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.