Four Short Stories

American short stories
Joyce Carol Oates: "Capital punishment" (1992)
1. Analyse the father and the daughter relationship in this story in terms of their feelings for one another. How do these feelings illustrate their differences or similarities?
The relationship between the father and the daughter is quite tense even though they love each other. We can see proof from the text on page 267 "She thinks of Mr. Brunty, whom she loves, as a "big lug." A "big dumb lug." A "big dumb ox."" There is another example on page 270-271, when her father comes to get her at the detention facility, "Daddy, thank God you´re here, oh, Daddy, I´m so sorry, I´m so scared, I´m so scared...". Here we see how attached she is to him. He, on the other hand, has difficulties to show his emotions. He was very worried that something bad had happened to her, but at the same time looked at her from a distance. "... What strikes him is how tall she´s grown, how solid and ample and heated her flesh. He embraces her, deeply moved, embarrassed, not really knowing what to do. He looks over her head at the juvenile officers as if hoping for support or solace." We can clearly see that both of them love each other, but it feels like they don´t talk so much with each other or that their relation is a bit tense. Her father doesn´t really know how to handle the situation. It´s like they love each other without saying or showing what they feel and then when they are in situations they show their love and then they act strange. Aswell two sentences down "He calls her sweetheart, comforts her, tells her not to cry, she´s coming home now. It´s all over now, he says. Or whatever he says: it´s as if another man, another father, were standing in his place, clumsy and flush-faced in his suit and tie, saying words not his but appropriate to the occasion." I think that Mr.Brunty has a difficult relationship to women since his heart was broken by Hope's mother (see page 263 "His heart had been broken, he said, but it could only be broken once. The women he knew now could take them or leave them and he hoped they understood that. "I hope they feel the same way about me," he said." Perhaps this also made it difficult for him to understand his own daughter. The episode at the restaurant after picking him her up from the detention facility also shows his love (page 275: "Big sad homely girl, his girl. Mr. Brunty feels a pang of helpless love for her, and dislike.") When she grows up they don't meet often and have strained telephone talks (page 282: Mr. Brunty, she has heard, is proud of her, in her absence. Mr. Brunty, she has heard, does love her - though he never writes...). As an adult when Hope thinks of her father's coming death she has difficult feelings for her father (page 281: "She loves Mr. Brunty yet cannot get along with him, just as he loves her (she believes) and cannot get along with her".)
2. The article "How Fiction Works" discusses different kinds of narrators. What kind of narrator and point of view do we have in this story? How does the point of view influence our sympathies?
We have an omniscient narrator, we know both the father and the daughter. But more narration from Hope´s perspective. This influences us to sympathize with both of them. Personally I sympathize more with Hope because I feel that you get to know her more and the story is more from her perspective. The distance to her father is also demonstrated when she always think of him as "Mr. Brunty", not father.
Alice Munro: "Boys and Girls" (1968)
1.What kind of narrator do we have in this story?
There is a participant narrator in the story, the story are told in I-form.
2. This story brings up the theme of gender, the question of individual identity versus traditional male/female role patterns. Give examples from the text that help to build up this theme in the story and briefly comment on your choices.
There is a difference between her father and mother regarding how they speak to her, for example on page 172 "My father did not talk to me unless it was about the job we were doing. In this he was quite different from my mother, who, if she was feeling cheerful, would tell me all sorts of things- name of a dog she had had when she was a little girl, the names of boys she had gone out with later on when she was growing up, and what certain dresses of hers had looked like-she could not imagine now what had become of them. Whatever thoughts and stories my father had were private, and I was shy of him and would never ask him questions." Her father doesn´t talk to her unless it is about the job but with her mother she can talk about different things, she tells about her personal stories. Her father´s thoughts and stories where private and she is shy of him. We can see one example in the text on page 172 "My father had just come from the meathouse; he had his stiff bloody apron on, and a pail of cut-up meat in his hand. It was on odd thing to see my mother down at the barn. She did not often come out of the house unless it was to do something- hang out the wash or dig potatoes in the garden. She looked out of place, with her bare lumpy legs, not touched by the sun, her apron still on and damp across the stomach from the supper dishes." It is clear how the work on the farm is divided with her father doing the heavy work and her mother does the work in the kitchen, the garden and the ordinary house work.
The girl is helping her father and her mother with their work but she doesn´t like to work in the house with her mother. Her little brother Liard isn´t big enough to help their father and that´s why she has to help him, see the examples on page 173, "I was given jobs to do and I would sit at the table peeling peaches that had been soaked in the hot water, or cutting up onions, my eyes smarting and steaming. As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what she wanted me to do next. I hated the dark kitchen in the summer,..." She also thinks that her father´s work is more important. "It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father´s service, was ritualistically important."
But there is a feeling about the mother that her daughter´s life isn´t supposed to be like that. The mother wants the daughter to help her in the house as a girl should. She is waiting for the little brother, Liard, to get bigger so he could help the father with his work instead of the girl. There are some examples of that in the text on page 172 "I heard my mother saying, "Wait till Liard gets a little bigger, then you´ll have a real help." The mother feels like she doesn´t have a girl in the family, almost as her daughter is betraying her with being with and helping her father instead of her. As in example on the same page "And then I can use her more in the house," I heard my mother say. She had a dead-quiet, regretful way of talking about me that always made me uneasy. "I just get my back turned and she runs off. It´s not like I had a girl in the family at all" and other example "She was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it and keep me from working for my father."
Another example of how different she is from the norm for how girls should behave in other ways than boys behave is when her grandmother comes to visit. One example on page 175 is "My grandmother came to stay with us for a few weeks and I heard other things. "Girls don´t slam doors like that." "Girls keep their knees together when they sit down." And worse still, when I asked some questions, "That´s none of girls´ business." I continued to slam the doors and sit as awkwardly as possible, thinking that by such measures I kept myself free." It´s clear that they think that she isn´t behaving like a girl should. They want her to behave like the norm. The daughter, on the other hand, doesn´t want to follow the norm and is behaving the opposite to keep herself free.
At the end of the story when her father gets to know that she didn´t close the gate for the horse, he answered: "Never mind," my father said. He spoke with resignation, even good humor, the words which absolved and dismissed me for good. "She´s only a girl," he said. I didn´t protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true." Now it feels like she has lost, her brother is big enough to go with their father and she will probably work in the house. Her father doesn´t get angry. It´s as though he blames it on the fact that she´s a girl and that it isn´t anything to do about it. She feels that she has lost. She doesn´t protest to what he says and just seems to accept the fact.
3. Give examples of details that help to create the setting of this story. Briefly comment and motivate your examples.
The whole part in the beginning, page 169 to page 170, describes the setting how the life on the farm is and what they do and how they do it "My father was a fox farmer. That is, he raised silver foxes, in pens;.... I found it reassuringly seasonal, like the smell of oranges and pine needles.." aswell the second piece on page 171 describes the setting on how the foxes lived and how her father had invented different functions to clean, feed and watering them.

Amy Tan: "The Joy Luck Club" (1989)
1. This story takes place during one evening in San Francisco, but through the use of flashbacks the perspective widens, both in terms in time and place. What are the different time periods covered by the story and how does the chronology of the events compare to the order of narration? (see "How Fiction Works", 9-10). What is the effect of narrating the events in this order?
There are different times covered in the story, there are stories from when her mother was in China about 1949 and the same year that she went to San Francisco and started the Joy Luck Club. That was two years before June was born, then June must be older than at least 20 (because she finished school and had been to collage).
The events in the story aren´t in a chronological order in the narration. The events are told by the mothers, June, and June´s mother. This makes the story more interesting and we get to know more people and are able to see the story from different perspectives. We thereby sympathizewith more characters and get a detailed story.
2. In this story the tension between generations is also a tension between cultures, between Chinese and Chinese-American culture. Note examples of such tension in June´s relation to her mother and to her aunts.
I felt that there was a tension between generations, between the daughters and their mothers. It seems like the daughters don´t appreciate their lives and what their mothers have done for them to come to America. For example, when June´s mother is trying to explain for her what she had to do to get to America, how she had to throw away all her belongings because she couldn´t carry it all. June doesn’t understand that this was real until the end, see page 605 where is says " ... What do you mean by "everything"? I gasped at the end. I was stunned to realize the story had been true all along. What happened to the babies? She didn´t even pause to think. She simply said in a way that made it clear there was no more to the story: Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies." June was also reminded that she and her mother didn´t really understand each other and that there was something missing between them, for example on page 614 "Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once again: My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other´s meanings and I seemed to hear less than was said, while my mother heard more." and on page 617 " I am crying now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not understanding this loyalty to my mother." Later on in the story she gets closer to her mother and gets to know her more. I have the feeling that she now gets answers and starts to understand her mother. Almost in the end, on page 617, it comes to her the tension between her and the other daughters and she understands their mothers´ sacrifice: "And it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds `joy luck´ is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation. I will tell them everything, I say simply, and the aunties look at me with doubtful faces."
There is also tension between the cultures, for example when they are going to play Mah Jong, June says on page 611 that she has only played some Jewish Mah Jong: "I only played a little in college with some Jewish friends. Annh! Jewish mah jong, she says in disgusted tones. Not the same thing. This is what my mother used to say, although she could never explain exactly why." and then everyone gets quite upset. Later on the same page June asks her mother: "What´s the difference between Jewish and Chinese mah jong? I once asked my mother. I couldn´t tell by her answer if the games were different or just her attitude toward Chinese and Jewish people." It´s then clear that there is a tension between the cultures. June´s mother doesn´t have a real answer to the question. It seems more like she has a different attitude to Jewish people. June´s mother also says that "...if nobody plays well, then the game becomes like Jewish mah jong.", as though the Jewish people aren´t smart enough to play the game well. Also when June asks Auntie Lin she doesn´t get a real answer. She is just told to sit and watch them and do the same.
Chitra Divakaruni: "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" (1998)
1. This story contrasts life in America with life in India.
- What are these contrast?
In India a wife gets up before the rest of the family but in America she can do as she wants, for example on page 29 "A good wife wakes before the rest of the household".
She was married off in India and in America they don´t do so. You can interpret that Mrs Dutta was married off because of the text on page 29 "...when she was a bride of seventeen,...." which is quite early for a marriage and then by reading a part later on when she talks about her husband, Sagar´s father, " ... Sagar´s father, whom she had just learned to love;...." that makes it clear that she was married off, because normally you love a person before marrying him/her.
She thinks that it´s a curious custom that the children are being allowed to close their doors against their parents. On page 31 "Now Saga is knocking on the children´s door- a curios custom, this, children being allowed to close their doors against their parents."
Mrs Dutta thinks that a child who refers to elders in a disrespectful way ought to be punished with slaps. In America you don´t punish with slaps for such a thing. "Mrs. Dutta hopes that Shyamoli will not be too harsh with the girl. But a child who refers to elders in that disrespectful way ought to be punished. How many times did she slap Sagar for something less, ... Such is a mother´s duty." That example, on page 32, shows us that a child could be punished for smaller actions and that it is a mother’s duty to punish them. Later on in the text, on page 32, she is angry with the children for their rudeness and angry with Shyamoli for letting them go unrebuked. "Hard with the pounding in her head to think what she feels most- anger at the children for their rudeness, or at Shaymoli for letting them go unrebuked."
In India they don´t celebrate Mother´s Day like in America, see example on page 34 "The picture had arrived, silver-framed and wrapped in a plastic sheet filled with bubbles, with a note from Shyamoli explaining that it was a Mother´s Day gift. (A strange concept, a day set aside to honor mothers. Did the sahibs not honor their mothers the rest of the year, then?)"
Another example that shows us that a married woman can´t do as she wants is when Mrs. Dutta became a widow. Then it was the first time ever she was able to read a novel straight through if she wanted. On page 34, "She liked being able, for the first time ever, to lie in bed all evening and read a new novel of Shankar´s straight through if she wanted..." In America you can normally do what you want.
- What is Divakaruni´s method or technique for bringing them into the story?
She addresses many differences between the cultures. Her method is to send this old woman Mrs. Dutta, who has lived her life in India with its traditions, into the world of her son Sagar, who has moved to America with his family. Mrs. Dutta wants his son and his family to live by the Indians and their lifestyle, but Sagar and his family are trying to get into the American society. When Mrs. Dutta and the family of her son are living together culture clashes occur and they show us the differences between the cultures.
2. Can you think of any way in which the author may have guided our feelings for the different characters in this story?
I feel sympathy for Mrs Dutta as she is just there and trying to help. She is new in the country and the traditions, and the author may have written in such way that we feel more sympathy for her. The narration is a limited omniscient narrator that makes us sympathize more with Mrs. Dutta because we know her better. I aswell sympathize with Sagar and his family because in the end Mrs. Dutta is just a guest and has to live by their rules. If the story would be in another perspective I think that we would sympathize with just Sagar and his family because then Mrs Dutta would be the cruel grandmother who wants to do everything her way and in the Indian tradition.
Questions relating to all short stories:
1. What kind of themes can we find in these short stories? Can we see similar themes? Are there themes that unite the stories, themes that separate?
There is one theme that occurs in all short stories and that is family relationships between generations (children and parents). A difference between some of the short stories is that the short stories by Oates and Monroe take place in a certain culture, the North American. In the other two short stories the conflicts between parents and family are strongly related to different cultures (American and Chinese in one case and American and Indian in the other).
One theme that occurs in all of the short stories is the individual development. In the short story by Oates we have the daughter who is well educated and grows from her less uneducated father. She takes her own steps out into the world and forms her own beliefs in what she thinks is right. In the short stories by Tan and Divakuruni, there is also the theme of children breaking up from the parents’ views of what is right (as the children adapt to a new culture). In the short story by Munro, the child also wants to break with the parents’ view on what a girl’s life should, but she gives up the thought of striving for her own way of living.
2. All four short stories depict America society; its time and values. Give three examples of your own to show how these stories reflect the society which gave rise to them.
America has for centuries been a country of immigration. It is a country with a mix of many different people and different cultures. The two short stories “The Joy Luck Club” and “Mrs Dutta Writes a Letter” depict how America is as a melting pot of different people and cultures. In “The Joy Luck Club” the mother escapes from China to America to find peace and in “Mrs Dutta Writes a Letter” it shows how the Indian family wants to go America and get into the American society. Earlier many immigrants came from the European countries and they formed together the American society. These two short stories depict how new groups of immigrants (Chinese and Indian) adapt to American society. Today in the US there are many Spanish speaking immigrants who come and influence the American society.
The first story “Capital Punishment” tells us about a man who has been sentenced to death, he is black and accused of murder. The story depicts how people who might be innocent gets sentences without a real and a fair trial. The daughter means that the black man should have a new and fair trial but her father doesn´t care like many other people. This seems to be a question nowadays in the US. Sometimes we read or hear about a person who has been sentenced but there are doubts if he/she is guilty and that there might be a difference between how black and white people are treated and sentenced for different crimes. I think there are lots of people who don´t get a fair treatment.
The second story “Boys and Girls” tells us how men and women should live, work and behave in the sixties. It is a story about a family that lives a traditional farmer life in America. The story tells us what differences there are between genders and their work at that time. Men do the hard work and the women do the housework. This traditional view on men’s work and women’s work has changed in America and this is shown in the story “Mrs Dutta Writes a Letter”, which was written in 1998. Here we see a development of the division between the genders. For example, the children tell Mrs Dutta on page 37 that "Here in America we don´t believe in men´s work and women´s work". This means that the people and the culture has developed to a more liberated and equal society where men and women can work with same work.