"So long I've been away. So long I've traveled, and so far." (107)
In Joyce Carol Oates' story "The Beating," Madelyn Fleet recounts her traumatic experience with her father's beating and her own sexual assault. At first when reading this quote, I didn't think much of it, but then going back, I realized she could have said this as a result of her return from her assault at Mr. Carmichael's house. She introduces her journey before it even happens, leading the reader to foreshadow the events to come. However, she does not give a clear indication of what happens at what time. Her errant thoughts link back her trauma, because after a person experiences something traumatic, everything sort of jumbles together in their memory. So, coming back to the hospital room after being sexually assaulted and then being asked to leave the hospital room could have happened within the same sphere of time. However, the quote does serve as an understatement to what happened to her. Since she did get sexually assaulted, it does not translate to going far away on a journey. It is more like setting out for an escape to then be kidnapped and brutally assaulted, but maybe to a fourteen year old, that is the only way to deal with things.
If this story is written in the future, giving the author time to recover, why are the events still mixed up? And why does she summarize the events so nonchalantly?
Showing posts with label Joyce Carol Oates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joyce Carol Oates. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2012
Blood Thick and Sticking
In William Faulkner's 1939 short story, "Barn Burning," what stood out to me was the way Faulkner used blood as both a theme for the story and a motif. Blood equals family loyalty (theme) and the word "blood" is used repeatedly throughout the story to represent the hopelessness, fear and grief felt by the main character, ten year old, Colonel Sartoris Snopes at the hands of the patriarch (motif).
The pyromaniac father, Abner Snopes, takes Sartoris out onto a road in the middle of the night and strikes him in the head while accusing him of thinking of betraying his family by telling the judge about his father's arson. "You were fixing to tell them. You would have told him...You're getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you" (8). This part of the story was particularly poignant to me. This could have been the "coming of age" father and son talk that usually begins with, "Son, you're getting to be a man...," a time in a boy's life when he should be provided with the tools he needs to have a successful future as a man. Instead, he is terrorized by his own father and what he learns is that he must stay within the bounds of his family or face the consequences of betrayal. Sartoris knows from experience the violence that emanates from his father.
Although Faulkner may be telling readers that not having "any blood to stick to you" is a reference to Sartoris losing his family, it also sounds like a veiled threat that Snopes will kill his son if he exposes his father's criminal activities. No wonder the motif of hopelessness, fear, and grief are so clear in the story. He has no role model, nothing to look forward to and no one to turn to in his darkest hours.
We know from reading the story that twenty years later Sartoris thinks about the things that transpired in his family. What we don't know is how his life really turned out. What do you think Sartoris' future held for him?
The pyromaniac father, Abner Snopes, takes Sartoris out onto a road in the middle of the night and strikes him in the head while accusing him of thinking of betraying his family by telling the judge about his father's arson. "You were fixing to tell them. You would have told him...You're getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you" (8). This part of the story was particularly poignant to me. This could have been the "coming of age" father and son talk that usually begins with, "Son, you're getting to be a man...," a time in a boy's life when he should be provided with the tools he needs to have a successful future as a man. Instead, he is terrorized by his own father and what he learns is that he must stay within the bounds of his family or face the consequences of betrayal. Sartoris knows from experience the violence that emanates from his father.
Although Faulkner may be telling readers that not having "any blood to stick to you" is a reference to Sartoris losing his family, it also sounds like a veiled threat that Snopes will kill his son if he exposes his father's criminal activities. No wonder the motif of hopelessness, fear, and grief are so clear in the story. He has no role model, nothing to look forward to and no one to turn to in his darkest hours.
We know from reading the story that twenty years later Sartoris thinks about the things that transpired in his family. What we don't know is how his life really turned out. What do you think Sartoris' future held for him?
Beauty and "The Beating"
"The house that looked ugly but dignified from the road looked, up close, only just ugly...the kind of house...in which, in a fairy tale, a troll would live" (128).
This is the description that Madelyn Fleet gives of her former math teacher's house to which he brings her for a clandestine and creepy rendezvous in Joyce Carol Oates's "The Beating." Immediately, this quote made me think of the story The Beauty and the Beast, in which a young woman is brought against her will to a monster's house where he is trying to recuperate from a terrible situation (i.e. being turned into a beast). Mr. Carmichael is dealing with the loss of his wife and young children--to what we do not know--and attempts to seduce Madelyn by taking her away from her depression. The twist is that Mr. Carmichael is not a kindly yet narcissistic prince on the inside, but a creepy, pathological child-molester who is rotting away with his house, and Madelyn doesn't fall in love but out of love with him.
This change from facade to interior is echoed throughout the story, from Madelyn's description of her father as the "everyman" who yet shares very little of his life; to the Brewer Building, which literally has a facade that hides its shady underneath; to Mr. Carmichael himself, math teacher on the outside, criminal on the inside.
Question: What does the idea of facade have to do with the fact that Madelyn waited fifty years to tell this story? And, what actually happened to her father?
This is the description that Madelyn Fleet gives of her former math teacher's house to which he brings her for a clandestine and creepy rendezvous in Joyce Carol Oates's "The Beating." Immediately, this quote made me think of the story The Beauty and the Beast, in which a young woman is brought against her will to a monster's house where he is trying to recuperate from a terrible situation (i.e. being turned into a beast). Mr. Carmichael is dealing with the loss of his wife and young children--to what we do not know--and attempts to seduce Madelyn by taking her away from her depression. The twist is that Mr. Carmichael is not a kindly yet narcissistic prince on the inside, but a creepy, pathological child-molester who is rotting away with his house, and Madelyn doesn't fall in love but out of love with him.
This change from facade to interior is echoed throughout the story, from Madelyn's description of her father as the "everyman" who yet shares very little of his life; to the Brewer Building, which literally has a facade that hides its shady underneath; to Mr. Carmichael himself, math teacher on the outside, criminal on the inside.
Question: What does the idea of facade have to do with the fact that Madelyn waited fifty years to tell this story? And, what actually happened to her father?
Dramatic Irony
"It came to me then: a memory of how Mr. Carmichael had puzzled our class one day 'demonstrating infinity' on the blackboard. With surprising precision he'd drawn a circle, and halved it; this half circle, he'd half; this quarter circle, he'd halved..." (129).
One of the reoccurring images in Joyce Carol Oates' "The Beating" is that of infinity, particularly being trapped in a moment, a memory forever. Literally speaking the story itself is trapped in a repeating loop just because of the way Oates chose to write it: by beginning the story and ending the story in the same moment "Still alive!" (107 and 135). In retrospect, the reader can see how Madelyn is trapped in this moment in her life were everything that could go wrong has. The first quotation appeared to me quite out of place in the story until I saw the way Oates points to Madelyn's memories and the loop that they play. While the reader is pointed to a past and a future, none of that can be brought to the present because of the way the hospital pools her memories.
Did Oates use the metaphor of the hospital pooling her memories forever as a dramatically ironic tool because Madelyn's memory of that day is literally trapped forever in the writing of the story?
One of the reoccurring images in Joyce Carol Oates' "The Beating" is that of infinity, particularly being trapped in a moment, a memory forever. Literally speaking the story itself is trapped in a repeating loop just because of the way Oates chose to write it: by beginning the story and ending the story in the same moment "Still alive!" (107 and 135). In retrospect, the reader can see how Madelyn is trapped in this moment in her life were everything that could go wrong has. The first quotation appeared to me quite out of place in the story until I saw the way Oates points to Madelyn's memories and the loop that they play. While the reader is pointed to a past and a future, none of that can be brought to the present because of the way the hospital pools her memories.
Did Oates use the metaphor of the hospital pooling her memories forever as a dramatically ironic tool because Madelyn's memory of that day is literally trapped forever in the writing of the story?
Saturday, March 31, 2012
The living dead
"Still alive! From the doorway of the intensive care unit I can see my father in his bed swaddled in white like a comatose infant, and he is still alive (135)."
Memory plays a important role in "The Beating" as Maddie, continues to lives by her traumatic experience. Maddie, perhaps unwillingly, keeps her memory of Mr. Carmichael and lives with it due to its ties to her father. Maddie keeps the memory of her father being in the hospital and ties it to her attack. It can be said, Maddie could not forget the experience of that day in July even if she wanted to. Not only did her father get a beating of sorts but so did she. The beatings are defining moments in which fourteen year old Maddie must live off. It is often the case in which we, the readers experience a loss of innocence and can better connect with the story and what it means to say about memory.
Why didn't Maddie notify someone she would be leaving home with Mr. Carmichael?
Memory plays a important role in "The Beating" as Maddie, continues to lives by her traumatic experience. Maddie, perhaps unwillingly, keeps her memory of Mr. Carmichael and lives with it due to its ties to her father. Maddie keeps the memory of her father being in the hospital and ties it to her attack. It can be said, Maddie could not forget the experience of that day in July even if she wanted to. Not only did her father get a beating of sorts but so did she. The beatings are defining moments in which fourteen year old Maddie must live off. It is often the case in which we, the readers experience a loss of innocence and can better connect with the story and what it means to say about memory.
Why didn't Maddie notify someone she would be leaving home with Mr. Carmichael?
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