In Tobias Wolff’s Say Yes, a central strain between the husband and wife is illuminated and never settled by the end of the story. The tension revolves around racism and the meaning of true love. In this story plot, point of view and irony reveal a married couple that becomes strangers.
The story commences talking about a married couple that seems to have a solid relationship where they work really well together. Having this cohesive and unified relationship really helps to set the story up for the conversation they have about racism and marriage. The husband believes he knows his wife, but he doesn’t really know her at all. The husband says to the wife, “A person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know each other”(247). In this part of the story, the husband relates culture with the idea of race and as the conversation proceeds and personal beliefs come into play, the husband upsets his wife. He takes the conversation to a place where it probably shouldn’t have gone by implying that he won’t marry her if she were black. She didn’t initially mean to turn this conversation into an argument, but the husband didn’t want to let the subject go. He knew that, “sometimes his wife got this look where she pinched her brows together and bit her lower lip and stared down at something. When he saw her like this he knew he should keep his mouth shut, but he never did”(246). Caught up in the argument, the husband says, “Jesus, Ann. All right. No”(248). This moment of the conversation changes the whole dynamic of the relationship.
After having this argument and it eventually tapering out by the wife walking away, the husband comes to a realization. He realizes that there was no point of arguing with someone wh...
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...he couple starts right after the beginning of the story and persists until almost the last few paragraphs when he approaches his wife outside the bathroom. The quarrel begins when the topic of black people and marriage gets brought into conversation while they were washing dishes. This text has an ending that is left incomplete and is ambiguous as to what really happens between the husband and the wife in the end. The story chooses to do this because it is essential to the entire irony of the story. By starting with a cohesive bond and ending with the couple being strangers, the story illustrates that even though you could be married to someone for years, you could still not know who they are as an individual.
Works Cited
Lynn, Steven. Say Yes. Texts and Contexts: Writing about Literature with Critical Theory. New York: HarperCollins College, 1994. 245-49. Print.
I thought that the husband was just telling his story then they went to a motel and fought then went home, it was only when I saw the police get involved where I found out I missed something. I enjoyed this story the most out of all the stories we had to read, after reading it I found the feud between the two characters to be a exceptional battle of wits until they show their hand in the climax and are forced to attempt to kill one another. The other stories I read took a less subtle approach to their conflicts and I think that is where a lot of the other stories fell short to me, the climax is more satisfying when it isn't expected or revealed before that. Overall, Twins by Eric Wright takes on a very underrated approach of having the conflict be mainly in the characters heads until one chooses to make a move, I found this made the story a lot better than the other options and it will without a doubt, leave you satisfied when it is
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama and The Essay.4th e. Ed. Frank Madden. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 253-261. Print.
Updike, John. "A&P." Thinking and Writing About Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 981-86. Print.
Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper" (p.316-327). Literature: Reading and Writing With Critical Strategies. Ed. Steven Lynn. University of South Carolina, 2004
Immediately, the narrator stereotypes the couple by saying “they looked unmistakably married” (1). The couple symbolizes a relationship. Because marriage is the deepest human relationship, Brush chose a married couple to underscore her message and strengthen the story. The husband’s words weaken their relationship. When the man rejects his wife’s gift with “punishing…quick, curt, and unkind” (19) words, he is being selfish. Selfishness is a matter of taking, just as love is a matter of giving. He has taken her emotional energy, and she is left “crying quietly and heartbrokenly” (21). Using unkind words, the husband drains his wife of emotional strength and damages their relationship.
The story begins around dusk, one evening in a non descript kitchen on El Camino Street in some unnamed American ghetto. The mood of the evening soon changes for the worse. While a husband and a wife wash dishes they quibble about inter-racial marriage, specifically Caucasian and African. Ann, the wife, proposes a question, "…I'm black, but still me, and we fall in love. Will you marry me?" Tobias Wolff parallels the narrative tone with the considerate loving attitude of the Husband, which makes the delicate subject matter of inter-racial marriage easier to confront in the short story "Say Yes".
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, and John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 125-156.
In the story Say Yes by Tobias Wolff, a marriage is broken overnight by a revelation of the insufficiency of their love in the test. Along with the husband’s wrong response to the “Love Test”, the relationship is dramatically demolished by Ann’s sudden realization of the superficial love of her husband. Even though her husband tries to please Ann with the right answer, her feelings of love has already been shattered by distrust and suspicion. The hypothetical “Love Test” in the story reveals the superficiality of his love, drastically shifting the relationship from intimacy to uncertainty.
Suchoff, David. Critical Theory and the Novel: Mass Society and Cultural Criticism in Dickens, Melville and Kafka. 5th ed. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.
Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 5th ed. New York: Longman, 2011. Print.
Guerin, Wilfred L., et.al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
The first marriage that we encounter in the book is that of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. The Bennets are not well matched at all in character or social background. Mr. Bennet is intelligent, and a “gentleman”, while Mrs. Bennet had little money and much “lower social connections” before their marriage. Their union was based on an initial physical attraction-Mr. Bennet found Mrs. Bennet to be beautiful, and Mrs. Bennet wanted the economic and social status that this marriage would provide her with. However, a marriage that is based on this kind of superficial attachment is doomed to failure, because as the years go on and the beauty fades Mr. Bennet is left living with a woman whom he absolutely does not respect at all.
...the story he is inviting the reader to condemn the mistreatment of women and lack of freedom in the family particularly under the institution of marriage. The attitude of the author gives the story a condemning tone. The tone is appropriate for the theme which is a strained relations in the family and specifically in marriage relations.