in Latin America. In 1950, his parents reconciled, and he and his mother went back to live with his father. The father-son relationship was strained, because Vargas Llosa's father believed the boy had been spoiled by his years with his grandparents, and he saw the boy's interest in writing as too feminine. To offset these "inadequacies," he sent his fourteen-year-old son to Leoncia Prado Military Academy. Vargas Llosa considers these years to be among the worst of his life. Vargas Llosa's years at the academy did not squelch his interest in writing, and when he was older, he longed to travel to Europe to focus on writing. He completed his undergraduate work in literature and law at the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, and then earned a grant to study in Spain. While in college, he had married his aunt (by marriage) Julia. The union between the nineteenyear-old man and the thirty-two-year-old woman was a scandal in the family. During his college years, he had supported himself and his wife by securing work as a reporter with local television stations and newspapers. Another important development during his college years was his introduction to the world of politics, a forum that would become his passion for the rest of his life.
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Vargas Llosa continued to write and became increasingly involved in politics when he returned to Peru. His leadership in a protest movement eventually led to his presidential campaign in 1989. His party advocated democracy, a free-market economic system, and personal liberty. Despite losing the race, Vargas Llosa brought credibility to his party because of his stature in Peru. Today, Vargas Llosa lives in Spain with his second wife. They have three children. He continues to write and is often mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate. His work includes novels, short stories, literary criticism, essays, journalism, and drama.
Plot Summary As the story opens, the narrator, Julian, is sitting at the River Bar with his friends Leon and Briceno. Leonidas, an older man, arrives and joins them. He informs them that Justo (another member of the group) will be fighting the Gimp at the raft that night. When Leonidas leaves, Briceno says that Justo is likely to lose, and the others tell him to be quiet. Julian goes home briefly, changes clothes, wraps up a knife and puts it in his pocket, and tells his wife he will be back later. He returns to the River Bar, where he talks to the owner, Moses, who has already heard about the fight. Because Justo is his friend, Moses offers to help in any way he can. He fears for Justo and tells Julian that the Gimp and his friends were in the bar the previous night, bragging about how they were going to get Justo. When they finish talking, Julian notices Justo sitting alone. Justo tells Julian how he ran into the Gimp and his friends and
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how they challenged him to the fight. Julian shows Justo the knife he has brought, and Justo says he will use his own. They finish their beers and go to meet Leon and Briceno. Leon and Briceno show confidence in Justo's ability to win the fight with the Gimp, despite earlier doubts. The four young men arrive at the raft, which is actually a huge carob tree that fell into the river years ago and moves only slightly every year. They see that the Gimp and his group are already there, and members of the two opposing groups exchange hostile, sarcastic words. Leonidas arrives, to the surprise of the fighters and their friends, but he insists that he has as much right to be there as any of them. Julian checks out the Gimp's knife; he examines the width, length, weight, and sharpness and declares it fair. Before having his own knife examined, Justo asks Leonidas why he is there. Leonidas replies that he came because he wanted to come. Chunga checks out Justo's knife and declares it fair. Justo and the Gimp prepare to fight, and Leonidas approaches Justo with words of advice about how to win the fight. The fight begins slowly, but soon escalates. Both fighters manage to knick the other, but eventually Justo is seriously hurt. Still, he refuses to surrender, and the Gimp pleads first with Julian (who was once his friend) and then with Leonidas to make Justo give up the fight. Justo refuses, and the fight continues. Soon, Justo collapses. The Gimp and his group slowly leave the area while the others pick up Justo's lifeless body. Leon turns to Leonidas and says, "Don't cry, old-timer. I've never known anyone brave as your son. I really mean that." When the young men offer to take Justo's body to Leonidas' hut, he says, "Yes."
Characters Briceno Briceno is one of the young men in the central group of friends in the story. He speaks his mind, such as when he announces that he thinks the Gimp will kill Justo in the fight. When he sees Justo, however, he expresses nothing but confidence in Justo's ability to win the fight.
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Chalupas Chalupas is the Gimp's most vocal supporter on the night of the fight. He belittles Justo and has an air of hostility about him.
Chunga Chunga is one of the Gimp's supporters. He is the one responsible for checking Justo's weapon to be sure it is acceptable.
The Gimp The Gimp is Justo's opponent in the fight. Despite being crippled, the Gimp is strong and skilled at fighting. The Gimp is confident in his ability and, according to Moses, was set on challenging Justo to a fight. The Gimp is like the other men in the story in that he participates in talking tough before the fight. Despite his talk, he does not actually want to kill Justo, as seen when he pleads first with Julian then with Leonidas to get Justo to give up the fight. The Gimp is described as being very ugly. He is quite tall, has a dark, pimply complexion, and is beardless. He has small eyes, long cheekbones, and thick lips. His left foot is lame, and there are rumors that he has a huge scar on his left foot from a pig bite, although nobody has ever seen the scar. At some point in the past, the Gimp and Julian were friends, although no explanation for the estrangement is offered. Still, toward the end of the fight, when the Gimp fears he will have to kill Justo to stop him, he pleads with Julian to make Justo surrender. The Gimp seems to understand that Julian values friendship, so he calls on him, in the name of past friendship, to save Justo for the sake of present friendship.
Julian Huertas Julian is the story's narrator. He is levelheaded, loyal, and trustworthy. He is the man on Justo's side who is given the responsibility of looking over the Gimp's weapon to be sure it is acceptable. Julian is married and has a son, but little is said about his relationship with his family. Julian is not afraid of the Gimp or his friends. When Chalupas speaks to him in a threatening way, Julian responds with insults.
Justo Justo is a skilled fighter who is challenged by the Gimp. Justo is Julian's friend, and he relies on the support of the other young men in his social
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group when he goes to fight the Gimp. Julian describes Justo as looking "like a kid, a woman: from [a certain] angle, his features were delicate, soft." From another angle, however, Justo's large purple scar across his face is visible. It extends from the corner of his mouth to his forehead.
Leon Leon is one of Julian's friends; he is also a supporter of Justo in the fight. His compassion is seen at the end of the story when he tries to comfort Leonidas by telling him that he has never seen anyone as brave as his son.
Leonidas Leonidas is an older man who is friends with the central group of young men (Julian and his friends) in the story. Leonidas lives alone just outside of town in a small hut. He shows up on the night of the fight, which seems to surprise everyone. He is not afraid of the Gimp or his friends and chastises them for questioning his right to be there. Just before the fight, he whispers advice to Justo to help him with the fight. At the end of the story, the reader learns that Leonidas is Justo's father.
Moses Moses owns the River Bar, where Julian and his friends sometimes go to have a beer. When Moses hears about the fight, he offers to help even though he feels that Justo's chances of winning the fight are not good.
Themes Loyalty Each character portrayed in "The Challenge" is loyal to either Justo or the Gimp. The battle lines are clearly drawn throughout the story, as no characters attempt to stop the fight or arbitrate the tension between the two sides. Although Briceno and Moses express doubt about Justo's ability to win the fight, they remain loyal to their friend. Loyalty is presented as something that is grounded in friendship and personal relationships rather than in a selfserving need to be on the winner's side. When Briceno sees Justo before the fight, he never shows his uncertainty to Justo but expresses nonchalance and confidence in his friend's ability to win the fight. He knows that Justo will not back down from fighting the Gimp, and his loyalty prompts him to be
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supportive in words and actions. Similarly, Moses offers to help in any way he can, despite his belief that Justo may not win. The type of loyalty portrayed in ' "The Challenge' ' is loyalty within the parameters of fairness and honor. The fighters and their supporters adhere to an agreed-upon set of rules, and they do not interfere in the fight. This shows that they are loyal to their friends (Justo and the Gimp) to the extent that they will respect their decision to fight to the end, even if it means death; to do otherwise would be to compromise their friends' dignity.
Machismo According to Sara Castro-Klaren in Latin-American Writers, the word machismo refers to exaggerated masculinity; American Heritage Dictionary adds that machismo is characterized by aggressiveness, virility, and emphasis on physical courage. Vargas Llosa came face to face with machismo during his years in the military academy, and in ' 'The Challenge," the characters depict this quality. In the story, machismo is portrayed in a variety of ways. The challenge issued by the Gimp to Justo to meet him at the raft to fight comes when Justo finds himself surrounded by the Gimp's group at a bar called the Sunken Cart. A fight immediately breaks out, but a priest stops it. This indicates that Justo finds himself alone on the Gimp's "turf," and he is punished for this. The tough talk by everyone involved in the fight is also an example of machismo. Each fighter and his friends try to intimidate the others by saying things that are snide and/or threatening. Their comments have nothing to do with actually warning the other men but are attempts at posturing for a superior position. That the fight is carried out in an up-close, hand-to-hand manner also reflects machismo. Justo and the Gimp are skilled knife fighters, showing that they are not afraid to get physically close to their opponents despite the obvious danger.
Style Descriptions Julian, the narrator, provides detailed descriptions of characters' appearances, settings, and actions. He also has a tendency to use similes in his descriptions. He remarks that the Gimp (once a friend of his) is
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Topics for Further Study To what extent do you think Latin American culture drives the action of this story? Choose three different countries with varying cultures and summarize how the story would be the same or different as a result. Look for similarities and differences across cultures and also bear in mind what you understand human nature to be. Think about how this story portrays a certain type of fighting. Compare it to modern American gang-related violence to see what similarities and differences there are. Is there a code of honor in each type? Are there established rules? Is there closure or resolution? Try to account for the
much taller than all the others. In the dark I couldn't see but could only imagine the face armored with pimples, the skin, deep olive and beardless, the tiny pinholes of his eyes, sunken like two dots in that lump of flesh divided by the oblong bumps of his cheekbones, and his lips, thick as fingers, hanging from his chin, triangular like an iguana's.
Later, while Justo's knife is being approved by one of the Gimp's friends, Julian describes the setting using descriptive sensory words and phrases: For a few minutes, we were silent, inhaling the perfume from the cotton plants nearby, borne by a warm breeze in the direction of the bridge. On the two sides of the riverbed in back of us the twinkling lights of the city were visible. The silence was almost total; from time to time barking or braying ruptured it abruptly.
As peaceful as the description of the landscape is, Julian soon describes the action of the fight as Justo and the Gimp begin to focus on defeating each other. His description is interesting, because he begins by describing the two fighters up close and gradually moves outward. This suggests that he is focused on the fight but may also be attempting to distance himself emotionally from an unpleasant outcome. Julian explains: For a few seconds they stood motionless, silent, surely saying with their eyes how much they hated each
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differences between the two approaches and suggest motives for each. Read about Vargas Llosa's strained relationship with his father. What relevance might this have to the relationship between Leonidas and Justo in "The Challenge"? Does the author's background provide you with any insight into the fictional characters, or vice versa? Using your conclusions, prepare a brief presentation for a middle school English class in which you demonstrate that there is often a relationship between an author's personal experience and his or her writing.
other, observing each other, their muscles tight under their clothing, right hands angrily crushing their knives. From a distance, half hidden by the night's warm darkness, they didn't look so much like two men getting ready to fight as shadowy statues cast in some black material or the shadows of two young, solid carob trees on the riverbank, reflected in the air, not on the sand. As if answering some urgently commanding voice, they started moving almost simultaneously.
As the fight escalates, Julian says that Justo moved in and away from the Gimp at the same time, shaking the poncho, dropping and keeping up his guard, offering his body and whisking it away, slippery, agile, tempting and rejecting his opponent like a woman in heat.
Again, Julian uses simile to enhance his description of the constant movement of his friend in the fight.
Minimal Characterization Although the narrator knows the characters very well, he provides little comment on them. While he gives surface information, such as where Leonidas lives and what the Gimp looks like, he never talks about his broken friendship with the Gimp or why there is tension between the Gimp and Justo. When Briceno sees Justo before the fight and expresses confidence in his ability to win, Julian
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merely says that Briceno seems to have decided to adopt this approach in talking to Justo; Julian is apparently not sure. This lack of knowledge is more characteristic of a passive third-person narrator than of an involved first-person narrator. The story reads as if Julian assumes the reader knows the characters. He describes how the characters relate to one another (to a limited extent; the reader does not know that Leonidas is Justo's father until the end) and leaves the rest for the reader to infer. Vargas Llosa seems to use this technique in order to challenge the reader to become involved in the story and to make assumptions and draw conclusions without being told what to think about the characters.
Historical Context Latin-American Literature Prior to Vargas Llosa's arrival on the literary scene, twentieth-century Peruvian literature was dominated by the works of Jose Carlos Mari£tegui, Cesar Vallejo, and Jose Maria Arguedas. Maria'tegui's work reflects his belief that Peru's people provide the key to understanding the country's past and future. Vallejo's poetry, prose, and drama gained special recognition after he took his life in 1938. His work reflects his belief in the importance of solidarity among human beings. Arguedas drew on the works of Maridtegui and Vallejo as he wrote about rural and urban life in Peru. In the 1960s, there was a "boom" in LatinAmerican literature. During this period, the work of prominent Latin-American writers received international attention and acclaim. As a result, related areas also expanded, such as translation, literary criticism, and North American graduate programs related to Spanish-language studies. The type of fiction that developed during the boom was new in that it was less documentary-like in style, presented the characters' inner lives, and offered different ways to interpret reality. This last element provided the foundation for magical realism, a type of fiction that is strongly associated with Latin American writers and has gained a substantial following worldwide. Magical realism is a type of fiction that is realistic and conventional on the surface, but contains elements such as the supernatural, fantasy, or myth. Writers whose work is credited with contributing to the boom include Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
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Jorge Luis Borge, and Julio Cortazar. Many of their works are considered enduring masterpieces of modern literature. In addition to being one of the youngest writers associated with the Latin American boom, Vargas Llosa is also the main Peruvian writer of the period.
Realism in Literature Realism in literature, which became especially prominent around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, refers to an author's factual, lifelike rendering of people, things, and events. Such writing is often concerned with realistic consequences of decisions made by characters. Most realistic writers are interested in democracy and frequently depict life among common people. Realism often reflects the tendency to move away from neatly plotted stories with distinct beginnings, middles, and endings, because life does not happen this way. Realists do not cater to readers' needs for satisfying conclusions with all loose ends resolved. Instead, they prefer to represent an episode (or episodes) from real life, leaving questions unanswered and a degree of uncertainty about where the characters will go after the story ends. Vargas Llosa combined the realism he admired in many European literary works with his own innovations. He added multiple perspectives, interior monologues, and fragmented narratives.
Critical Overview Mario Vargas Llosa is considered one of the foremost writers in Latin American literature. Although his novels receive the most critical attention, his short works are also praised for their realism and their use of innovative techniques. Many top literary critics and writers, including Salman Rushdie, admire Vargas Llosa. Critics like Rushdie (in New Republic) and Regina Janes (in Reference Guide to World Literature) note that Vargas Llosa's career reflects the author's growing confidence in his ability to write complex fiction. His early works, these critics note, are more straightforward, yet are equally compelling. "The Challenge" typifies this observation because it is a simple story of an arranged fight between two men, supported by their social groups, yet the story is written in such a way as to encourage the reader to look more deeply into the characters' motivations.
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Compare & Contrast 1950s: Fights between opposing groups are settled by arranging a time and place for a fight between two men, one from each group. The fights are often (but not always) carried out according to rules of fairness, and other members do not interfere with the fight. Weapons are generally fists or knives. Today: Interpersonal violence tends to be the result of criminal activities and heightened political tensions rather than simple grudges. The accessibility of guns has raised the stakes of such violence. 1950s: The political atmosphere in Peru is changing. Dissatisfied groups determined to see improvement are challenging current authorities. In 1956, President Prado begins making sweeping changes, but economic instability and inflation cause riots and strikes. Students organize protests on campuses, and citizens are making their voices heard. The economy does not improve
In the context of Latin American literature, Vargas Llosa is considered one of the most important modern writers. His use of realism, combined with effective innovations and complexities, has earned critical and popular acclaim. The author believes that Latin American authors have a responsibility to communicate socially responsible themes and messages, and critics often cite these as strengths in his works.
Criticism Jennifer Bussey Bussey holds a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor's degree in English literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, Bussey dis-
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significantly until a 1959 series of government initiatives is enacted. Today: Over the past fifty years, new political parties have emerged in Latin America. Peruvians have experienced coups, military rule, and democracy in an effort to establish a stable form of government. While the political climate is still tense and often unstable and border disputes are still a reality, the emphasis has shifted from trying to change existing regimes to trying to form workable new approaches to government. 1950s: Roman Catholicism is not only the predominant religion in Peru but also the established religion by law. Other religions are allowed to practice freely, however, and there are small numbers of Protestants, Jews, and Muslims. Today: Roman Catholicism remains the predominant religion, with 90 percent of the population practicing.
cusses Mario Vargas Llosa's use of irony in the characterization of the Gimp in "The Challenge" and how this irony reveals complex themes. Mario Vargas Llosa's short story ' 'The Challenge'' is a seemingly straightforward story about a fight between two men, Justo and the Gimp. Although Vargas Llosa tells the reader little about them and thus does not fully develop any of the characters, he provides enough information about some of the characters to allow the reader to make assumptions and draw conclusions. Vargas Llosa relies more on irony than descriptive narrative to reveal the character known as the Gimp, and in doing so the author also portrays valuable lessons about judging a person. According to William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman in A Handbook to Literature, irony refers to ' 'the recognition of a reality different from appearance." In characterizing the Gimp, Vargas Llosa leads the reader to make certain assumptions about him based on his appearance and public demeanor,
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What Do I Read Next? Edited by Roberto Gonzales Echevarria, The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories (1999) is a collection of the work of more than fifty writers. Ranging from the sixteenth century to the present, this anthology enables the reader to follow the development of short fiction in Latin America. Vargas Llosa's memoir, A Fish in the Water (1994) traces the author's experiences from his early days of strife with his father through his military school years and impressive career as an
Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World (1981) is considered by many to be the author's masterpiece and has, therefore, received considerable critical attention. It is the story of a Brazilian preacher whose apocalyptic prophecies earn him a sizeable following.
The Gimp's appearance is not heroic or inspiring. He is described as a man who is taller than most, with a lame left leg. This information tells the reader that the Gimp also moves somewhat clumsily, probably swaying back and forth a bit when he walks. In many situations, this would be the type of man the reader would expect to be the follower, not the leader, in his social group, especially a group that emphasizes fighting and dominating others. His nickname is an outward acknowledgement by the public that he is lame, and his acceptance of this nickname reflects the character's acceptance of his physical limitations. In fact, Vargas Llosa never gives the Gimp's real name. In addition, his rough features and hard appearance give him a menacing, unapproachable quality. Together, these physical qualities suggest a person who is not a stereotypically strong, bold hero. His emergence as a leader respected by his peers is ironic, then, because all outward clues suggest a completely different social standing.
ters' actions validate this appearance. In ' 'The Challenge," however, the Gimp not only adheres to rules of fairness, he also displays compassion when he is winning the fight. He pleads with Julian and Leonidas to make Justo surrender the fight, presumably so the Gimp does not have to kill him. This casts doubt on Moses' earlier comments to Julian that the Gimp was talking tough the night before about how he would "cut [Justo] up into little pieces." Even if the Gimp did make such comments, the truth about his character is revealed more honestly in his actions during the fight. It is ironic that the Gimp tries to spare Justo's life in a fair fight because the Gimp is presented as a tough, relentless fighting machine. In reality, he possesses at least some degree of compassion. When the fight ends with Justo's death, the Gimp does not brag to his friends or his enemies, he simply walks quietly away. This is the last time the reader sees the Gimp, and it shows him as the unlikely victor in a physically demanding forum. Although the reader is led to take Justo's side in the story, it is difficult to hate the Gimp for killing him.
Despite his lame leg, the Gimp is the winner of the fight with Justo. Moreover, he wins by respecting the rules of the fight, when such a character might be expected to cheat. Too often, writers portray characters who appear as though they may have bad characteristics and then have the charac-
Another way in which Vargas Llosa uses irony in portraying the Gimp is in the pig imagery that describes him. First, the reader learns that there is a rumor that the Gimp's lame foot carries a large scar (shaped like a cross) from a pig bite he received many years ago. Although nobody has ever seen
but then he shows that these assumptions do not comprise a true picture of the Gimp.
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author to his days as a presidential candidate. Because it is autobiographical, this book allows the reader insight into Vargas Llosa's background as well as into the author himself.
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this scar, the rumor persists. During the fight, it is dark, but Julian imagines ' 'the Gimp sweating, his mouth shut, his little pig eyes aflame and blazing behind his eyelids, his skin throbbing, the wings of his flattened nose and the slit of his mouth shaken by an unconceivable quivering . . . " This language clearly casts the Gimp in the image of a pig; more specifically of a pig fearing for his life. This imagery is significant because it likens the Gimp to an animal that is typically slaughtered. The men are fighting with knives, which is the instrument commonly used to slaughter pigs. That the rumored scar on his foot is in the shape of a cross suggests that the expected slaughter (of the pig) will be sacrificial, as the cross symbolizes the Christian belief in Jesus' willingness to be sacrificed on the cross. Although the setting of this story is never given, it is probably Peru, since much of Vargas Llosa's work is set in his native land. If it is not Peru, it is another Latin American country, as evident in the characters' names, which means that Roman Catholicism is the prevailing religious belief. This is significant because the cross—in the form of the crucifix, a cross bearing Jesus' body—is quite common among Catholics. The pig imagery associated with the Gimp creates tension and confusion about what sort of person the Gimp is. Is he a lowly pig to be slaughtered and therefore a villain? Or is he a sacrificial figure meant to die for the good of others and therefore a heroic figure? Either way, the pig imagery seems to foreshadow the Gimp's death. This expectation of the Gimp's death sets up another of Vargas Llosa's uses of irony, because whether the Gimp is villainous or heroic, he wins the fight by killing his opponent. He is the one who takes a life with his knife rather than being slaughtered with a knife like a pig. Among Vargas Llosa's works, the theme of the powerless attaining power (often through force or violence) presents itself time and again. If the Gimp is supposed to be understood as unsympathetic livestock, his victory demonstrates that, sometimes, unlikely people ultimately gain power. On the other hand, if the Gimp is to be understood as a noble sacrifice, his use of force and violence in the fight takes away his opportunity to fulfill his destiny. If that is the case, then another of Vargas Llosa's themes—the folly of abused power— is depicted. Clearly,' 'The Challenge'' is a complex story in which characterization and themes emerge from the tension created by irony. The irony used in portraying the Gimp demonstrates that truth is found in action and that it is
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The author's use of irony catches the reader off guard and forces him or her to consider complex questions about the Gimp and, by extension, other people and situations."
dangerous to make snap judgments of people based on their appearance. The reader's opinion of the Gimp has likely changed somewhat from the beginning of the story, because his actions demonstrate an opposing, though equally valid, reality about his character. Beyond the Gimp's nickname, physical appearance, and associations with the pig, there is something admirable in his character. He is brave, skilled, and compassionate. These qualities are revealed to the reader not through the narrator's comments, even though he and the Gimp were once friends, but through the Gimp's actions: Vargas Llosa empowers his readers to make decisions about what sort of person the Gimp may or may not be. Regardless of readers' conclusions, the truth about who he is has little to do with what the Gimp says or what is said about him but instead is found in his actions. This is an important message o f ' 'The Challenge." What the Gimp appears to be, he is not. He seems to be weakened, slow, and inhuman, yet the fight shows that he is strong, capable, and compassionate yet determined to preserve his honor and his life. On the outside, the Gimp looks like he might be a bad person but after all, he turns out to be rather heroic. In creating a character who is easy to misjudge and difficult to admire even at the end (he wins the fight by killing Justo, the narrator's friend), Vargas Llosa teaches a lesson about impressions and patience in understanding another person. The author's use of irony catches the reader off guard and forces him or her to consider complex questions about the Gimp and, by extension, about other people and situations. By showing the reader who the Gimp is, instead of simply telling, Vargas Llosa places demands on the reader that lead to a greater understanding of the Gimp in the end.
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Source: Jennifer Bussey, Critical Essay on "The Challenge," in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.
Rena Korb Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, Korb explores the many ambiguous elements of Vargas Llosa 's story. In Vargas Llosa's prizewinning story "The Challenge,' ' the meaningless death of a young man takes place within the confines of an unstable, impermanent world. In the environment that Justo and his friends inhabit, nothing is what it seems. Actions, people, and even relationships constantly shift and transform. Appearances cannot be trusted. This motif fixes the moral framework in which young men such as Julian and Justo grow up, helping to explain why violence, and their falsely brave reactions to it, outlines their lives. In marked contrast to this motif, "The Challenge" opens with firm roots in the mundane, realistic world. "We were drinking beer, like every Saturday," Julian narrates, "when Leonidas appeared in the doorway of the River Bar. We saw at once from his face that something had happened." At this early point in the story, situations are still what they appear to be. Bad news is conveyed in the usual way, by a' 'pensive'' expression on a person's face or a voice with a "strange" inflection. Julian and his friends soon find out what causes Leonidas to show concern—that evening their friend Justo will fight a tough rival known as the Gimp. This news sets in motion a chain of events that plays out against the wavering realities that delineate the rest of the story. No longer are things as they seem; these senses—eyes and ears—can no longer be relied upon. To enhance this feeling, Vargas Llosa imbues the narrative with details that show just how unreliable appearances can be. Some of these details are small; for instance, although the men live in a city, the outskirts, "where the dunes started," are only walking distance away; or as he leaves home, Julian bumps into his wife, who holds their sleeping son in her arms, giving Julian "the impression he was dead." Other telling details surround the men and the upcoming fight. The Gimp, so-called because of a lame left foot, is actually an agile, skillful fighter. His gang jumped Justo that afternoon not like men but "like mad dogs" whom even the priest called "animals." Indeed, although the rivalry between the Gimp and
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Justo has developed from their city personas, the place it will finally end is outside of the city, distant enough that only the ' 'twinkling lights'' are visible. Paralleling these disparities, Julian and his friends are forced to hide the truth from themselves and the other people who surround them. Julian lies to his wife about where he is going that evening and when he will return. More significantly, Briceno does not tell Justo that he believes that "the Gimp's going to kill'' him. Instead, at the fight Briceno and Leon "seemed to have agreed on showing confidence and even a certain amount of light-heartedness in front of Justo." To carry out their goal, they lie about Justo's fighting prowess. "You're going to cut him to shreds," says Leon, and Briceno backs him up, adding, "The Gimp couldn't touch you." Briceno, however, tries to stop the fight through the blatant subterfuge of suggesting it be postponed because there is not enough moonlight to see. Such dishonesty can be dangerous. This danger, physically symbolized when Julian hides his knife in his pants pocket, is ultimately borne out in Justo's death. From the moment that Julian leaves his house on this deadly evening, every action is overshadowed by shifting perception. At the bar where he stops off first, the changing nature of reality is reinforced when Julian and the owner discuss the Gimp. While Julian describes this foe's face as "really funny when he's mad," the owner says that the night before, when the Gimp was angry with Justo, "he looked like the devil." Justo's own appearance this evening is deceptive: "Seen from the side and against the darkness outside, he looked like a kid, a woman: from that angle, his features were delicate, soft." However, once Justo turns around and faces Julian,' 'the purple scar wounding the other side of his face, from the corner of his mouth up to his forehead'' destroys that image. The situation that evening, as well as the feelings of the men involved, is clearly amiss. The four friends descend to the riverbank differently than usual, along a longer, narrow path. The unusualness of the evening, despite the gang's brave talk, is demonstrated by Briceno's unfamiliarity with the terrain, and going down the path he "tripped and swore.'' The' 'raft,'' where the fight is to take place, is not even a raft but rather a tree that fell into the dry riverbed. Its impermanence and instability is reinforced through Julian's description: "It was very heavy and once it went down, the water couldn't raise it, could only drag it along for a few yards, so
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that each year 'the raft' moved a little farther from the city." All that is constant are the instruments of danger, for in comparing his knife with Julian's, Justo declares them to be "the same."
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From the moment that Julian leaves his house on
Nowhere, however, are Vargas Llosa's careful details more relevant than in the fight scene, when, again, nothing is what it seems. The Gimp's knife "felt like a piece of ice" when Julian checked it over. The poncho that Leonidas wears becomes a shield that Justo wraps around his arm, and later, after the men's ponchos have fallen off in the heat of fighting, it comes to resemble "a many-faceted rock." Justo and the Gimp "didn't look so much like two men getting ready to fight as shadowy statues cast in some black material or the shadows of two young, solid carob trees on the riverbank." As the fight is about to begin, the Gimp is hardly a man but a "limping shadow [that] slid toward the center of the space the two groups had marked off." The moon is hidden that evening, shrouding the scene in darkness. When Julian first approaches the Gimp's gang they do not recognize him, and Julian's answer to their questioning who's there— "Julian.. .. Julian Huertas. You blind?"— underscores the complete blindness that Justo and his friends insist on maintaining; all of them know who will be the winner this evening. This murkiness is literally reinforced as Julian examines the Gimp's knife, which he only can do by the' 'feeble light'' of a match. When he throws Justo's knife to the Gimp's friend to examine it, it falls on the ground, and Julian must resort to "groping on the sand in search of" the weapon. The surrounding blackness forces the witnesses to "strain" their eyes "vainly" to see what is happening. Because of this, Julian's description of the fight is unreliable. However, Julian refuses to admit this. "I wasn't able to see their faces," he acknowledges, "but I closed my eyes and saw them better than if I'd been in their midst." Such a blatant misstatement is Julian's attempt to assert some measure of control over this hopeless situation, even to the minimal extent of elevating it to a fight filled with honor and courage rather than admitting it is merely a brutal, senseless fight between petty rivals. The partially viewed fight itself illustrates the slippery nature so prevalent in the story. The Gimp's movements and his circling around Justo are like' 'dancing." Justo, no longer an angry young man, responds by ' 'offering his body and whisking it away . . . like a woman in heat.'' At one point, the
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this deadly evening, every action is overshadowed by shifting perception."
"adversaries, as close as lovers, formed a single body." Not surprisingly, the deadly blows come as a result of Justo's inability to accept
