Summary Of The Dirty Rotten Shame

Alice Munro (2009), a Nobel Prize in Literature Winner who resides in Canada, is known for her thought provoking short stories revolving around the lives of her unique characters. Her latest anthology, Too Much Happiness, consists of ten short stories, one being the title story, that all feature complex emotions and the challenges that come along with them. One theme specific to this collection is the treatment and feelings of important women in the stories. Each story features a woman as one of the main characters, who goes through struggles and emerges stronger at the end of the story. In particular, several women throughout the anthology experienced struggles directly caused by men in their lives. Their feelings and responses reveal
The main character found herself alone walking to the library and reflecting on the uncomfortable evening. One of her favorite poems was ruined for her, and as the lines crossed her mind it occurred to her that “[she] would never think of those lines again without feeling the prickles of the upholstery on [her] bare haunches. The sticky prickly shame” (p. 90). Shame is a complex feeling; an uncomfortable mixture of embarrassment and regret. In Michael Uebel’s essay “Dirty Rotten Shame? The Value and Ethical Functions of Shame,” he explores the deeper feelings that come with shame. When feeling ashamed, “consciousness is always forced back on the self…and in this respect it is not unlike mourning, in which a person becomes exquisitely aware of the self” (Uebel, 2016, p. 13). This increased state of consciousness causes the feelings to be intensified, which is no doubt what the main character of this story was feeling while reflecting on the poem she’d read aloud while exposed the night before. While Mr. Purvis didn’t touch her, requiring her to be naked and read him poetry constitutes as a form of sexual abuse. The main character was left emotionally scarred, and with each detail she recalled she felt more and more uneasy. She felt uncomfortable throughout the evening, regretful and shameful afterwards, and will likely experience anxiety for a
It wasn’t until a few years later when Savanna caught a glimpse of Kent on television helping victims of a fire in Toronto, that she called Sally to inform her that he was alive. Through various connections of Savanna’s, Sally was able to get in contact with Kent and made arrangements to visit him in Toronto. However, her initial reaction to meeting up with her long lost son wasn’t unbounded excitement, it was hesitation. She ultimately agreed, and soon found herself in Toronto face to face with her son. He was living in a run-down apartment and begging to maintain the funds to take people in. Just when Sally felt the conversation was going somewhere, Kent revealed the real reason he invited her to stop by: Alex’s death. After reading his hero’s obituary, Kent wondered who got his money and if he was going to be receiving a share. Sally was overwhelmingly disappointed. In a study conducted by Sandra Schmidt Bunkers (2017), a participant stated that “When disappointment is related to family it is much harder” (Bunkers, 2017, p. 9). If anyone else had asked Sally for information regarding Alex’s death, she would have told them along with how much she loved her late husband. But because Kent was family, his questioning was more of a disappointment, especially because his heart was in the wrong place. Once his intentions were made clear, Sally asked a bit more about his life before wrapping up the small talk