Here is this week’s paper I wrote for my literature course. We had to read five designated short stories from Short Story Masterpieces and summarize all of them, then select one story to discuss further through our impressions and a critical analysis on a topic of our choice.

Summary:

“The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” by D.H. Lawrence tells the story of Mabel, the horse dealer’s daughter, who is currently struggling to make ends meet after the death of her mother. When visiting her mother to tidy up her grave, she gets overwhelmed by her feelings and almost commits suicide by drowning. Nearby, Jack, a doctor, comes to save her life by extracting her from the water and nursing her back to health. From Mabel’s perspective, Jack did this because he loved her; from his perspective, Jack did this because he is a doctor. As the story comes to a close, Mabel realizes that Jack doesn’t actually love her, but Jack decides to marry her anyway and proposes to her before he returns to his senses.

“Flowering Judas” by Katherine Anne Porter is about Laura, a young woman living near Xochimilco. She works for Braggioni, a large man who sings to Laura when she returns home. He is a man with great self-esteem who is not told of how bad he is at singing because of people’s fear of his retaliation. He is dissatisfied with his wife and chooses to go away for an extended period of time. During this leave, Laura meets a prisoner named Eugenio. When Braggioni returns home, his wife apologizes; that night, Laura dreams of Eugenio.

“A Country Love Story” by Jean Stafford tells the story of Daniel and May, husband and wife, who choose to purchase a house in the country. The particular house they select happens to have an antique sleigh in the front lawn; at first, they have a strange impression of it, but eventually, they just let it be and decide not to get rid of it. As the story progresses, Daniel and May have a conflict, the first of its kind in their five years of marriage, after Daniel has a hallucination indicating that May has been unfaithful. Daniel remains in his room working, while May is lonely. The sleigh begins to take a symbolic role, as it represents May’s loneliness, as well as acts as the residing place of May’s hallucinations. Eventually, Daniel realizes that his hallucinations were what was fueling the arguments, and Daniel and May proclaim their love for each other again.

“Flight” by John Steinbeck features Pepé, a boy who lives with his mother and siblings in Mexico. Pepé’s mother always berates him for not being a man, but one day, still sends him off to get some medicine, which is a man’s job. During the trip, Pepé acquires the medicine, but also gets in a physical confrontation while he and others are consuming wine. When he returns home, the fact that he stabbed a man initiates another journey where he heads off into the mountains. During his trip, his horse gets injured by some people who are pursuing Pepé; eventually, he dies after being buried by an avalanche.

“Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty is narrated by Sister, a woman whose sister, Stella-Rondo, recently moved back into her house with her adopted daughter to live with family after she got a divorce. Upon Stella-Rondo’s arrival, Sister suspects that her daughter is not adopted, but biological. This insults Stella-Rondo and motivates her to turn the entire family against Sister. Stella-Rondo spreads rumors about Sister to Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo to make them believe that Sister has been bad-mouthing them. Eventually, Sister becomes fed up with Stella-Rondo and decides to move out to live at the post office.

Impressions:

When reading “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” although it is somewhat apparent that it was supposed to be a sad story at first due to the sully setting and the poor situation in which Mabel is, I sort of thought it was partially a comedy in disguise. I thought the plot revolved around a perfect example of different perspectives gone wrong. Most of us have experienced a situation where two different people with two different backgrounds or levels of experience see the same scenario differently, and end up having some sort of humorous misunderstanding. I felt Lawrence integrated this concept well into this story, and twisting a developing love relationship into the confusion made it even more compelling.

Critical Analysis:

I decided to expand upon my initial interest with the idea of differing perspectives and take a closer look at the primary conflict present in the story by extracting and analyzing the motivation and implications behind each character’s actions and connecting it to the conclusion of the story. The primary conflict of perspectives is how Mabel and Jack perceived the fact that Jack rescued Mabel from drowning, as illustrated by, “… the small black figure walked slowly and deliberately towards the cent[er] of the pond … gradually moving deeper into the motionless water.”

From Jack’s perspective, he identified a figure that was intentionally walking into the water to commit suicide. As a doctor, he sensed someone in danger and felt the urge to help them – his intuition is noted when it says “the doctor’s quick eye detected a figure in black passing through the gate of the field, down towards the pond,” and later, “When he rescued her and restored her, he was a doctor, and she was a patient. He had had no single personal thought of her.” It can thus be concluded that, for Jack, this was just his normal work outside of regular working hours, and he was helping a person in need.

To Mabel, however, the fact that Jack saved her was something completely else. She was told of this novel experience unfolding from Jack’s perspective because her inquiry of “‘What did I do?’” implies she does not remember what happened. However, rather than seeing it from a perspective paralleling Jack’s, she applied her own opinions and emotions to the recount. From a normal person’s point of view, it is understandable to interpret someone risking their own life to save yours as an act of altruism so powerful that only love could motivate someone to do such a thing. To make the situation more intense, Jack undressed Mabel so she would cease to lose body heat from the cold, drenched clothing; to Jack, this was standard doctoral procedure, but to Mabel, she interpreted this as an act of intimacy.

So what made Jack cave in and decide to propose to Mabel? In Mabel’s flurry of confusion, she overwhelmed Jack with actions symbolic of love, such as forcing him to admit his love through words and kiss her. As a result, Jack’s own personal emotions took over and made him just as confused as Mabel, causing him to change his position from a professional doctor to a dutiful man. In essence, the conflict of perspectives was “resolved” when Jack took on the same perspective to the rescue as Mabel.

This week my literature class made a temporary transition from novels to short stories. We were instructed to read five different short stories, then select one on which we would write the remainder of our response paper. All of these short stories are found in Short Story Masterpieces, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine.

Summary:

“The Egg” by Sherwood Anderson is a story narrated by a young boy about the influence of eggs on his father. From before the narrator was born, his father worked at a chicken farm where he raised chickens from birth to death; he goes on to describe the depressing cycle of life and death that raising chickens involves. The narrator’s father seems to be an emotional, detail-oriented, and materialistic person, as he had the idiosyncrasy of saving the bodies of mutated chicks. The bulk of the story has a recount of an event where his father, unable to overcome his social awkwardness, made a fool of himself in front of a guest by trying too hard to impress him, and instead, failing all his egg-related tricks.

“The Boarding House” by James Joyce features Mrs. Mooney, the former daughter of a butch­er who was abused by her husband and left him to start a board­ing house. While at the board­ing house, she noticed a middle-aged man who was building a relationship with her daughter Polly. She did not intervene at first, but when the time came, she decided to speak with the man and demand that he follows through with marriage. At first, Polly is frightened, but eventually, has positive visions of her future.

“Marriage a la Mode” by Katherine Mansfield tells a story of the couple William and Isabel. Isabel is dissatisfied with William because they lived in a small, stuffed-up house and had a nanny that was ruining their children. Isabel begins to think of William as dull, and says bad things about him with her friends. The following day, Isabel receives a letter from William that she shares with her friends, but then feels ashamed for doing so and decides to write a letter back to William later.

“Cruel and Barbarous Treatment”€ by Mary McCarthy tells the story of a married woman who decides to engage in extramarital affairs. She demonstrates her skill of manipulating her hus­band, lover, and friends by calculating how others will perceive her. She also considers all the positive and negative consequences of each of her potential decisions. Eventually, she has a divorce with her hus­band and pursues a relation­ship with the Young Man to enhance her life.

“€œA Spinster’s Tale”€ by Peter Taylor is narrated by Elizabeth, a woman who tells of the relation­ship she had with her brother and drunkard Mr. Speed. For Elizabeth, Mr. Speed was a curious and frightening character that she claimed she would eventually build the courage to confront. Later on in the recount, she explains that she has gotten more used to Mr. Speed with the encouragement of her father, but is still fearful. One day, Mr. Speed is accidently let into Elizabeth’s house due to a case of mistaken identity, and Elizabeth reacts by calling the police.

Impressions:

When I first read through “The Egg” by Sherwood Anderson, I went through a series of emo­tions of confusion, depression, sympathy, and understanding – confusion as to the nar­ra­tor’s father’s actions, depression as to the fact that he would choose to do such things, sympathy for his failures, and understanding after possibly identifying a reason for why everything happened as it did.

This story reminded me about how someone’s emotions can severely affect how someone performs actions, and I drew the conclusion that this was most likely from what the narrator’s father was suffering. The narrator notes, “‘I have handled thousands of eggs,’ father said. ‘€˜No one knows more about eggs than I do.'” This is a valid claim, as he spent his entire life working with chickens and eggs; however, his expertise in the field was severely impaired when he was trying too hard to what he was good at. I made a connection between this and the “golfer’s error” story that I’ve heard frequently before, which says that even professional golfers will make elementary mistakes if they overanalyze their swinging technique, and should instead rely on muscle memory.

Critical Analysis:

When thinking about the narrator’€™s father throughout the piece, I was able to make con­sis­tent connections between him and individuals with autistic intelligence about whom I have learned in the past. (Note that autistic intelligence is not the equivalent of having autism; possessing autistic intelligence does not mean someone has autism, and not all types of autism are characterized by strong levels of autistic intelligence.)

In the beginning of the story, the narrator’s father is illustrated as being satisfied as to how his life had turned out: “[He] himself went to bed, quite happy in his position in life. He had at that time no notion of trying to rise in the world.”€ This can be seen as the control or baseline situation, where he was able to decide what to do with his life, and stop when he felt he reached the edge of his comfort zone. Upon meeting his wife, this changed, as, “€œfor father and [the narrator] she was incurably ambitious,”€ which implies that she pushed them to achieve more with their lives. Those with autistic intelligence have a tendency to become uncomfortable when being pushed out of their comfort zones by an outside force; as a result, they show other peculiar and unique traits, which were also seen by the narrator’s father.

One of them is an extreme attention to details that may seem irrelevant or unimportant to most people. A common example used to describe this concept is to compare normal and autistic intelligence with flashlight use in a cave -€“ normal intelligence shines the light on the entire cave to get the big picture, while autistic intelligence shines the light on a single stalagmite to pick out all the details. The narrator’s father did a similar thing when he fo­cused excessively on grotesque chicks and preserved them in alcohol-filled jars.

Another defining characteristic of those with autistic intelligence is having difficulty em­pa­thizing and mirroring the emotions of others. When the narrator’s father was trying to impress Joe Kane with his egg tricks, he was so engulfed in his own emotions that he was not able to pick up on Kane’€™s attempts at disengaging from the conversation.

Keeping these connections in mind, it is likely that the author attempted to characterize the narrator’s father as someone with a relatively high level of autistic intelligence. He is some­one who a majority of people would perceive as strange and different, as said by his visitor: “Joe Kane decided that the man who confronted him was mildly insane but harmless.” However, those with autistic intelligence are still fully capable humans in their own ways, as demonstrated by the father’€™s ability to work like others, and receive comfort from his family.

To read more papers I wrote as homework for my classes, check out the “Academics / Homework” cat­e­go­ry index.