Runaway by Alice Munro

 

Runaway was instructive to me in for two reasons. Munro uses two major devices that accelerate the reader's understanding of what's happening, one is point of view and the other is natural setting. I tend to tell my stories through one viewpoint and that tends to create one dimensioned experience. So in order to consider what the multiple viewpoints and offer I chose to examine this in Runaway. Her use of setting, however, jumped out at me so strongly that I couldn't ignore how it also informs my writing.

The story is about a woman named Carla who ran away from home to marry Clark, and then attempts to run away from him and their troubled marriage. Clark and Carla own a horse farm. The story begins with the return of the neighbor, Sylvia who has been in Greece recovering from the death of her husband. Carla helped Sylvia keep house while Leon died and worked with her to clear out the remains of his things once he was gone.

Munro uses two points of view: Carla's and Sylvia's. Both are third person close making each one narrator as well as primary characters. Where she chooses to switch point of view heightens the tension in the storyline. The story is split, the first third told by Carla, second third by Sylvia, then Carla/Sylvia/Carla in equal parts through the last third of the story. Clark who is the cause of tension in the story is only observable through these women's eyes.

The passage that best illustrates Munro's ability to shift point of view and enrich the story is just before Sylvia is visited by Clark. She has put Carla on a bus to Toronto to escape him. "She kept seeing Carla, Carla stepping onto the bus. Her thanks had been sincere but already almost casual, her wave jaunty. She had got used to her salvation." She is back at her house just falling asleep on the couch in the living room.

"The next thing she knew she was on a bus somewhere-in Greece?-with a lot of people she did not know, and the engine of the bus was making an alarming knocking sound. She woke to find the knocking was at her front door.

Carla?"

Carla had kept her head down until the bus was clear of town."

Now Munro takes us through Carla on the bus, reflecting on her first running away, realizing that Clark is essential to her, panicking, getting off the bus and calling him to come get her. This section closes with,

"'Come and get me. Please come and get me.

I will.'

Sylvia had forgotten to lock her door. She realized that she should be locking it now, not opening it, but it was too late. She had it open."

Clark has come to visit her and return the clothes that Carla borrowed to run away. The reader's knowledge that Carla has gone back makes the suspense of Clark's visit even more powerful. What is he going to do? Munro uses that quick point of view shift masterfully. While I have tended towards putting my reader into one character's head believing it makes a stronger story, Munro shows me that multiple points of view actually deepen a readers understanding of the character and motive.

The second device that Munro uses to move the story is natural setting. The most prominent example of this is the passage below. When I first read this passage I thought it was a benign and lovely description of the farm scene mirroring the upward trajectory of Carla and Clark's marriage after "runaway day". They are reconciled and happier, the wood is coming into summer, and things are improving.

"Birds were everywhere. Red-winged blackbirds, robins, a pair of doves sang at daybreak. Lots of crows, and gulls on reconnoitering missions from the lake, and big turkey buzzards that sat in the branches of a dead okay about half a mile away, at the edge of the woods. At first they just sat there, drying out their voluminous wings, lifting themselves occasionally for a trial flight, flapping around a bit, then composing themselves to let the sun and the warm air do their work. In a day or so they were restored, flying high, circling and dropping to earth, disappearing over the woods, coming back to rest in the familiar bare tree."

Then Carla gets the letter from Sylvia describing the reappearance of Flora the runaway goat that she witnessed with Clark. Clark had left her yard with Flora; Sylvia believes the goat to be back home. She is not. And a few pages later, Munro puts the buzzards to use. And what was a beautiful description of nature becomes a harbinger of malice.

"She had only to raise her eyes, she had only to look in one direction, to know where she might go. An evening walk, once her chores for the day were finished. To the edge of the woods, and the bare tree where the buzzards had held their party."

Buzzards, of course is a signal to the reader, but placed carefully alongside songbirds, then crows and gulls, the progression to buzzards doesn't seem ominous. Once I read "buzzards party" in the section that came later, I had to go back and reread the prior passage with my new understanding. I believe strongly that place helps the reader envision what's occurring (or at least it helps me as the writer) but need to think about how to use my settings to further plot. Munro gives me a lot to think about in this story.

 

 

 

 

Quality of Life by Christine Sneed

What is sinister about this story is that it isn't. Mr. Fulger provides Lyndsey a comfortable life and satisfying intimacy and asks for nothing. And yet the lack of any detail about him, his life, creates the tension that something is sinister. The reader can participate in Lyndsey's paradigm that she has no choice and she is being coerced, or one can side with Mr. Fulger and say that she chooses her situation and has it all good. So this seems like a story that depends heavily on the perspective of the reader.

There is no evident reason why Lyndsey can't stop seeing Mr. Fulger. There is the implication that he has power, that he is ruthless, but there is no evidence. Lyndsey seems to be struggling with herself, with her inability to exert her own will. In their first meeting he comments, "We often rely on others to make our most important decisions. There's no reason to be ashamed of this." (p.272) And like Nisha in Admiral, the reader is left wondering if the protagonist finds the situation (of luxury; of money) untenable why doesn't she exert her will and exit?

I found this story to provide more to think about than Admiral. While Nisha clearly had a solid reason for taking the job with the Strikers, Lyndsey has no reason to continue to engage with Mr. Fulger. Sneed doesn't provide any dimension to Mr. Fulger on purpose. Which makes him a backdrop to Lyndsey's (somewhat adolescent) frustrations and inactions. So that makes this story really about Lyndsey, and self imprisonment. If Sneed explained Mr. Fulger we would spend less time creating reasonable and then unreasonable stories about who he really is and if he is evil or not.

We know the Strikers are cold, manipulative and exacting. They are used to getting what they want and they do. Boyle does not let us guess about them. This heightens the frustration with Nisha's inaction, because everyone knows she is being bought. We aren't sure if the same is true of Lyndsey. And that makes this story chilling.

Admiral by T.C. Boyle

This story is primarily about class, and assumptions about class. Boyle creates fairly stereotypical rich people in the Strikers. The only sign of emotion on their part is around the dog. "She'd had the acceptance letter in her hand to show her, thinking how proud of her Mrs. Striker would be, how she'd take her in her arms, for a hug and congratulate her, but the first thing she'd said was What about Admiral?" (p.5)

Nisha is bought, just like Admiral is bought. She struggles with this, but not successfully. Although you understand why she is there, that she needs money, there is little depth to what she is experiencing in this story. The reader isn't sure what Nisha desires as an alternative which makes it hard to feel badly for her. It's unclear whether Boyle is doing this on purpose, or it is an accident of the storytelling.

She tells herself the job is temporary but when she contemplates starting to look for a "real" job "the face of her mother, sick from vomiting and with her scalp as smooth and slick as an eggplant, would rise up to shame her."(p.11). This feels like a misstep on the part of Boyle. Nisha has been indoctrinated by her mother that there are jobs that black people shouldn't take. Being a maid, for instance. "A woman of color does not clean house, that was what her mother always told her, and it had become a kind of mantra when she was growing up, a way of reinforcing core values, of promoting education and the life of the mind, but she couldn't help wondering how much higher a dog-sitter was on the socioeconomic scale than a maid." (p.2) One isn't convinced of the authenticity of Nisha being shamed by her sick mother, as her mother wouldn't endorse this job at all.

Boyle only provides one quick conversation about the animal cruelty, and not in a way that engaged my desire for revenge on the Strikers. It seems to me that the emphasis on the sandwiches, the drinking, the playing with Admiral are elongated and the crux, the tension between she and Erhard is underplayed even ignored. Wouldn't she struggle earlier with the pending event, whether he was interested in her, if that emotion would alter his actions? She understands her situation, "Of course, Nisha was no fool." She knew there was quid pro quo here, knew that Erhard has his agenda, but she was in n no hurry, she'd committed to nothing..." (p17)

Nisha expresses that she is humiliated by Mrs. Striker's return home and subsequent foiling of their plan. But it is unclear what is driving that. Is it that she, Nisha, couldn't pull off the rebellion? Is it her continued participation in the creation of a false dog? Is it that she's had her place reinforced once again? Boyle suggests the latter by closing with "And every slowly, as the days beat on, she began to understand what her role was, her true role." p(21) That role is truly make Admiral, Admiral. Perhaps by letting him run into traffic and die the first dog.

In a few short sentences, Boyle moves from this thought to the day of reckoning. Mrs. Striker calls their bluff and the story is over. Nisha makes a few attempts at rationalizing her life without success for herself or us. But I'm not sure I care enough for her. Does that make me Mrs. Striker?

Will She? Won't She? The Years of My Birth by Louise Erdrich

The construct of this story is clear. The externally flawed is saved by love and generosity. The physically beautiful is internally flawed. The guilt of a mother who gives up a child because it’s imperfect is turned on the remaining child and poisons the relationship.

Erdrich does not sacrifice Tuffy with subtlety, she puts her out there abandoned and physically flawed. She creates good and evil characters, the Wishkobs versus the Lashers. She creates drama through the very practical event of a needed kidney to bring them together and they all act out their true natures (none of whom changes) in the moment of climax. The story is short and satisfying even if we don’t know the outcome. The satisfaction coming in the revenge that neither of the Lashers is happy and the child that was thrown away comes back with the ability to save them, even if she doesn’t.

The question Erdrich makes you ask is: what value does Linden provide Tuffy? Tuffy reflects on her adoption, "I was grateful now for the way things had turned out. Before we were born, my twin had had the compassion to crush me, to improve me by deforming me: I was the one who was spared." (p. 68.)

If Linden dies, will his presence, his only possible "goodness", die as well? If Tuffy saves Linden, does she also save herself from being alone? If Linden dies, will Tuffy then be subject to Nancy? Tuffy seems to need Linden to live more than he does himself.

So where is the climax in this story? There are two possibilities: Nancy asks Tuffy for the kidney or Linden rejects Tuffy and she has a dilemma. The tension is built throughout back story since you know from the outset that there is a twin, that there is a birth mother. Erdrich isn't telling you this information out of pure interest, she's putting it out there for you to pay attention. So we wait through the first half of the story, until Tuffy is settled into her life for the phone call. It comes, they meet. Still more tension through dinner, but Erdrich takes you quickly to the point (the story is very short after all). Thus the climax seem to occur at the point of the question. Will she? Won't she?

More tension builds through Tuffy wrestling with possibility, consulting her sister (who threatens to have Linden's plug pulled), and then getting tested. No one she encounters, including Linden's doctor, thinks she should sacrifice herself for him. Not even Linden himself "You don't have to be a Jesus." (p.68) he tells her. Erdrich drives the story all the way to the point at which we believe Tuffy is going to abandon Linden. And then she abandons the reader. She puts Tuffy in the "white, white room"(p.68). This then could also be the climax. Will she? Won't she? The white room is the place where Linden's presence held her hand, where she was put away from those who loved her, where she screamed until child services gave her back to the Wishkobs. The white room is a place of powerlessness, so we have to think Tuffy is stuck. But really, any action that follows is plausible, will she, won't she?

I believe the narrative arc leads you to the point at which Nancy asks. While Erdrich toys with the reader for the remainder of the story, you can't believe that she won't save him. Tuffy is, after all, an inherently good character. She doesn't need to escape from Linden, he has protected her, she will rescue him. So while the tension is heightened all the way to the close of the story, the emotional pivot point is at the question. The point at which the reader says along with Tuffy, "All my life, knowing without knowing it, I had waited for this to happen." (p. 68). We all had. And we are all stuck in that white room with her but resigned that she will find "the alternative unbearable" (p.68) and will save both herself and Linden.