American Culture with the Carrigan's

In Persuasion Nation was a bit of a shock to read right after Jhumpa Lahiri’s beautifully written Interpreter of Maladies, but I found its insane style to be quite refreshing and one of my favorite reads of the semester. Saunders’ writing is quite impressive in the way it takes something so familiar to the reader and turns it into a bizarre nightmarish sort of world, that still often contains some surprisingly deep moral truth or social commentary. This satire is both really funny, and in a few cases actually made me stop and think or get a little fired up about the issues it raised.

“Brad Carrigan, American” is my favorite example of Saunders’ style and of conveying some pretty meaningful criticisms even though they're surrounded by absolutely ridiculous events. Already on the first page, for instance: “‘I tried to butter my toast,’ says Chief Wayne. ‘At which time I discovered that this stick of butter was actually your dog, Buddy, wearing a costume--a costume of a stick of butter!’” (Saunders 119). I read this several times before giving up on any significance it might have. Similar random events occur throughout and are especially strange because they are treated as commonplace, even familiar: “Then we hear the familiar music that indicates the backyard has morphed again, and see that the familiar Carrigan backyard is now a vast field of charred human remains” (Saunders 125). Some of the weirdest stuff is found in the TV-show-within-a-TV-show segments such as “FinalTwist,” in which six friends unknowingly eat their mothers-- possibly a critique of the way TV shows and media have become obsessed with making fun of people and calling out embarrassing things, and the way audiences enjoy watching people do really undignified things. And then there's “Kill the Ho,” where--not to worry--”they don't actually kill them,” just design a digital version of their death (Saunders 138). This is also a pretty clear jab at shows like the Bachelor or America’s Next Top Model, and reality TV in general, that always seem to include a story arc for someone who crashes and burns--it's part of the entertainment.

Besides the satire of television and media, the more striking criticism for me was Saunders’ calling out American culture for thinking so highly of ourselves--specifically the concept that we are so lucky and so privileged and that sympathy for the unlucky is enough to make up for their lack of essential things. The juxtaposition of a news update on trending butt implants with the drastic increase in number of children dying from AIDS in Africa is clearly exaggerated, but also has so much recognizable truth to it and is meant to be an extremely cringeworthy moment in the book (Saunders 129). Saunders is not-so-subtly calling out the tendency of upper class people to sit and contemplate their own fortune instead of actually doing something to actively solve what they say they feel so sad about seeing on TV. To drive home his point about the laziness of American culture, Saunders has the one character who offers to cut down their corn and feed it to the starving children on their doorstep or move the screaming bodies out of the rain or take care of the baby that falls on their roof, be laughed at and completely rejected by his friends. As Doris so elegantly puts it: “I think we’ve been very fortunate, but not so fortunate that we can afford to start giving away everything we’ve worked so hard for. Why can’t our stuff, such as corn, be our stuff? Why do you have to make everything so complicated? We aren’t exactly made out of money, Brad!” (Saunders 132). And as a final gesture, Brad, the only character who is compassionate and thinks about things other than himself, is written out of the show, slowly forgetting himself and turning into a blob. The show goes on with its “mean talk and jokes about poop and butts,” its violence, and its moral lessons that are only spoken and never acted upon--a pretty strong critique of American media culture (Saunders 122). Saunders uses this motif of a character becoming conscious of the meaninglessness of the world around them in several of his stories, such as Jon and the polar bear in "In Persuasion Nation," and while sometimes the slowness at which the characters realize this is mildly annoying as a reader, I generally found Saunders' satire to be very compelling (and also uncomfortably weird!)

Community?

The setting of Lahiri’s short stories alternate between America and India, and it’s interesting to note the differences in how these places are depicted, and to realize that neither is shown in a completely positive light. The main differences Lahiri presents are the greater sense of community and cultural tradition in India that is absent in America. Everyone in class seemed to agree there is more of a sense of community in the stories that take place in India, whereas the characters in America are often suffering from homesickness or the loneliness of not fitting in. The two obvious examples of Indian community that come to mind are in “The Real Durwan” and “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar,” yet in both of these stories the portrayal of community is not as positive as we might expect--in fact it’s actually pretty ambiguous. In “The Real Durwan,” for example, the people living in Boori Ma’s apartment building seem very together, but they do not treat Boori Ma very well and--while they pretend to include her--she is pretty intensely excluded from their community. They see her more as a helper, someone who can do odd jobs for them, and not as an actual adult person who could contribute anything meaningful. They make her carry heavy basins up to the roof even though she’s an old woman. They don’t give her the courtesy of sitting on actual furniture: “Knowing not to sit on the furniture, she crouched, instead, in doorways and hallways, and observed gestures and manners in the same way a person tends to watch traffic in a foregin city” (Lahiri 76). She has a potentially very interesting and very sad past, but even when she tries to tell them about it, they don’t believe her. She is the Durwan, the gatekeeper and protector of the community, but they don’t really take her seriously. I guess this is kind of understandable since she is an older woman who might be delusional (it is left unanswered whether there are actually mites in her bed or if it’s only the heat). They don’t really expect much of her, and yet, when she doesn’t do the job that she was never fully expected to do, they get upset and kick her out of the neighborhood. This old woman who lived in their building for quite some time is now left to fend for herself on the street. Not the best picture of community.

In “The Treatment of Bibi Haldir,” the community feel is especially present because of the narrative voice talking as “we.” While it is very noticeable that people are often together and interacting with each other, whether this is a positive dynamic or not is once again unclear. Bibi seems to participate more in the community interactions than Boori Ma was able to, but the women she hangs out with still talk to her in a rather patronizing manner. They don’t expect her to find a husband, what with her looks, her sickness, and her quirkiness. Yet they still jokingly encourage her to dress nicer and have conversations with men on the street. They giver her advice on how to attract men and things to say. “‘Frowning like a rice pot will get you nowhere. Men require that you caress them with your expression’” (Lahiri 165). In a similar way to Boori Ma, they don’t really seem to take her seriously, and the fact that they are basically pretending to be her friend and giving her fake aspirations makes it almost worse. It’s possible to interpret their interactions with her as being pretty mean. At the same time, when Bibi starts facing more serious problems, the community does seem to step up to help her. They try to visit her, they send their children to play on the roof to keep an eye on her. “Someone donated a kerosene lamp; another gave her some old mosquito netting and a pair of socks without heels. At every opportunity we reminded her that we surrounded her, that she could come to us if she ever needed advice or aid at any time” (Lahiri 171). I was a little taken aback the first time I read this by how much the community seemed to actually do for Bibi in her time of need. However, reading it again I don’t think their treatment of her is really very impressive. After all, they donate socks without heels, they don’t try that hard to stay in contact with her even though they know she is struggling, and although they say they’ll support her, it’s hard to imagine any advice they could give her being much less condescending than their previous treatment of her. There’s also the fact that they ran Haldar out of business without hesitation, for how he was treating Bibi. I do think I would rather live with Bibi’s community than Boori Ma’s, but neither community is really shown to be all that supportive. Maybe it works for “normal” people, but people who don’t fit in are often excluded, and the community isn’t really there for them.

That being said, I don’t think the point Lahiri is trying to make is that the sense of community in India is not really that special, or that it is always exclusive and fake. After all, the community in America is basically shown to be nonexistent. The Indian characters in the U.S. are extremely lonely and having difficulty adapting to their environment. Mrs. Sen is a prime example of this. She is overwhelmed by seemingly simple aspects of assimilating into American culture, such as learning to drive and eating chicken instead of fish. “If she passed a person, she waved. If she saw a bird twenty feet in front of her, she beeped the horn with her index finger and waited for it to fly away” (Lahiri 120). Mrs. Sen is more aware of community, or a lackthereof, than most Americans seem to be. And as a result, she feels very distant from everybody else, even her husband, and more restricted. But as we see with Mrs. Croft and the narrator of “The Third Continent,” it is possible to find very strong communities in America and to assimilate smoothly into another culture. So Lahiri gives us a rather complex view of these two countries and leaves it up to us to decide the positive and negative features of both. While India seems to have a stronger community feeling, it’s impossible to universally praise all of its social interactions when Lahiri gives us stories about people such as Boori Ma and Bibi Haldar. Instead, I think the positive element of India that America lacks is perhaps more of a cultural identity--an appreciation for food, for customs, for things having their place. These things create a sense of community that is perhaps more apparent once you’ve left it than when you’re still there, and is what people like Mrs. Sen seem to miss the most about India.

Superheroes

When I first realized “No Face” was revisiting the character of Ysrael from the first story, I was intrigued, because I remember that opening story being really good, and also terrified, because Ysrael’s life seems horribly depressing and dark and I didn’t want to know what became of him. “No Face” took all my expectations and POW zapped them to pieces. Ysrael’s life in “No Face,” while incredibly bleak and traumatic, is actually portrayed as an adventure, something he can still have fun with. Ysrael spends his time scavenging for coins among unconscious drunks, getting harassed on the street for helping cats, and being attacked by mobs of kids, all because of his legendary deformity. He describes the people in his world, with the exception of Father Lou and his own family, as his enemies. And yet he is smiling under his mask. He is a superhero, and he enjoys the thrill of escape. While he’s certainly not invulnerable, throughout this story he takes an extremely negative situation and sees it as just part of his world, nothing he can’t handle with his supernatural abilities. After being chased off by the cleaning woman he even shows off a little: “he’d grip the bars of the gate and pull them a bit apart, grunting, to show her who she was messing with” (Diaz 155).

It makes perfect sense to me that Ysrael would identify with a superhero, who often start their career with some sort of accident and have powers that could be seen as a kind of defect. They’re tough, and they face a lot of enemies but they always defeat the evil powers around them. “Today he buys Kaliman, who takes no shit and wears a turban. If his face were covered he’d be perfect” (Diaz 155). As for Ysrael’s actual superpowers, I think it’s pretty clear that--while he is incredibly fast and strong--they don’t literally exist. The fact that they’re presented to the reader as fact though, shows us that they are very real in Ysrael’s mind and that he is able to use his imagination to escape his circumstances. I think it’s pretty impressive that this kid who wears a flea-infested mask, who’s accused of eating children and is attacked at random, is still able to feel confident in himself, like he’s on top of the world. At the same time, it’s possible that all of this is completely incorrect. We know it’s not really Ysrael narrating this story, so any resolution we may start to have thinking that Ysrael is really doing fine, is kind of thwarted by the fact that we really don’t know what’s going on in his head. While the narrative voice reminds me of a sports commentator, always with a sense of excitement and suspense, constantly presenting Ysrael as heroic and admirable, it’s still an outside view, not Ysrael’s own voice. (I kept being a little shocked realizing the story is in 3rd person. It feels like it’s Ysrael narrating, but it can’t be).

The idea that Yunior is narrating the story is intriguing and makes a lot of sense to me. Yunior was always more understanding of Ysrael than the other children and less easily motivated towards violence. He still participated in tormenting him in gangs, feeling especially accomplished about hitting Ysrael in the back with a rock. “We laughed and went back to our baseball games and forgot him until he came to town again and then we dropped what we were doing and chased him” (Diaz15). But Yunior’s narration has always shown him to be a gentler character who clashes a little with his society’s definition of masculinity and toughness. He seemed a little out of place even in the gang of kids, and is shocked when his brother knocks Ysrael out from behind to get a glimpse of his face. By narrating “No Face” to us, it’s almost like Yunior is trying to make amends, or to go back and try to comprehend what Ysrael’s life was like and who he really was: just another boy, a potential classmate or even friend. But no! Ysrael was special, powerful in his own way, and someone who Yunior ultimately respected, even admired. We don’t really know if Ysrael actually sees himself as a superhero, but by choosing to narrate “No Face” in such an enthralling style, it’s clear that Yunior did see him that way, as someone out fighting to survive, a legendary figure, and maybe an intimidating one too. If Yunior is narrating, “No Face” really tells us a lot more about Yunior’s character and his ability to empathize than it does about Ysrael himself. This fits since the collection as a whole is kind of about Yunior’s maturation and growing up in a tough world, however I was kind of disappointed to realize that this means “No Face” may not be even close to Ysrael’s reality.

Ysrael’s physical abilities are pretty indisputable from the story “Ysrael,” and if he did go to a comic book store every week, it’s likely that he would still have the same wild imagination and be able to connect to the characters. However, I find it incredibly unlikely that Yunior ever went back and sat down with Ysrael like he did with Nilda, or this story would probably be told in a style more similar to that of “Negocios.” While I could imagine child-Yunior being a bit of a stalker, I don’t think he observed all of the events in this story and I think large portions of “No Face” are fictional. Ysrael continues to be more of a legend and while we can see from this story that Yunior wishes to understand him, in reality I don’t see Ysrael’s outlook as being very promising at all. There’s no way a teenager or adult can go on pretending to be a superhero and not be completely written off (not that Ysrael isn’t already exiled from society). It brings me back to the ending of “Ysrael,” after Rafa and Yunior have seen his face and are riding the bus home:

“Ysrael will be OK, I said.

Don’t bet on it.

They’re going to fix him. …

Yunior, he said tiredly. They aren’t going to do shit to him.

How do you know?

I know, he said” (Diaz 19).

Moore's Endings and How to Get Help

I really enjoyed Self-Help by Lorrie Moore and getting to experience new styles of narration. While some of her 2nd-person narrations did feel a little experimental, I didn’t find that the style distracted from the story at any point. On the whole, narrating in 2nd person made it harder to judge any of the characters even when they were doing morally questionable things (such as cheating on people), because the reader experienced it as “you,” forcing the reader to see themselves as the troubled character. In some of the stories, such as “How,” the plot is presented at first almost like a choose-your-own-adventure story, with options for what occupation you have or what dates you might go on. I found this style could be occasionally annoying, but it was effective in adding a sense of loneliness or detachment, like these details didn't matter. All the weird narrative formats, including "How to Talk to Your Mother," told going backwards in time, made Self-Help a unique and refreshing read and I was generally very impressed by Lorrie Moore's writing.

Self-Help works extraordinarily well as a collection, in my opinion, playing on similar themes throughout the book of insecurity, emotional instability, self-reflection, and feeling trapped. All of Moore’s characters feel in some way stuck in their situation, whether it be in a relationship with a dishonest man, on a deathbed surrounded by people who question her, or in a domestic life and low-status job that has her feeling suffocated and yearning for a more ambitious life. Another common element of Moore’s stories is the humor--a major feature in all of them. While the stories often deal with rather dark subject matter and many of the characters seem to struggle with Depression or deal with other losses in their lives, the sort of morbid humor, puns, and other ridiculous jokes exist in such a presence that the loaded situations the characters are in end up being less emotional than we might expect. A lot of the humor comes from the sort of awkwardness/clumsiness that many of the women in these stories seem to have (one of the best examples perhaps being the line on the bus about book bindings). I like to relate this humor back to the epigraph (“The purpose of this book is to direct attention to the ways in which non-backboned animals reproduce,” etc.) which I think perfectly captures the subtle humor and the serious but strangely laughable tone Moore is going for. Even so, the humor in this book also makes some of the content more depressing to me because the witty, sarcastic humor sometimes feeds into negative thoughts and self-deprecation. It makes some of the characters seem as though they’ve lost some of their capacity to feel or express emotion, or that the only way they can cope with their situation is to try and laugh about it.

The story “To Fill” stood out to me as being pretty different from the others in the collection and I think it is a fitting end. For one thing, though the entire book is about women struggling through hard times and dealing with their own minds and ambitions and needs for love, independence, etc., this is the first time a character actually has a breakdown and seems to really hit rock bottom. She stabs her husband and is taken away from her child and it’s a very bleak outlook for this character. However, because of this breakdown there’s actually more hope in this story that a better future may come for her than in any of the other stories, where the problems are confined to the character’s mind and they are left alone to hope these feelings will slowly dissipate. In “How,” for example, the ending is the woman finally leaving her ill husband and walking off feeling guilty and a little ashamed, even if the choice was right for her. “A week, a month, a year. The sadness will die like an old dog. You will feel nothing but indifference… One of those endings” (Moore 64). In “How to be an Other Woman,” she is left alone, pretending to be okay when her ex-lover calls her on the phone. “Love drains from you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity,” (Moore 21). Even “How to Become a Writer” ends with the character quitting her job, wondering what her purpose in life is, and describing her love life as an occasional “date with a face blank as a sheet of paper” (Moore 126). The endings aren’t always necessarily tragic, but they all lack a sense of fulfillment and feel more restless, making me a little nervous for the mental/emotional state of the main character. However, in “To Fill” there is actually a somewhat optimistic tone to the ending, with the woman potentially able to get treatment, and at the very least able to see her son again. It’s still not happy, but to me it’s more hopeful that any of the other stories.

I’m not entirely sure what the significance of this story--that hits rock bottom and then reaches a new high--being at the end is, but I think there’s something that could be said about trying to keep emotions to yourself and survive only through “self-help” as opposed to letting others take care of you a bit. The women in these stories have so many thoughts and feelings that they all almost go crazy because it’s too much confusion to sanely handle in one mind, and they need a way to let it out. While clearly stabbing your husband isn’t the accepted way to do that, by writing all these stories on women who are stuck, I think Moore is letting people know that they aren’t alone in having these feelings, and that sometimes you can’t get through everything by yourself. Sometimes you need to stop and get help. Yet many of Moore's women are fiercely independent or needing to get away from people, so I don’t know if that’s really what Moore is going for theme-wise, maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but that’s something I interpreted from her work.

What Just Happened

“The Man-Child” was definitely a traumatizing read and I spent a few shocked moments after finishing it trying to process what just happened and… why? I guess I knew something was going to go wrong in the story, but I admit I did not see the cold-blooded murder of a child coming. Like at all. Looking back on it, it’s hard for me to pin down exactly why Jamie would do such a thing, and I think this highlights just how little we really understand any of the characters in the story, besides the one our narrator is aligned with, Eric. The relationship between his mother and Jamie is really ambiguous and confusing and I don't understand it at all. His father seems like a decent guy when he’s showing Eric around the countryside, but he’s described at the beginning as “big, laughing, dreadful, and red,” and it is also mentioned that he “captured” his wife, who has remained in metaphorical chains ever since (Baldwin 61). I think part of this is because getting the story through the eyes of a child limits our ability to follow everything that is going on between the other characters, as seen when Eric’s discomfort over things such as the sun or the position he’s sitting in, take over the narration as opposed to the dialogue between his father and Jamie. “He did not understand what they were talking about this afternoon, these grown-ups he had known all his life; by keeping his eyes closed he kept their conversation far from him” (Baldwin 69). On the other hand, Eric's youth makes him more sensitive to his mother's reactions and as a result we are more aware of the tension in the room even if we miss some of the conversation. It was clear to me that something was off throughout this story, however, it was hard to tell which character was more suspicious or to really relate to any of them. They are all pretty mysterious in a way.

While it’s hard to even imagine what would cause Jamie to kill the child of his friend, it is important to look at some of the reasons why he might have convinced himself to do such an unspeakable thing, if not only for the purpose of calming my utterly bewildered mind. The only part of the story that really shows us Jamie’s character and sheds light on his motivation for killing Eric is the conversation with Eric’s parents at his birthday dinner. While Jamie is supposedly their friend, he is frequently made fun of for not having a wife, kids, or land, such that there is definitely a feeling of superiority around the father. While Jamie claims to “know all the things [he] has to thank [Eric’s father] for,” the scene is full of tension and resentment from Jamie (Baldwin 68). It makes sense for Jamie to be jealous of the father’s success compared to his own, and of the fact that the father’s line will continue and pass on to future generations, while Jamie has no land of his own and relies on this family.Yet this doesn’t make sense as a reason to kill Eric because doing so does not mean Jamie will get the land nor does it do anything to improve Jamie’s current situation. I think he does it instead to spite Eric’s father and stop his sense of superiority and dreams for the future. The mother asks Jamie why it is he stays in town with them when he had the chance of moving away, and Jamie replies that everything he cares about is here, however Jamie seems to be realizing that he isn’t cared for by this family particularly well, nor does he care very deeply for anyone there anymore. (BUT the friendship between the father and Jamie is described as pretty intense at the beginning--they've been through a lot together, but I guess things change)

“‘A man’s not supposed to sit around and mope,’ said Eric’s father, wrathfully, ‘for things that are over and dead and finished, things that can’t ever begin again, that can’t ever be the same again. That’s what I mean when I say you’re a dreamer--and if you hadn’t kept on dreaming so long, you might not be alone now.’” This has got to be hard to hear from a friend, and Jamie’s response shows that while he is (for the moment) pretending to be civil, he is doubting his interest and care in this friendship. “‘Ah well,’ said Jamie, mildly, and with a curious rush of affection in his voice, ‘I know you’re the giant-killer, the hunter, the lover--the real old Adam, that’s you. I know you’re going to cover the earth. I know the world depends on you’” (Baldwin 68). Despite the “affection” in his voice, I have no trouble visualizing a fuming Jamie with a voice and head full of contempt as this man who took over his land tries to lecture him on everything he's doing wrong. I think by this point a part of Jamie has snapped and he starts to think of ways to ruin things for the father. His line “I know the world depends on you,” followed immediately by a discussion of Eric himself and what makes him similar to his father, almost foreshadows what is to come. The terrifying thing about Jamie is that he has nothing to gain from this murder. He says he doesn’t want the land, he doesn’t take up Eric’s offer to be his little boy, he doesn’t kill the father. I think this is because Jamie feels beaten down by the father and instead of ending his life, would rather ruin everything he had that was held above Jamie’s head. I think Jamie must be a little unstable/crazy to begin with, but I think this moment with Eric’s parents is where it dawns on him that maybe it’s time to leave and get out of town, that there’s not much for him here anymore.

Side note: The biggest question I actually had coming away from this story was what is up with the mother? She seems to be the most suspicious of Jamie, such that her behavior changes after returning home, “as though she had been startled by some new aspect of something she had always known” (Baldwin 76). So what startled her about Jamie? The fact that she can have no more children has probably changed the way she sees him, but the way the text emphasizes her change almost implies Jamie is at fault for something. But unless the child was his, which doesn’t make much sense to me, what could he have done? I keep thinking maybe there was some sort of affair between the mother and Jamie, since we know her relationship with her husband is a little weird from that beginning description, but I'm not really convinced and nothing in the plot is really clarified by this so I kind of doubt it... Anyway, there’s a lot of suspicion and distrust in this story and it certainly makes for an unnerving read.

Something to be Learned Through the Ages

I greatly enjoyed Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger particularly because every story ended with some sort of unexpected twist, revelation, emotional moment, or totally confusing statement (as is the case with "Just Before the War with the Eskimos"). From suicide to a religious experience to a dead Easter chick in a wastebasket, the stories are never predictable, and frequently confusing. Even though none of the stories in this collection had overlapping characters as seen in the other two collections we've read this semester, Nine Stories felt surprisingly unified. Salinger has a very distinct style and focuses on unique, yet still quite similar characters: upper class, intellectually inclined children or young people, who maintain some quality of innocence even though their character interacts intensely with the adult world. All of Salinger's stories center on the dialogue and relationship between characters, regardless of the age difference or whether the characters had even met before or not.

"Uncle Wiggily Goes to Connecticut" was the least memorable of all the stories for me, but in terms of fitting Salinger's theme of exploring the relationship between children and adults, it's really one of the most meaningful. Most of the story is just a visit between Eloise and Mary Jane, full of some seemingly superficial conversation topics such as which color of hair dye their friend had used, people they used to know, and movie stars. The two women are very talkative and seem to be having a good time doing a lot of laughing, drinking, and smoking. "Marvelous," seems to be Mary Jane's response to everything. This depiction of adults is contrasted with the character of Ramona, who is quiet and a little awkward, constantly scratching herself and appearing thoroughly unimpressed with Mary Jane's attempts to engage her in conversation. Ramona clashes with Eloise's confident and bubbly (though as it turns out, also extremely self aware) personality and is instead interested in playing outside, swords, and having a companion. It is clear from the existence of Jimmy Jimereeno, Ramona's imaginary friend, that Ramona and Eloise's relationship is not close. This seems to be true with many of the other parental figures in Salinger’s writing as, with the exception of Boo Boo in “Down at the Dinghy,” all of them from Esme’s guardian to Teddy’s mother and father seem distant and not understanding. Yet to say that the wealthy, self-absorbed adults of Salinger's stories are merely superficial characters to bring out the innocence and creativity of children, is way too simplistic a view, and borderline incorrect in some cases. Eloise is clearly struggling with issues of identity and dissatisfaction with her current life. She is still mourning the death of Walt and her inability to talk about it with many people or to find the qualities he had in her husband. Though Eloise is upper class, she is also able to critique the superficiality of the lifestyle she’s in, especially in her husband Lew. “The first thing he asked me was what his rank was,” she says, about Lew and Walt’s military service, demonstrating her frustration with the collection and display of material achievements in the world she lives in(Salinger 31). The ending of the story is particularly poignant and a little strange, as Ramona invents a new imaginary friend causing Eloise to physically scare her a bit and then break down, holding Ramona’s glasses while she cries. She turns to Mary Jane for comfort: “‘I was a nice girl,’ she pleaded, wasn’t I?” (Salinger 38). Though her parenting is certainly flawed, Salinger doesn't present Eloise in a completely negative light or as the one-dimensional superficial woman that she fears she is.

Whether Salinger’s story is aligned with the child or the adult (or in the case of “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” and “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes,” the more child-like adult), Salinger tends to use the image of the child as the one causing change or inspiration or some sort of emotional experience in the adult--because of some innocent wisdom or honesty children possess. On the other hand, Salinger refrains from polarizing his adult characters or trapping them in superficial roles. While often the subjects of criticism for materialism, many are given incredibly complex stories and experiences that often influence the child too. While Nine Stories features a lot of kids brushing up against the adult world, Salinger also points out that there is often not a clear line between the two and both can learn much from the other. Whether the child-adult relationship provides a profound emotional understanding like with Esme and the American soldier, or merely a common loneliness felt by Ramona and Eloise, there is some similarity and understanding to be found in connecting with people on an inter generational level.

Hemingway is Not One For Happy Endings

In Our Time  was a harder book for me to digest after The Things They Carried--which was certainly confusing at times, but always seemed to have a unified goal of expressing emotional truth and communicating the war experience. In Our Time felt less unified to me, which is fine for a collection of short stories, but because of the reappearance of certain characters and some of the stories being so abruptly short, I still felt myself looking for some sort of overarching message. I didn’t really find one, but I do think this book had an overarching tone of gloom and foreboding, and throughout every story there was this feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Even some of the more innocent stories like “Cat in the Rain,” which ended with the woman getting a cat like she wanted, have a kind of dark undertone. In “Cat in the Rain,” this is felt in the tense interactions between the husband and wife (“Oh shut up and get something to read” 94), and the description of the cat (“big tortoise-shell cat pressed against her and swung down against her body” 94) implying a lack of dignity and maybe even dissatisfaction. Perhaps the cat was only a representation of all the things she wanted, and having the cat does nothing to help her reach those other freedoms or ease the dynamic with her husband.

I think the feeling of gloom and dread that hangs over all these stories is in part due to the content of the stories themselves--and Hemingway’s tendency to end them with a twist--but is definitely also aided by the “interstitial chapters” that do a pretty good job destroying any hopeful feelings that remain. We mentioned in class how these chapters are notable for describing scenes of intense violence in a very short amount of time. Particularly memorable ones include the man with Typhoid not even being able to stand up for his own execution, or Boyle shooting two Hungarians off their wagon even before actually knowing who they were. Typical of Hemingway’s iceberg narration style, we are handed these gruesome events, that don’t often relate to any of the rest of the plot, and we are given no instruction for what to do with them or how to interpret them. Even the interludes that don’t include direct acts of violence are still pretty disheartening and touch on the way war affects people and messes with their minds. One that really stood out to me was the soldier having a religious moment during the bombing and praying just to survive, but then immediately forgetting his promise or thinking nothing of it as he sleeps with a prostitute that night. Hemingway sort of runs down the positivity in the story from the soldier surviving, by giving us details that sort of tease the reliability or morality of the soldier. While I don’t feel like I have a place to really judge the soldier's actions, Hemingway’s narration is implicitly a little judgmental, or at least cold: "The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rossa about Jesus. And he never told anybody" (67).

With all these italicized stories creating an ominous tone for the entire book, it was a bit of a surprise for me to read the last section where Nick seems so peaceful, content, and even optimistic. We see this side of Nick in the story “Cross-Country Snow” when he becomes a very poetic narrator describing “his sticks hanging like some insect's thin legs, kicking up puffs of snow as they touched the surface and finally the whole kneeling, trailing figure coming around in a beautiful right curve...the sticks accenting the curve like points of light, all in a wild cloud of snow" (108). But even that story had a melancholy ending with Nick and George realizing things won’t be the same anymore and acknowledging that even promises break and friendships don't last. Yet after all this gloom and disillusionment, the closing story is once again Nick out in nature--this time alone--and once again accompanied by feelings of contentment and peace. We identified the tone in class to be “meditative” which I think is very accurate. But this time, it ends with a more optimistic and hopeful tone: “There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp” (156).  I’m a little confused what the significance of this ending is, whether it’s commenting on the healing power of nature or of being alone, and how to understand this in the context of all the tension in previous stories. It feels weird to view it as a post-war optimism after stories like “Soldier’s Home” that depict such an unsuccessful homecoming and assimilation back into civilian life. It was nice to end Nick’s narrative on a hopeful note, but after so many ominous endings it also felt a little strange to me.