Analysis of Alice Munro's "How I Met My Husband"
"All of it is clear to a person who has understanding and right to those who have acquired knowledge." (Proverbs 8:6-9)
Alice Munro gives a good example of the meaning of this in her story "How I Met My Husband". The theme of this story is under certain circumstances people can sometimes be blind to the truth.
The main character, Edie, provides the narration of the story from a first person point of view. She tells her story based on an event from her past. Because she narrates the story the reader is unable to be sure if what she tells of the other characters is completely accurate. Because one does not hear other character's thoughts one could question whether Edie interpreted them correctly. Or has time caused her to recall her story different from the way it actually happened? For example, Edie says it is hard for her to recall how she felt when she had to do dishes without a dishwasher and heated water. It had been so long ago her perception had been altered. Sometimes time can play a role in why truth can be so hard to see.
The conflict that appears to be most prevalent is appearance vs. reality. Loretta seemed to be a friendly neighbor when in fact she was more interested in what new information she could gossip about. For example, she asked Edie personal questions about the Peebles. The Peebles were ignorant of Loretta's true motives. It appeared to Edie that Chris was her true love when in reality it was the mailman she would marry and fall in love with. Similarly, the mailman believed Edie was always waiting for him at the mailbox when in actuality she was waiting for her letter from Chris. [Nice Point] False appearances can make it hard to d...
... middle of paper ...
.... She was unable to accept that he did not love her so she blamed his actions on others. For example, she believed it is Edie's fault, not Chris's, that they were "intimate", so she accused Edie of being loose and bad. Likewise, Alice was very obsessive because she continued to follow Chris wherever he went, trying to catch up with him. When love is involved in a situation it can really alter the truth.
In the end Edie finds that the truth was always there she just had to grow and experience life in order to filter it out. Truth is sometimes a hard thing to find because there are many things that can influence it. However, as people explore life, truth will become easier to discover.
Works Cited
Munro, Alice. "How I Met My Husband." Perrine's Literature : Structure, Sound, and Sense. By Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson. Boston: Heinle, 2008. 125-140.
Kinnell, Galway. “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Portable 10th ed. Ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2011. 490-491. Print.
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true” (Kierkegaard)- Misleading oneself by accepting things as true or valid when they are not is a common phenomenon of nearly every human being, especially when faced with life changing of threatening situations. Self-deception can therefore be considered an option to escape reality in order to prevent oneself from dealing with the weight of a situation. Basically, those strong influencing psychological forces keep us from acknowledging a threatening situation or truth. However, oftentimes people do not realize that they are deceiving themselves, for it is mostly the action of the subconscious mind to protect especially the psychological well- being. This psychological state is depicted and in Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. He shows that people try to escape reality and seek refuge in self-deception when confronted with life-threatening situations, through characterization, alternate point of view, and the fluidity of time.
Kempe, Margery. "From The Book of Margery Kempe." The Norton Anthology of Literature By Women. 2nd ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 18-24.
The story, depended on her affection for the historical backdrop of country Ontario, Canada, where she grew up. When one first peruses the story, it may seem confounding. Munro utilizes an outside storyteller, who bounced forward and backward in time from the 1800s to the 1980s. This storyteller incorporates outside wellsprings of data, for example, news cut-outs and portions from books—that intrude on the stream of the story and stun the follower, and, toward the end of the story, the credibility of the storyteller is raised doubt about, which can make a few pursuers address the purpose of the story. However, when one warrens more profound, the explanations behind these apparently bumping account devices, which are another trademark of Munro's written work, turn out to be clear. Through its complicated structure and the utilization of a sketchy storyteller, "Meneseteung" eventually investigates numerous topics. Therefore, Munro's story can be delighted in on numerous levels. One can read the story as a faithful piece, analysing the life of a Canadian frontierswoman who lives in a male-ruled society and who experiences the improper parts of the human experience. One can likewise focus on the storyteller, who is recreating this story by utilizing reliable bits of data and extrapolating to cover the crevices.
As a result, what you see is what you get. If you believe you’re dumb, that very belief will make you dumb. If you believe your sister is dumb, you’ll look for evidence to support your belief, find it, and she’ll remain dumb in your eyes. On the other hand, if you believe you’re smart, that belief will cast a rosy hue on everything you do. (Covey 13)
Her memory of these events is a justified version of what she believes happened. This may alter the truth in her narration, leading to question the credibility of the source. According to Antonio Damasio, a comparable construct of dynamic memory may be fundamental in establishing human consciousness, which is a process that is linked to two stages known as "autobiographical self". This includes “core self” which creates an autobiographical identity which emerges through a special kind of story. This initial stage both enhances the awareness of the imagery of the “temporal and spatial context” and imposition of an experiential perspective. An instant projection made over and over which is the sense of the self in the act of knowing. This means that the governess reflecting her past, may have led to memory alteration, and what the readers are exposed to, is far from the truth. “That is, consciousness, seemingly a collection of disparate mental projects- thinking, daydreaming, planning, observing, as well as what we usually think of as remembering- occurs in the conjunction with the continuous reproduction of the “self”, or the unifying perspective that lends each separate construction its coherence.” (85). Perhaps her mental illness may have led to hearing needing an identity, along with the times she lived in, she projected her own fears onto the children, as a way to feel a sense of "self". Henry James used a point of view prose on purpose to steer the audience away from the actual truth. “I don’t know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think you’re cruel. I don’t like you!” (James 215). The governess, so disoriented by her mind, doesn’t realize that she is projecting her own fears and demons created by her mind onto the ones she loves. In her mind, she blames the figures she sees, the things that threaten her and herself the most, not realizing she is the one struggling to
Bradstreet, Anne. "To My Dear and Loving Husband." The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. 28.
Charters, Ann. Major Writers of Short Fiction: Stories and Commentaries. New York, NY: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Print
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
The Progress of Love by Alice Munro Plot: Woman gets a call at work from her father, telling her that her mother is dead. Father never got used to living alone and went into retirement home. Mother is described as very religious, Anglican, who had been saved at the age of 14. Father was also religious and had waited for the mother since he first met her. They did not have sex until marriage and the father was mildly disappointed that the mother did not have money.
Fathers is a short story by Alice Munro that was set in the 1940s during World War II. It is told from the perspective of a narrator in rural America who reflects back on girls she knew and was friends with during her youth, and gives her recollections on their fathers. It is an interesting look at the father-child dynamic during the World War II years, and illustrates how that dynamic has changed in the years since.
When a child is born, he or she does not see the same things an adult sees. The baby does not understand language and cannot make the distinction between races or gender or good and evil. While it is impossible to go back in time, novels allow readers to take on a new set of eyes for a few hours or days. They give a new perspective to the world, and sometimes provide a filter to the things seen in the world. Unreliable narrators give authors the flexibility to lie to and withhold information from readers, providing new perspectives into the narrator as well as the other characters of the novel. Authors use unreliable narrators not to give more information to the reader, but to withhold information in order to further character development.
Introduction paragraph- end with thesis- In Shirley Jackson's short stories, ostensibly happy couples experience unusual encounters that force the wives to concede the truths about their marriages, and themselves that they have tried to ignore.
-the read must put more trust in the narrator in this type of situation in believing what they say is the truth
Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning and also the basis of education. Curiosity had killed the cat indeed, however the cat died nobly. Lives of Girls and Women is a novel written by Nobel Prize Literature winner, Alice Munro. This novel is about a young girl, Del Jordan, who lives on Flats Road, Ontario. The novel is divided into eight chapters; and each chapter refers to a new, unique event in Del's life. As an overall analysis of the book reveals that Del Jordan's intriguing curiosity has helped her throughout her life, and enabled her to gain further knowledge The character is often seen in scenarios where her attention is captivated, and through the process of learning she acquires information in order to her answers her questions about particular subjects. There are many examples in the book that discuss Del’s life, and how she managed to gain information, as well as learn different methods of learning along the way.