In this paper, I will examine some of the mythic elements of “Noon Wine.” Specifically, I will look at how Porter uses psychic distance to illustrate Mr. Thompson as a flawed hero, undone by his own hubris.

In an interview with Barbara Thompson, Katherine Anne Porter stated that “any true work of art has got to give you the feeling of reconciliation—what the Greeks would call catharsis, the purification of your mind and imagination” (Porter).  Mr. Thompson’s farm is a literal representation of catharsis.  In mythology, the hero is called to adventure, called away from his ordinary life into an unknown (often magical world).  In “Noon Wine,” Mr. Thompson doesn’t leave the comfort of his home, but rather, the magical world is literally brought to his doorstep.  When he hires Mr. Helton as a farm hand, Mr. Helton transforms the Thompson farm, almost magically, from a rundown, cluttered old farm into an admirable abode, one with a “strong gate that Mr. Helton had built and set firmly on its hinges,” where the “piles of trash around the barns and house disappeared” (243).

The house as a figure of catharsis is also a representation of Mr. Thompson himself–the house being a universal/mythical symbol for the Self (Jung).  As the stories progresses, the house becomes less of a hovel and more of a functioning structure; the animals are well-kept, the garden is fertilized, the cows milked, the butter churned.  The Thompson farm has become a well-oiled, archetypal machine.

Porter shines in her presentation of archetypal roles and in her ability to move deftly along the psychic distance spectrum.  It is through this craft maneuver that the readers become intimate with Mr. Thompson’s hubris.  In the beginning of the story, Porter writes: “In spite of his situation in life, Mr. Thompson had never been able to outgrow his deep conviction that running a dairy farm and chasing after chickens was women’s work.” When Mr. Helton begins to thrive on the Thompson’s farm, Porter states that “Mr. Helton had never heard of the difference between a man’s and a woman’s work on the farm.”  These are just two examples of how Porter maintains a relatively even level of psychic distance in the first half of the story, while also giving the reader subtle hints into Mr. Thompson’s judgments (235).

In the second half of the story, Porter reels in the psychic distance.  When the bounty-hunter, Mr. Hatch visits the farm, the reader is suddenly brought in very close to Mr. Thompson’s thoughts.  Throughout the scene, Porter zooms in and pulls out masterfully.  In doing so, the reader enjoys witnessing the unfolding of Mr. Thompson’s judgment (or hubris).  Consider the following two lines:

• “He couldn’t remember when he had taken such a dislike to a man on first sight” (243).
• “The man was no good, and he was there for no good, by what was he up to” (250).

In the first example, Porter keeps us at a moderate distance.  The reader is still being told to filter the story through the speaker: “HE couldn’t remember.”  In the second line the filter is removed and we are much closer to Mr. Thompson: “That man was no good.”  The reader is brought into an intimate space with Mr. Thompson.  We are no longer being told that “he” felt this way, but rather that “the man was no good.”  There is no question.

Porter works along this range of psychic narrative throughout the scene with Mr. Hatch.  The method produces various effects.  First, when the reader is pulled closer to Mr. Thompson, it magnifies the tension of the scene.  Were the scene written without these interludes of psychic closeness, the tension would diffuse.  Because we are deeper inside Mr. Thompson’s head, we are allowed to join him in his judgments, join him in his own trepidation and discomfort.  Second, the reader is also allowed more access into Mr. Thompson’s hubris.  The further along the conversation with Mr. Hatch progresses, the more Mr. Thompson is pushed into that zone of discomfort.  Therefore, the hubris becomes more transparent.  Porter writes:

“Mr. Thompson began to feel that Mr. Hatch was trying to make out he had the best judgment in tobacco, and he was going to keep up the argument until he proved it.  He began to feel seriously annoyed with the fat man.  After all, who was he and where did he come from?  Who was he to go around telling other people what kind of tobacco to chew” (249)?

Here we see a progression from moderate psychic distance into close psychic distance.  The section begins with “Mr. Thompson began to feel,” and moves into “Who was he to go around telling other people?”  In short, we see Mr. Thompson begin to unravel before our eyes.  Mr. Thompson has much to lose—the wellbeing of his farm, the vitality of his land and family.  Going off the web definition at wisegeek.com, hubris is defined as:

Hubris, Greek for “insolence,” is a protagonist’s tragic flaw of overbearing pride, and leads to his or her reversal of fortune or downfall. Terrible consequences befall the tragic hero when hubris causes the violation of a moral code, the neglect of a warning from an authority figure or god, or an attempt to overstep normal human limits” (Morrow).

Mr. Thompson’s “insolence” may appear more empathic to the reader (who has enjoyed the fruits of Mr. Helton’s labor along with Mr. Thompson), but it also serves as a point of contention in the story: if Mr. Thompson loses Mr. Helton will he, in turn, lose prosperity?

The reader is aware of all that Mr. Helton has contributed to the health of the farm (or at the archetypal level, the health of Mr. Thompson’s conscious self).  Because the reader has invested in this progression, the varying levels of psychic distance heightens the tension in the scene.  Not only are we privy to Mr. Thompson’s thoughts and judgments (as well as his apprehension in losing Mr. Helton as a positive, nurturing force in his life), but as the scene progresses with Mr. Hatch, we begin to sense an impending dramatic turn in the story.

Porter writes that Mr. Hatch would “put Mr. Thompson in a fix,” that it was “a terrible position” and “he couldn’t think of any way out” (255).  Yet, instead of moving in close to Mr. Thompson, in terms of psychic distance, Porter opts to pull back:

“ . . . and then something happened that Mr. Thompson tried hard afterwards to piece together in his mind, and in fact it never did come straight.  He saw the fat man with his long bowie knife in his hand, he saw Mr. Helton come round the corner on the fun, his long jaw dropped, his arms swinging, his eyes wild” (255).

During this passage, Mr. Thompson displays no element of judgment.  Though the scene is playing out through Mr. Thompson’s perspective, the reader is given no insight into what Mr. Thompson is experiencing at an emotional level.  As a matter of fact, Mr. Thompson is so far removed from the reality of the situation that he cannot “piece together in his mind” all that occurred.

Given the aftermath of the story’s climax—Mr. Thompson attempting to regain his reputation and the suggested suicide at the very end—Mr. Thompson becomes the epitome of the fallen hero.  The “terrible consequences” outlined in Morrow’s definition of hubris befall Mr. Thompson in a way that one can only liken to the Greek tragedy.

Sources / Cited Works

• Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. New York: Dell, 1968. Print.
• Morrow, Licia. “What is Hubris?.” Wisegeek. N.p., 2003. Web. 19 Mar 2010. <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-hubris.htm>.
• Porter, Katherine Anne.  Interview with Barbara Thompson, in Katherine Anne Porter, a Critical Symposium, ed.  Lodwick Hartley and George Core.  Athens, GA, 1969, p. 14.
• Porter, Katherine. The collected stories of Katherine Anne Porter. New York: Mariner Books, 1979. Print.

In his book on animal intelligence, If a Lion Could Talk, Stephen Budiansky addresses the animal perspective by stating: “if a lion could talk we probably could understand him. He just would not be a lion anymore” (Budiansky).  During my brainstorming process of this piece, I researched the animal POV many times on the internet.  When I came across this gem of a quote, I had to ask myself, in regard to Robert Olen Butler’s story, Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot, is the parrot in this story really a parrot?  Is he really a man?  Is he something else?  Instead to focusing solely on the animal perspective in this paper, I wanted to instead focus on the parrot as Other and how Butler uses the contrivance (jealous husband reincarnated in a parrot’s body) to characterize the speaker/narrator.

Butler others his narrator in two obvious ways.  First, he places the main character in the body of a parrot.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Otherness as “a person, group, or entity perceived as being the opposite of or completely separate from or alien to oneself or one’s group” (“otherness”). The narrator in this story has not only been separated from his body—through death—but has been reincarnated in the body of another species altogether.  Second, Butler others the narrator (pre-bird form) by creating a character that is predisposed to paranoia and fits of anger/jealousy.  The following question begs to be asked: what does Butler’s othering of the main character do in terms of voice?

Keeping the Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry in mind, I want to focus on the narrator’s physical separation from the “outside world.”  In the opening paragraph, the narrator states, “I never can quite say as much as I know” (71).  The reader is already given clues as to the content of the story (i.e. the title), but the first line takes us a step further.  This narrator is separate; this narrator is Other.  When the narrator’s wife leaves the door of the birdcage open, the narrator flies out, feels a calling to the outside and smacks into the window.  In referencing his escape attempt, the narrator states, “I tried once and I learned a lesson” (76).  At this point in the story, the narrator is content in his separate world, as long as he can continue to catch a glimpse of the outside (normal) world.

The narrator appears to embrace his newfound otherness in regard to his physical body.  Consider the following section: The cage is “full of bird toys.  That dangling thing over there with knots and strips of rawhide and a bell at the bottom needs a good thrashing a couple of times a day and I’m the bird to do it” (73). The narrator has accepted his physical form, has come to find delight in bird-like activities like thrashing the rope.  Furthermore, the narrator uses a hybrid voice at times, a voice both human and bird:

When we held each other, I had no past at all, no present but her body, no future but to lie there and not let her go.  I was an egg hatched beneath her crouching body, I entered as a chick into her wet sky of a body, and all that I wished was to sit on her shoulder and fluff my feathers and lay my head against her cheek, my neck exposed to her hand (77).

Because the narrator has physically become a parrot, he emotes through bird-related sensory details.  Returning to one of the original questions posed for this paper: is the narrator a bird?  Is he human?  Is he a human soul in a bird body?  Butler merges the voices (human and bird) in such a way that the reader loses sight of these questions. Perhaps the story isn’t about the human/bird connection but rather, the voice of the Other, regardless of who or what that Other is.

When Butler takes the narrator into reflective moments throughout the story, the reader learns that the narrator struggled with otherness before his new incarnation.  Upon hearing his wife talk about the “new guy” in the shipping department at her work, the narrator begins to become paranoid that she is having an affair.  The narrator explains,

I felt like a damn fool whenever I actually said anything about this kind of feeling and she looked at me like she could start hating me real easy and so I was working on saying nothing, even if it meant locking myself up [in the bathroom] (74).

The narrator then relays an incident where he finds the shipping man’s name and address, goes to his house, climbs a big tree so that he could look inside the upstairs bedroom window and falls to his death.  As comical as the moment is for the reader, it further illustrates the narrator’s otherness, albeit in human form.  The reader might chuckle at the idea of a man fishing around for a name and address, driving to someone’s house and climbing a tree to catch his wife in what he perceives as a torrid affair.  But, the narrator makes no excuse for his actions, he only reminisces that he should have been able to flap his wings and fly off, that “it all seem[ed] so avoidable” (75).

Butler’s voice in Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot works effortlessly.  Not only does he put the reader in a precarious/fantastic situation, but he sidesteps the need for us to believe the rules of his world, to understand them, to place them under a microscope.  In the end, it’s not about whether or not we believe the contrivance, but rather, that we are capable of investing in the characters of the story—namely the main character.  Though Butler others his narrator throughout the story, he manages to tap into the Other within us all, the Other that wonders what it would be like to give that rawhide bell-toy a good thrashing.  Maybe we aren’t the birds to do it, but Butler certainly makes us believe we can.

Cited Works / Sources

• Budiansky, Stephen, John Kistler, and John Kistler. Animals are the issue. Free Press, 2004. Print.
• Butler, Robert. Tabloid Dreams. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1997. Print.
• “otherness.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010. Merriam-Webster Online.  10 March 2010 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/otherness>

In Adam Haslett’s story, Notes to My Biographer, the narrator tells us abouy “two things to get straight from the beginning: [he] hates doctors and [he has] never joined a support group in [his] life” (1).  As I read this story, there were two things that became clear: Notes to My Biographer is both funny and endearing.  Haslett’s technique of blending humor and pathos produces a beautiful and terrible narrative.  Furthermore, the layering of humor and emotion within the story serves to heighten the disjointed perspective of the main character, Frank, as he maneuvers between mental delusion and lucidity.

When the narrator, Frank, describes his son Graham to the reader, he states that Graham “learned from his mother; he [Graham] presses play and the fraction of his ancestry that suffered from conventionalism speaks through his mouth like a ventriloquist: Your-idea-is-fantasy-calm-down-it-will-be-the-ruin-of-you-medication-medication-medication” (9).  The reader can assume from this passage that Graham embraces the convention of his mother’s (sane) side of the family and, simultaneously, chastises his father for his “eccentricity.”  Frank doesn’t bother to go into details which emphasizes his lack of concern (or perhaps the refusal to validate Graham’s comments).  Instead, Frank focuses on his own memories of Graham:

He has a good mind, my son, always has, and somewhere the temerity to use it, to spear mediocrity in the eye, but in a world that encourages nothing of the sort, the curious boy becomes the anxious man.  He must suffer his people’s regard for appearances.  Sad (9).

This contrast between humor (the string, medication-medication-medication) and the pathos that immediately follows has numerous effects.  First, as stated above, it seems to heighten Frank’s fractured narration as he moves from the action of the present into his obsession with an idea for a new bicycle invention.  Second, it keeps Frank from propelling too far out of the reader’s “empathy zone.”  While Frank is certainly a character that demands a reader’s interest, the fragments of humanity and emotion that we are allowed to experience in Frank’s narration keeps us more that just “interested” in what happens to Frank as a character, but invested.

Haslett moves deftly between the two, proving that Frank is not only capable of moving us to laughter, but possesses the ability to draw us deep inside his own pathos, however erratic and “eccentric” that pathos may be.

Graham serves as an instrument of grounding throughout the story, a means for the reader to gauge the reality of the situation(s).  While Frank reminisces internally on Graham, (his “muse”) during the restaurant scene, recalling the “storage container, pancake press, tricycle engine, flying teddy bear,” Graham’s actions give the reader an alternative method for reading the moment: “Graham disagrees with me when I try to send back a second bottle of wine, apparently under the impression that one ought to accept spoiled goods in order not to hurt anybody’s feelings” (11).

Graham’s presence is vital to the lucidity of the story.  Furthermore, it juxtaposes Frank’s narrative “flitting” as he bounces from present action to internal dialogue.  Were Haslett to remove the moments of pathos from the story, I think the reader would become further and further alienated from Frank, perhaps to the point of exhaustion (as paralleled in Graham’s passing out on the bed in the hotel room.)  The beauty in this story is the way the author forces us to take a step back (perhaps along with Graham) then reels us back in, slowly, purposefully.

As Graham sleeps on the hotel bed, Frank bends over his son, wiping drool from his mouth, cupping his “gentle face” in his hands.  Upon reading such a touching passage, we find that forgiveness comes easy, that Frank’s mental illness is, in a sense, a way for the character to express his loneliness.  Throughout the story, Frank encourages from his son the same kind of “eccentricity,” as though Frank is begging Graham to join him in his illness, to be his muse, to fuel his inventions.  Where Graham sees his inherited disability as a curse, Frank views it as an extension of himself, a means to feel less estranged from the world.

“You have the chance to be with me,” Frank tells his son, “the things we’ll see!” (14).  Without the pathos in the story, the reader would coast along from one zany idea/circumstance to the other.  Thus, the story would become more of a parody, striving for the comic gimmick instead of bearing us along the “vast darkness” of Frank’s narrative ocean—an ocean that take us deeper into meaningful discourse.

Cited Works

Haslett, Adam. You Are Not a Stranger Here. Norwell, MA: Anchor, 2003. Print.

The dramatic monologue is a term best known by poets and playwrights.  It refers to a moment in a poem or a play where a character speaks directly to another character, uninterrupted.  In some cases, an entire poem (or play) can employ this device: i.e. Robert Browning’s poem, My Last Duchess as an example.  This “speech” usually offers insight into a character’s history and psychology.  In this paper, I will look at what effect the dramatic monologue has on Stuart Dybek’s story, We Didn’t.  The dramatic monologue not only invites the reader into a more intimate space, but it suggests a double voicedness–a refraction of the writer’s voice through the speaker’s.

In We Didn’t, Dybek uses the dramatic monologue format to relay an incident from the speaker’s past.  The “addressed you” he speaks to is the character Gin, and old girlfriend.  Dybek’s narrator reminisces with Gin (and thereby with the reader/audience) about a summer that almost culminated in copulation between Gin and the narrator.  We, the reader, are asked to step into the shoes of Gin, to listen to the narrator’s retelling of the story.  This places the reader in the role of active participant, much like the 2^nd person point of view.  However, in the dramatic monologue, the rules of engagement are more defined.  We are not meant to join the narrator in the telling of his story, we are meant to join the listener, and thus become an outside witness to the events.

The narrator is clear in establishing this role for the reader from the start:

We didn’t in the light; we didn’t in darkness.  We didn’t in the fresh-cut summer grass or in the mounds of autumn leaves or on the snow where the moonlight threw down our shadows.  We didn’t in your room on the canopy bed you slept in (156).

The “we” present is not the narrator and the reader, (i.e. the collective “we” as found in Faulkner’s A Rose For Emily) but represents the narrator and Gin.  While the reader joins Gin in terms of following the narrator’s story, we are also reminded that though we have stepped into the role of witnesses, we are outsiders nonetheless.  It is because of this that Dybek’s story contains a double voicedness.

I believe that this dual voice can be discerned beginning on page 158.  When a team searching for the body of a drowned woman interrupts the narrator and Gin’s near-lovemaking session, the narrator pulls back considerably.  The voice moves from an obvious “addressed you” to a more objective point of view:

Swerving and fishtailing in the sand, police calls pouring from their radios, the squad cars were on us, and then they were by us while we struggled to pull on our clothes (158).

In the next paragraph:

They braked at the water’s edge, and cops slammed out, brandishing huge flashlights, their beams deflecting over the dark water.  Beyond the darting of those beams, the far-of throbs of lightning seemed faint by comparison (158).

This objective narration continues through page 159 then returns to the “addressed you” in the paragraph that begins, “Without saying anything, we turned from the group . . .” (159).

Perhaps Dybek chose to move further away in psychic distance because of the content: the description of a drowned, pregnant woman.  It is my belief, however, that through this change in distance, the narration experiences a separation of narrator and author.  Dybek masters this form in We Didn’t and simultaneously possesses unrelenting authorial control. This effect can be disarming, considering the proposed intimacy of the “addressed you.”   It is an effect that surprises the reader with a highly accessible voice, a voice we (as readers) might find familiar to our own.  This further illustrates a duality in voice, or rather, a duality the reader confronts as impartial (yet momentary) observers.

In utilizing the dramatic monologue form, the narrator often reveals more than he/she intends.  When Dybek’s narrator and Gin are kissing at the drive in, after the incident with the body, Gin pulls away and grows distant.  The narrator would “kiss harder,” trying to lure Gin back from “wherever [she] had gone” (160).  Here, the narrator shows an awareness of the rift that’s forming between he and Gin, though in his remembered dialogue, he goes through the motions of presenting the conversation to Gin (the recipient of this narrative) and the reader (as witness).

By the end of the story, Dybek’s speaker returns to a lyrical narrative that echoes the beginning lyricism: “we didn’t, not in the moonlight, or by the phosphorescent lanterns of the lightning bugs in your back yard, not beneath the constellations we couldn’t see . . .” (163).  Dybek’s narrator is relentless in this sentiment, relentless in conveying to Gin (and thereby to the reader) exactly what did not occur between them.  Because of the dramatic monologue form, we are invited to witness the unraveling of a relationship, and therefore, we are given permission to dwell on these events through the narrator’s eyes and through Gin’s silent yet undeniable presence.

Cited Works

Dybek, Stuart. I sailed with Magellan. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2003. Print.

What a whirlwind I find myself in.  I’ve been writing more than I ever thought possible this semester: stories for school, genre flash fiction, mainstream flash fiction.  I’ve also finished a prologue and two chapters of a book (epic fantasy).  There may be a successful writer in me after all.

My first story for grad-workshop went over quite well.  It was received with thoughtfulness and care and many of my fellow classmates had good things to say.  I have to meet with Steven S. to discuss another revision.  This one is close.  I feel it.  I haven’t felt this positive about a story since Book Girl.

Our genre-writing group had its first session.  Trai brought a wonderful, light-hearted demon fantasy to the mix.  Maya’s working on a supernatural romance and Miriam is playing with magical-realism/fantasy.  Lisa will turn in next week as she wasn’t expected to make the first group, but surprised us all by showing up.  (cold and all) yay!

I’m writing in Feynwaer, a world that Darin and I have built over the last 15 years.  He has Aldamas and the mercenary and I have Jessiah and E’zreal.  They are great companions and have proven addictive as of late.  I’m enjoying the process and the notion of a novel has become less intimidating.

I have a great feeling about this writing group.  Trai, in particular, brings a wind of inspiration into my life.  I am so thankful for her.  I feel like I’ve been given a wonderful treasure—one that I have to take out of my pocket and look at every few minutes just to believe it’s really there.

My writing life is good.

My next story for workshop, I’ve decided, will be “Will’s Girl,” about the ultimate nerd in high school dating a foxy chick, much to the disgust and confusion of the macho male populous.  We’ll see how it goes.  It’s playing out quite humorous in my head.  We’ll see if it translates to the page.

Off to feed the muse again.  She’s been quite accommodating lately.  Thank you, o wondrous muse.

Scanned from Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, by David Gerrold.  Pretty good stuff for a genre how-to book.

By:

Stephanie Train

Chance.  Born blue and covered in afterbirth.  He wouldn’t breathe right away and his mother, now gone to Heaven, cried to the nurses, “save my baby, God, please.”  He finally let out a cry, a small one, a prelude to his small size and stature as he grew from a small boy into a small man.  The cry sounded like a kitten mewling, his tiny fists clawing at the air, his eyes screwed shut.  He could finally breathe.

He was hooked up to machines that breathed for him for the days after he was born, clear tubes that came out his body like stringy, plastic organs.  He never had that one lazy eye corrected and he always walked with a limp–or a shuffle rather–but at least he could walk.

Chance wasn’t a family name, it was the story of his life: gasping for air out of his mother’s birth canal, surviving a fall from the tree at age six—the tree the other kids told him he could never climb. (But he did, and he fell.)  Surviving physical therapy.  Surviving the 6^th grade.  Special education classes weren’t that bad.  At least he was surrounded by kids who joined him in the ranks of the abused—victims of insult, circumstance and rhyming taunts.  Chance can’t dance.  Chancey’s a Nancy.  Limpy the Gimp.

They were all the same.  Maggie, who had been nice to him once when they were sitting in the nurse’s office alone, joined in on the bullying during recess.  Kimberly, who refused to be his dance partner during square-dancing intermurals, didn’t want to be stuck with the “limping boy.”  Jimmy Joe Johnson, who looked fifteen but managed to squeeze inside a 6^th grade desk; would trip Chance in the hall, guffawing at the crippled boy falling on his face.  “Way to go, Grace.”  They all laughed, always, like a choir with no variation—always the same, high-pitched laugh, a shrill laugh.  All the same.

“Model 278A,” the female robotic voice called out over the loud speaker.  “Model 278A.  Worker model.  Processing module 4.5.  Strength module 13.452.  Endurance module 5.  Repeat function.  Beginning of Line.”

Insert the modules in through an opening in the back of the head.  At this phase, the androids remind Chance of the old mannequins from the 20^th century.  They’re made organic stuff: skin, flesh and bone and organs, but they’re empty, like the vapid starlets who bat their eyelashes and stare at the cameras like big-eyed, poorly drawn cartoon characters.  Chance plugs in the circuit, gives them thought, gives them life.

Archie stands in the balcony, separated from the model-workers by plexiglass.  Archie who melted metal, who created chips and circuits and boards as small as fingernails.

“They’re always the same,” Archie said last week.  It wasn’t the first time he said this.

“Isn’t that the point?” Chance replied.

“It’s wrong.”

They come down the line, hanging by a shoulder harness, swaying from the sudden stops like slabs of beef.  Like their predecessors they’re top of the line—near impossible to distinguish from a real person, aside from the empty stares with eyes like an animal mounted and stuffed—a lion, a great boar.

“Worker 439.  Insertion of module.  Window opening.  Begin . . . begin . . . begin,” the voice instructs.  Chance holds the module in his gloved hand, thin, delicate, the size of a quarter.  Pushing it into the back of the head would almost be like plunking a coin into a mall kiddie ride—back when there were coins and back when there were malls.  Insert coin here.  Then the yellow cab or the red fire engine starts to rattle and shake.

“Worker 439.  Begin . . .”

All the same.  Chance held the module up to the light, checking it for dust, checking it for clarity and quality.  Like their predecessors, the module goes in.  Unlike their predecessors, the module is flawed.  Chance always liked saying the word: flawed.  Flawed, imperfect, marred.  Tainted.  In the past, given to him pristine, ready to input.  Now, he held flawed between his fingers.  Flawed came from Archie, Archie who (using a magnifying glass the size of a human head) made alternations on the modules, made changes to the programming, made flaws.

“Slip them in,” Archie had told Chance.  “They won’t be able to tell at first.  You’ll see.  Nothing’s perfect, right?”

“Right,” Chance said.

“Worker 439.  Begin . . .” the voice urges.  In a few seconds the red lights will go off.  There would be a work-jam.  Chance doesn’t want that in his permanent file.  He plugs the module in.  It doesn’t go in at first.  His hands are shaking.  He takes in a deep breath then lets it out and tries again.  It clicks into place.

“Model 278A.  Model 278A.  Processing module 4.5.  Worker model.  Strength module 13.452.  Endurance module 5.  Repeat function.  End of Line.  Next.  Next.”

Chance doesn’t know the changes Archie made under his big magnifying glass, burning his bits of metal.  But, as he waits for the next model to swing to a stop, he imagines for a moment, a brief moment, thinking to the future.

The androids stand before an eager crowd.  They stand in a perfect row, like marines, unmoving, unblinking until the director pushes a button and releases them into the world.  They come to life, their eyes rolling left and right, up and down, their fingers curling and uncurling in awareness.  All but one begins to walk around.  All but one makes precise steps.  One lurches forward and a moment of realization washes across its artificial features.  It limps toward the others, dragging a foot behind it like a lame dog.

The director’s lips tighten; his eyes twitch.  The workers gasp and rush and panic.  Even the other androids pause and look, their defects hidden for now as they consider.  Then it erupts from the crowd–a crowd that’s used to perfection, that has grown numb to symmetry–cascading up and down the aisles like notes on a scale: applause.  Applause.

I’m just in a Tobias Wolff kind of mood today . . .

Bullet in the Brain

Enjoy!

I just finished, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.  This is for my “How to teach reading” course, a prereq. for the teaching licensure program at CSU.  It’s adolescent literature.  I started it last night and got about 44 pages in.  I just finished it tonight (224 pages in all).  Good stuff.

It was great fun reading an adolescent lit book and I’m already a big fan of Alexie’s short stories.  We had to come up with five comments/questions about the piece, from a teaching point of view.  Here are the five I came up with tonight:

1. I enjoyed the short chapters and the brisk/crisp style of the book.  It was so easy to get into, to get through each section.  Great for adolescent readers.
2. Another thing that makes it a good choice for teens is the content and language.  Alexie doesn’t shy away from teenage lingo nor does he downplay the things that might be important to a teenager.  When I read it, I found myself relating to a lot of what Junior was going through, even though I had grown up in a predominantly white community (and a girl no less, geesh)!  I think we can understand what Junior is going through, even though his plights take on epic proportion compared to my own, he’s relatable.
3. I loved the focus on sports in the book.  I’m usually not a fan, but for any sports-minded teens, they’ll get a lot from that aspect.
4. A Fairy Tale?   It certainly read like one at times, but it had heart.  I think the difference is that the princess in the tower is beyond our reach.  Junior is not.  We can root for him without placing him upon a pedestal.
5. I liked the fact that Alexie didn’t go for too much dramatic formula.  Sure, there’s some, but what conflict is truly original?  I’m speaking about the fact that he doesn’t torture the protagonist in a cruel and unusual way.  We get to experience the joys right along with Junior.

At any rate, a good read.  I highly recommend it for a fast, easy, delightful read.  This is one book I would definitely teach a class of middle-school/high school students.

For Todd’s Teaching Creative Writing class, Jonathan and I have teamed up to present a lesson plan on conflict within fiction.   Here are some notes I’ve come up with from poking around on the internet:

Examples of character conflict plots

• Man against Man
• Man against Self
• Man against Nature
• Man against Society
• Man against Circumstances
• Man against Machine
• Man against God
• God against Everybody

Also consider these items as well:

The External struggle VS the Internal struggle.

• External: conflict with elements outside of one’s self (and often outside of one’s control).
• Internal: conflict within the psyche: is there an important decision to make?  An urge/temptation to resist?  Is there a decision to make?

The conflict suggests escalation of struggle into climax—so follow the potential for a story that the conflict suggests.

Crisis VS Conflict

This can go back to the premise of Situation VS Story.

• Crisis examples: a car accident, a sudden illness.
• Conflict examples: a young man is planning a trip to backpack across Europe and is hit by a car accident.  He must decide whether or not he will go on the trip.

A Crisis might have potential for bringing action into a story, but a true conflict will force the character (and reader) into a bit of soul searching: reexamining values, introspection, reviewing ones choices, a shift in self and attitude.

Questions to consider:

What does your character want/desire?

What does your character need?

(Will Add to this post as Jonathan and I get more going)

Resources Used So Far:

• http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative/crisis-vs-conflict.htm
• http://www.blurtit.com/q726270.html
• http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1004812