Mixed Heritage and Eyes in Tayo’s Search for Self and Cure

In Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony the color of Tayo’s eyes comes up frequently. Tayo’s eyes are an outward representation of the deeper characteristics beneath his surface. His eyes signify that he is of a mixed ancestry, but more than that, they signify that Tayo is a mixed up person. Tayo’s whole existence is two-sided—not just because he’s half-white and half-Native American but also because what people expect him to be and do is only half of who he really is and what he does. He’s of the new generation but he respects the old way. All these things that are a part of his inner self are visible on the outside in his eyes. By coming to terms with his differences in appearance, Tayo will be able to be cured from the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder he suffers with after fighting in World War II, and in the end, discover who he truly is.

It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. This means that by just looking into the eyes of another person, you can learn a lot about who they are. Tayo’s eyes look physically different from those of the other Laguna Pueblo people around him, and so looking into them reveals his mixed heritage. When Tayo and Rocky meet with the Army recruiter, he doesn’t believe the two are brothers because Tayo looks obviously different: “The Army recruiter looked closely at Tayo’s light brown skin and his hazel eyes” (Silko 66). Hazel eyes are a “light greenish-grayish brown” color that in Tayo’s case came about because of his mixed parentage (“hazel”). His eyes here show his connection with two cultures, but his inability to truly exist in either alone. Being this mix of two races, two eye colors, two worlds, really disconnects Tayo from the people around him, especially Auntie.

Besides being lighter skinned, Tayo’s eyes are the only physical difference between him and say Rocky or Harley. But these physical differences cause an emotional rift separating Tayo from the rest of his group. Being half-white brings about contentions and hostilities from almost everyone around him—from Auntie who nearly neglects him as a child, and from Emo whom Tayo tries to kill, to Rocky and Harley who are just trying to understand. His eyes are a big clue that Tayo is not a “full-blood.” Tayo gets a lot of reactions because of his ancestry and people think he shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the Native American Culture.

When Old Grandma is worried about Tayo’s condition and wants him to see the medicine man, Tayo’s own Auntie, who brought him up, even thinks this is wrong: “You know what people will say if we ask for a medicine man to help him. Someone will say it’s not right. They’ll say, ‘Don’t do it. He’s not full blood anyway’” (Silko 30). It seems Auntie is worried what other people would think, but that is actually exactly how she thinks, too. Tayo doesn’t only get these feeling from his family, but from complete strangers as well, “he remembered how the white men who were building the new highway through Laguna had pointed at him. They had elbowed each other and winked” (53). Most people in the novel, white or Pueblo or Mexican, see this mixing of blood as a bad, negative, and almost nasty thing.

Tayo’s eyes, a symbol of his mixed ancestry, separate him from the Native American culture and the white American culture simultaneously, but oddly enough, his eyes, his heritage, connect him to these two different worlds. Because of who Tayo is, because he is half-white he has a connection to the white world that his immediate family and friends can never understand. He resides in neither world alone, and with his eyes observes them both as an outsider while he also has the benefits of an insider.

Tayo was raised on the reservation by his Auntie, Rocky’s mother. Since childhood he’s been taught the legends and stories and ancestries of the Laguna people from the beginning of time. He is immersed in this Native American world, but not allowed to fully be part of it by his Auntie because he is impure in her eyes: “since he could remember, he had known Auntie’s shame for what his mother had done, and Auntie’s shame for him” (53). One would expect a child having roots in white culture would not appreciate the ceremonies and legends of the Native American culture, but Tayo respects and understands these important stories probably even more than the full-blooded Pueblos— at least more than Auntie’s own son Rocky does, and probably more than Auntie herself. He loved to hear Old Grandma tell the old legends, and he believed them:
“He never lost the feeling he had in his chest when she spoke those words, as she did each time she told them stories; and he still felt it was true, despite all they had taught him in school—that long long ago things had been different, and human being could understand what the animals said” (87).

Tayo can see why these stories are important. The past provides insight into the future. The past is what makes people who they are in the present and who they will be in the future.

Symbolically, as well as literally, eyes represent seeing and vision. They can represent hindsight, or foresight or how things are perceived as they are occurring. Because Tayo’s eye color, hazel, is the result of a white father and a Native American mother, he can see both of the perspectives. He participates in things of the white culture and also in things of the Native American culture. Tayo is part of neither culture, but really part of both, so he can understand the prejudices more. This view as an outsider with knowledge of the inside is how Tayo becomes aware of the Lie.

Deep down everyone knows brown-skinned people are somehow worse than white people, they do worse things, they are the only ones that steal, “only brown-skinned people were thieves; white people didn’t steal, because they always had the money to buy whatever they wanted” this is the Lie (177). And Tayo realizes that “only a few people knew that the lie was destroying white people faster than it was destroying Indian people” (190). He is one of them. He sees how prejudices doesn’t make people better than others, but just makes hatred.

Emo is a fine example of how racism and prejudice breed hatred and violence. Emo fights and murders and nothing good ever comes from him. Hatred begets hatred, violence begets violence. Tayo is normally peaceful, but when driven to hatred by Emo’s racist remarks, Tayo stabs a broken bottle into Emo’s stomach. He hates the whites, he hates the Mexicans, he hates the Japanese, and he hates those with mixed blood. Because of this negativity coming from Emo and others like him, Tayo is never part of the group.
Tayo’s light skin and eyes separate him from his immediate family and friends, but they also provide a greater connection between him and some other important characters. Tayo is not, in fact, the only character in the novel described as having these light eyes, a result of the mixing of two cultures. Night Swan, Josiah’s girlfriend, has hazel eyes too, “she was an old cantina dancer with eyes like a cat” (81). Betonie’s Mexican grandmother had green eyes while his Native American father most likely had brown eyes; because of this Betonie has hazel eyes. When Tayo first meets the old medicine man he looks him over “then Tayo looked at his eyes. They were hazel like his own” (109). Both Night Swan and Betonie help Tayo find his cure. Because they have this connection through their light eye colors, these characters are able to see the world similarly.
From what I can tell Night Swan is not actually from mixed origins, she is Mexican. Night Swan is interesting because she is not white or Native American, but Mexican, the third race of people that play an important role in this novel. Whether or not she is the product of “interracial breeding” or not, she still manages to teach Tayo a few things about it and about who he is, after they make love. Night Swan says something of great significance to Tayo and to this novel, a key quote in the entire book:
“‘They are afraid, Tayo. They feel something happening, they can see something happening around them, and it scares them. Indians or Mexicans or whites—most people are afraid of change. They think that if their children have the same color of skin, the same color of eyes, that nothing is changing. . . . They are fools. They blame us, the ones who look different. That way they don’t have to think about what has happened inside themselves’” (92).

Tayo, Betonie, Night Swan and others like them are evidence that things are changing. Tayo has been taught to believe that this sort of change is a bad thing, but Night Swan and Betonie try to help him realize that change can be good and that just because people say you are one thing doesn’t mean that you have to be the thing they say. This helps Tayo accept himself the way he is and to find his cure.

Betonie also comes from mixed ancestry. His grandmother was a Mexican woman who also had light eyes. Betonie is a crucial part in Tayo’s journey for a cure and is a crucial part in Tayo finding out his place in this messed up world. Without Betonie’s guidance Tayo would never be able to come to terms with his illness—PTSD from serving in WWII—and cure it with the Ceremony. Then frankly we wouldn’t have a novel.

Betonie helps Tayo see how the Native American, Mexican, and white worlds coexist. Betonie sees past the lie that “all evil resides with white people” (122). He believes the stories about the creation of Indian people and the creation of white people. Betonie helps Tayo understand that he doesn’t have to be scared of the white people or their ways: “I tell you, we can deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we invented white people; it was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place” (122). Understanding how the two worlds are just two parts of a whole is a very important concept. When Tayo begins to understand this better, he begins to understand himself better, and therein lies his cure.

In the beginning Tayo’s mixed blood makes him insecure. His peers in the rising generation don’t understand how or why Tayo believes in the stories. But the stories are what keep Tayo connected in the end. Though he looks different on the outside, he is still just a human being. His differences make him able to comprehend things that his friends and family could never hope to understand.
 
Works Cited
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Deluxe ed. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2006. Print.
“Hazel” merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2011. Web. 3 May 2011.

Irony and Expectations in “The Story of an Hour”

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” though extremely short, as far as stories go, is figuratively filled to the brim with Irony.  Irony pulses through Mrs. Mallard’s veins by her afflicted heart.  It seeps in through the open window and the view that gives the promise of spring.  Life and death, love and bondage, these themes play off each other in unexpected ways.  Chopin seems to foreshadow one outcome and then plays out another; she sets up very clear expectations and then doesn’t quite follow through. The eventual outcome does not meet the expectations of the readers, because irony is deeply embedded in this fine story.

            The first line of the story sets up the irony nicely: “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart condition, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (157).  This sort of beginning is straight forward and readers are led to expect the outcome of really only one possible scenario: Louise Mallard will take the news badly and her heart will fail her.  But Kate Chopin masterfully uses irony, and the expected outcome is not how the story ends.  If it were the story would be pointless, as would this essay.

            At first, Mrs. Mallard takes the news exactly as we, the readers, would expect her to.  She weeps “at once, with sudden, wild abandonment,” as any woman would who had just received such terrible news.  She glances out the window and sees “tops of trees . . . all aquiver with the new spring life”.  In a story about death, it is interesting that the setting would be springtime.  She, Mrs. Mallard, believes and we as readers are led to believe that Mr. Mallard is dead.  The spring image of “countless sparrows . . . twittering in the eaves” does not quite seem to give the right mood of life ended, of death.  Spring implies new life and rebirth.  In this case, it symbolizes Mrs. Mallard’s new life without her husband. (157)

            Instead of dying, like one would expect, or dwelling in sadness, Louise starts to think a little differently on her new life alone: “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully”.  And we get another reference to her heart: “Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously”.  This is the moment where the story takes a dramatic and ironic turn, this is the moment where Louise Mallard comes to her realization that without her husband she can be “free, free, free!” (157).

            As this turn takes place, we get yet one more mention of Mrs. Mallard’s heart as its’ “pulse [beats] fast, and the coursing blood [warms] and [relaxes] every inch of her body” (157).  Now instead of being her weakness, ironically her heart is what relaxes her, courses blood through her and ultimately keeps her alive.  Instead of killing her this weakness makes her strong enough to hold onto her new vision.  She abandons her sadness, at least in this moment, for she knows that she will “weep again when she [sees] the kind, tender hands folded in death,” but she does not “stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her”.  But she also realizes that she can become free from that “powerful will bending her” to her husband’s will.  Only through death does she realize that she can truly live. (158)

This is not the way a widow is expected to think minutes after hearing the news that her husband has died.  Louise sees her marriage as bondage, and ironically thinks that it “was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life may be long” (158).  Little does she know that the dream of today, freedom from the “bondage” of her marriage, will only come to pass by way of yesterday’s desire, that her life will be short. 

            Mrs. Mallard conceives that “a long procession of years” awaits her that will “belong to her absolutely” (158).  The word procession here is ironic in and of itself.  Procession means “continuous forward movement” which definitely makes sense in this context, but I’d like to suggest another reason why Chopin may have chosen this word instead of progression or succession or any other of its synonyms (“procession”).   Procession isn’t used extremely often in common vernacular, and when it is the word “funeral” usually precedes it.  Ironically, this type of procession is in her future; It will not be her husband’s funeral, but it will “belong to her absolutely” (158).

            When Josephine, Louis Mallard’s sister, tells her that she will make herself ill, Louise replies, emphatically, “Go away. I am not making myself ill”.  We are told that she is in fact “drinking in the very elixir of life through that open window”.  The scene outside of spring represents something that she can never obtain, but it is not the elixir of life, for in five very short paragraphs, Louise Mallard’s life will be over.  At that moment, however, “there was a feverish triumph in her eyes” as she concocted her story that only lasted an hour. (158)

No, she was not making herself ill, and that is what is ironic.  Maybe if she had been making herself ill she would have been prepared to see her husband alive again.  But she was making herself well, she was freeing herself: “Free! Body and soul free!” (158).  Unfortunately, her body and soul wanted freedom so badly that they couldn’t take it when they say Mr. Mallard alive and well and unaware that he had ever even been presumed dead.

The most ironic thing in the entire story is the very last sentence.  It reflects the opening sentence about Louise Mallard’s heart affliction.  After she has seen her husband and is dead, the story closes like this: “When the doctors came the said she had dies of heart disease—of joy that kills” (158).  The eventual outcome, Mrs. Mallard’s death almost meets the expectations of the readers, but not in the expected way.  Irony weaves its way through the story and emanates from the spring day outside.  Mrs. Mallard’s heart did fail her in the end.  She did not get the new life she expected and the disappointment killed her.  She didn’t die from joy but from melancholy, ironically enough.

The Color Yellow in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

            The fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose the color yellow for the wallpaper in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is significant.   Gilman could have chosen any color for the ugly, torn wallpaper in the nursery, but chose yellow.  Perhaps it is meant to be ironic.  Or possibly the wallpaper is past its prime, yellowed with age.  Or maybe, Gilman was making use of the psychological moods set by this color.  Most likely, yellow was chosen for a variety if not for all of these reasons.  The yellow wallpaper is an outward symbol of the narrator’s inward self.

            The narrator gives us several detailed descriptions of the hideous wallpaper.  She tells us that “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.  It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (298).  Then she gives her first impression, her first feelings upon seeing the wallpaper: “No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (298).  I shall point out in a bit the significance of these opinions, but first I’d like to talk a little bit about the color yellow itself.

Under the listing for the word “yellow” in the dictionary, there are several possible definitions.  Most literally: “a color like that of egg yolk”; and more abstract: “craven, timorous, fearful.”  And also “to make or become yellow” as in “The white stationery had yellowed with age.”  I will revisit these classic dictionary definitions more deeply a little later. (Dictionary.com)

            The psychological interpretations of the meanings and moods of the color yellow are also quite interesting.  In an article entitled “Color Psychology – Yellow” written by Kendra Cherry, a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, yellow is describes as being “cheery and warm”.  This short story is in no way warm or cheery; it is, in fact quite the opposite—depressing—as it is about a woman who is going insane from post-partum depression.  If this were the only psychological interpretation of this color, one would assume that Gilman was being simply ironic in her choice.  However, this same article points out many other significant and useful information on the color.  Irony certainly plays a role, but there is so much more than that.  The characteristics of the wallpaper are also those of our narrator.

            One might find it fascinating to learn that yellow is the “most fatiguing” color to human eyes “due to the high amount of light reflected” and if used as a background it can cause extreme eyestrain (Cherry).  Fatiguing.  Does the wallpaper fatigue our narrator?  I dare say that it does—to at least some degree.  She spends what seems like most of her free time now—after being kept in this room—examining the wallpaper, following the lines in the pattern and then she admits that “half the time now [she] am awfully lazy, and lie[s] down ever so much” (302).  This suggests that her eyes are strained and fatigued by following the pattern around the room, but then fatigue is only one of many other feelings: “I get unreasonably angry at John sometimes”(298).  Could the wallpaper be somehow behind this resentment the narrator feels for her husband, the physician?  These feelings can be explained by the psychology behind the color yellow, as Cherry’s article continues:

“Yellow can also create feelings of frustration and anger. While it is considered a cheerful color, people are more likely to lose their tempers in yellow rooms and babies tend to cry more in yellow rooms” (Cherry).

Anger, frustration, and hatred—which was the first emotion she felt regarding the wallpaper, as I mentioned earlier, if you’ll recall—as well as resentment consume her as she is still forced to stay in this old room and follow the pattern on the wall.  The characteristics of the color of the wallpaper show through our own narrator’s personality.

The question as to why she is so obsessively looking at and in the pattern can be answered once again with Cherry’s psychological expertise.  According to her research, this highly visible color “is also the most attention-getting color. Yellow can be used in small amount [sic] to draw notice”.  So, our narrator is physically and psychologically drawn into the worn-out, torn-up wallpaper. 

Our narrator is not only physically trapped in this nursery, but psychologically as well.  Is it that she cannot leave?  Or that she won’t?  Obviously, her husband has some serious control over her, but still she succumbs, not really fighting back.  Earlier, I defined yellow abstractly as “fearful” or the opposite of courage. Cowardice.  I’m sure everyone has watched a film where one character calls another “yellow” because of their obvious lack of courage.  What I’d like to suggest is the Gilman also knew this usage of the word, and that it is not mere coincidence.  The narrator’s cowardice plays a major role in her becoming insane.

The wallpaper itself holds the narrator captive in its yellow blotches and mushroom shapes.  Her eyes are drawn into it, her emotions are displays of it, her behavior results from her psychological reactions to the color yellow.  She realizes that she is a part of the wallpaper and that the wallpaper is a part of her.  The woman she sees among the yellow hues is herself, encaged in the wall.  It is only as her insanity sets in, as she succumbs, not to her husband but to the wallpaper itself, that she is made free.  The woman becomes her, she becomes the yellow.

When the adjective yellow becomes a verb, yellowed, most people would know immediately what that means.  Think of the old newspapers and books and important documents, sitting in glass boxes in museums and how they turn yellow over time.  They are past their prime.  Again, let’s look at the first description our narrator gives us of the wallpaper.  She describes it vividly as “a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (298).  The wallpaper is not only yellow, but it has yellowed and faded.  Since the wallpaper is directly linked to the narrator, this implies that she has also yellowed and faded.  She has gone from who she used to be, before she had her baby, before her post-partum depression, and has turned yellow.  She has turned into yellow.

It is ironic that the color meant to make her warm and cheerful made her angry, hateful and insane.  But just as yellow has many different effects on the mind, the narrator is able to break free from the oppressive, fatiguing yellow, and through insanity, she becomes warm and cheery.  She is yellow, all of it.  Throughout the course of this story she is, each in turn, the hate, the anger, the fatigue, the strain, the warmth, and the cheerfulness.

I suggest that Charlotte Perkins Gilman decided on the color yellow for a significant purpose.   That though there are a vast number of colors that each have emotions attached to them—blue for depression, red for passion, green for life—Gilman chose yellow knowing it’s wide variety of possible meanings. Her choice is precise, yet ironic.  Only the meanings behind the color yellow, only yellow’s moods are reflected in our narrator so perfectly. The yellow wallpaper is the narrator’s imprisonment in herself.

Works Cited

Cherry, Kendra. "Color Psychology - Yellow." About.com. The New York Times

Company. Web. 22 Mar 2011.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Art of the Short Story. Eds. Dana

Gioia and R. S. Gwynn. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006. Print

"Yellow." Dictionary.com. Web. 23 Mar 2011.

The Blind Shall See

The Blind Shall See:

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the narrator learns that stereotypes and first impressions can render one blind.  Sometimes it is hard to look past these prejudgments to see a person’s true character.  At first our narrator struggles with what he thinks he should see.  He doesn’t want to be taught a lesson; he doesn’t want to learn anything new.  He’ll be nice for his wife’s sake, but he doesn’t have to enjoy himself.  Through the course of the evening he gradually lets his reservations go.  He goes from prejudice, to tolerance, and finally to acceptance for the blind man. Only after he takes a risk and steps out of his comfort zone can he really make the important connection.  In this moment he has his epiphany that changes the way he thinks.

            Before Robert comes to visit the narrator has very clear ideas of what being blind means.  Blind people wear glasses, walk with canes, and they most certainly don’t have beards.  He feels bad for the blind man, figuring it must be a terrible thing to have such a handicap.  He imagines how Robert must live and the insecure woman his wife must have been for marrying a blind man.  Before the blind man even walks into the house, he shatters the image that the narrator had created.  The narrator himself is blind in the way that he can’t look past what he had been taught to believe.  He isn’t prepared for what he sees. It unnerves him that the blind man doesn’t wear dark glasses.  As the narrator looks into his eyes, he notices that Robert’s “pupils [seem] to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it”.  To the narrator, this is creepy.  He remembers reading somewhere that blind men don’t smoke, surely something written in black and white must be true.  But Robert even proves that wrong.

            After dinner and after his wife falls asleep, the narrator starts to adjust to having Robert around, but he is just tolerant.  He talks to the blind man, and eventually he becomes comfortable conversing over the television.  The narrator then realizes to his astonishment that he is actually “glad for the company”.  He begins to feel genuine empathy, in contrast to the pity he had felt before, when the thought occurs to him that Robert probably doesn’t even know what a cathedral truly is.  Roberts asks him to describe one, and the narrator doesn’t know how to describe something to a blind man.  He tells Robert about the physical characteristics of cathedrals that “they’re big.  They’re built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes”.  Robert could never understand a description of this type, but he doesn’t let the narrator give up.  Both of them will see something new before the night is through.  Robert will see a cathedral for the first time, and the narrator will truly see Robert.

            Finally, when the idea comes to draw a cathedral together, the narrator’s eyes are opened to the world his guest experiences daily and he truly accepts Robert for who his is.  The narrator doesn’t initially know how drawing will help the blind man understand, but he feels a bond forming and tries anyway.  Robert wants to help the narrator let go of his limitation, he wants the narrator to learn the way Robert has always been taught.  Hand-in-hand they draw, and the narrator starts to understand. He can’t stop.  Robert recognizes that the inner struggle the narrator had been fighting and sees that his host is changing: “You didn’t think you could.  But you can, can’t you?”.  Robert is not only referring to the narrator’s ability to draw, but that he has finally taken down the barriers blocking his view.  The narrator can finally see.

            The narrator’s vision clears. It goes from blind prejudice, to foggy tolerance, and finally to an accepting clarity. When he feels the connection he has made with Robert he knows that something important is happening to him.  The two of them are close beside each other and the narrator can feel himself changing.  He is having a very sacred experience and it’s “like nothing else in [his] life up to now”.  Despite his earlier intentions to only please his wife, the narrator finds that he is completely accepting and comfortable with Robert.  He discovers something profound, a lesson he had never even realized he needed, and this discovery changes him. He finally is able to see through his unfair stereotypes to see the real person behind the handicap. He is only able to do this when his takes a risk and closes his eyes.

Risks and Expectations in Alice Munro’s Writing

Risks and Expectations in Alice Munro’s Writing

Alice Munro’s stories seem to be predictable, but suddenly take a perplexing turn causing the characters to learn the value of taking risks.  Examples of this can be found in several of her short stories, including How I Met my Husband, Day of the Butterfly, and Miles City, Montana.  Munro seems to foreshadow one outcome and then plays out another, she “sets up very clear expectations” and then doesn’t quite follow through (Hampson 477).  The female narrators are hard to read, and are all very tentative when it comes to risk taking. I would like to focus on how Munro focuses the readers’ attention on this in these short stories.

In How I Met my Husband, the title implies that the story is mainly about Edie meeting her husband.  “The expectations created by the title have been fulfilled, technically,” but it is definitely not in the way that the readers feels was set up (Hampson 477).  The title is not only very misleading, but it makes you anxious to hear a romantic tale from Edie.  Instead most of the story is spent in leading up to the fulfillment of the title, which doesn’t happen until the very last paragraph.

All throughout reading this story, there seems to be a pull between Edie and the Pilot, and the reader is compelled to believe that the two will end up together.  When Chris promises to write, it is easy to assume they will become pen pals, writing one another until, after a long romance, they finally end up getting married.  The turning point brings about disappointment when Edie goes everyday to the mailbox, anticipating the first letter to arrive only to find an empty handed mailman waiting for her. 

Unfortunately, the reader realizes the turn of events only as Edie does: “It never crossed my mind for a long time a letter might not come” (219). It never crosses the readers’ mind that Edie and the pilot will never end up together until this time. Then it become painfully obvious, for both reader and character, that “no letter [is] ever going to come” (219).  The reader can’t help feeling like the ending they’ve been given is not as good as the one they were anticipating.

Edie learns that disappointments happen, but she decides not to show them to others: “I like for people to think what pleases them and makes them happy” (514).  Now the readers can clearly see that the narrator has been lying to herself, and to them, the readers, throughout her narration.  By not ending up with the pilot, Edie learns that some things or people are not worth waiting for, and she does find her husband.  Waiting for the letter was a risk, but the outcome was great.

            The expectation and turning point are much more subtle in Day of the Butterfly.  The reader starts to assume that Helen and Myra will probably become friends as they walk together eating Cracker Jack, even though Myra is an outcast.  Munro encourages this idea with Helen giving the prize to Myra. 

Helen is afraid that someone will know that she gave Myra a gift, she hopes Myra won’t wear it or “someone [would ask] her where she got it” (238).  Despite this, the reader is still led to believe that these two will eventually become friends, that there is something good when their fingers touch: “I can go and talk to her at recess. Why not? Why not?” (238).

At one point Helen sees a benefit in befriending Myra: “The birthday party of Myra Sayla became fashionable” (239).  She is eager to go to the hospital to celebrate Myra’s non-birthday.  This makes the readers believe even further that a friendship between Myra and Helen is not only possible, but likely.  The readers see that when it is socially acceptable, Helen can befriend Myra.  But friendship can’t and should not be faked, for this reason Helen feels uneasy around Myra at the hospital.  She knows that she was being selfish and unfair to Myra.  Being friends with Myra would soil what little self-image she had. That was a risk she could not take.

            The unresolved expectation in Miles City, Montana is much more dramatic. Munro begins the story with the narrator relating a childhood memory of a boy drowning.  When the suggestion of swimming is first brought up by the traveling family, the readers’ stomach goes queasy.  It seems obvious that one of the children is going to drown, otherwise why tell about the boys funeral? 

This idea is enforced by the fact that the lifeguard is not paying attention, and suddenly Meg has gone missing.  The readers and the characters expect the worse, but this story ends, really, with a feeling of ease.

            The narrator learns that she should put a little more trust in her youngest daughter.  Taking a three year old seriously is a risk, but Meg proved capable of a lot more than anyone gave her credit for.

             Munro’s stories make for interesting reading, “fracturing each character's—and each reader's—expectations” (Bright 4).  Taking risks is not always a bad thing.   Edie takes a risk by opening herself up for the possibility of heartache.  Helen is friendly to Myra, even though it is unpopular. Though she does it in secret, what she learns from the experience will stay with her.  The mother in Miles City, Montana sees her daughter in the water.  At first she doesn’t believe what she sees, but she takes a risk and trusts that her daughter really can swim. Though it can be frustrating, these unpredictable turns in the stories allow the readers to learn lessons along with the characters “that shift our perceptions of ordinary events” (Ross 474-75).  The seemingly predictable takes an unexpected turn that involves taking a few risks.

Works Cited

McMullen, Lorraine. “Shameless, Marvelous, Shattering Absurdity.” Probable Fictions: Alice Munro’s Narrative Acts. Ed. Louis K. Mackendrick. Ontario: ECU Press, 1983. Print.

Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 5^th edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. Print.

“Minimalism.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10^th edition. Springfield: Merriam-Webster’s, Incorporated, 1999. Print.

Munro, Alice. “Day of the Butterfly.” An Introduction to Fiction. 9^th edition. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.

- - -. “The Found Boat.” An Introduction to Fiction. 5^th edition. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.

- - -. “How I met my Husband.” An introduction to Fiction. 10^th edition. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.

- - -. “Miles City, Montana.” Michael Meyer 470-83.

- - -. “An Ounce of Cure.” Michael Meyer 451-58.

- - -. “Prue.” Michael Meyer 467-69.

Weiss, Allan. “How I met my Husband: Overview.” Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Nov 2009.

Woodcock, George. “On Symbolism in Munro’s Fiction.” Michael Meyer 476.