First, I should probably clarify something I wrote previously in my introduction to these essays. With specific examples already written down and cited, it seems as though I was focusing on the specifically physical description of characters in his stories, and that is an oversimplification. While I have examples of exactly that to include in this essay, I meant something a little more. What David Means does in most of these stories and especially well in “A River in Egypt,” is create his settings through the character’s involvement in them. I’d say that includes the characters themselves, their reactions, expressions, etc., but rather than taking a few sentences to describe the environment and then move on to the characters within them, Means combines these two necessities so that the reader is constantly involved in the same space as the characters themselves.
With “A River in Egypt,” I may have been a little forgiving of Means in my introduction as well. He does a bit of “telling” near the end of the story, however, I don’t think it is weak exposition by any means. I believe it is intended to show the neuroses of a father, especially in the unbearable situation that he finds himself in with a seriously ill child. However, I want to focus on the development of the hospital/diagnosis dynamic in the first couple of scenes, and how he places his reader in the position of the father. Means does a wonderful job of showing the pain that a parent feels watching their child in pain; it is something that cannot be described emotionally, only presented in order to evoke empathy, and he does this well. He forces the reader to stand in the father’s position and see the child’s face, “his tiny mouth a tight rictus of pink next to which his cheeks bunched to reveal a remnant of his original baby face – womb wet with sweat, blue with blood, and dramatically horrific” (25). This is an image that anyone can imagine, and somewhat understand the pain of, but once the reader assumes the role of the parent, that this sick, hurting child is yours and your responsibility and there’s nothing that you can do, the pain becomes real, as well as the hopelessness.
The other part of this scene that Means establishes well is the paranoia of the father, which is triggered by the reaction of the nurse. Merely telling the reader that the father was holding his son with his hand over the boy’s mouth when the nurse walked in would do little to convey the high emotional state of the situation. However, Means describes the action in short, specific terms, once again placing the reader in the father’s shoes and, in a way, making the reader responsible for the action. That is to say, the reader is just as responsible as the father. Anyone who has been a parent with a small child, or even a pet (on a smaller scale), understands the actions of a frustrated, hopeless parent in a moment of despair. One’s actions are hardly ever a result of clear thinking, but rather a reaction to a moment of insanity. Means takes his reader, who is now standing there with a hand over the child’s mouth, and makes them feel judgment, insecurity, and shame with the entrance of the nurse. Again, he does this entirely through the facial expressions, aside from a simple, “Oh, dear” spoken by the nurse. As the father stands there, holding the sweaty child roughly, the nurse is described “from the nose up, her intensely blue eyes and a single raised eyebrow seemed to be saying: Something funny’s going on here” (26). Although the father seems to find some kind of understanding in her face, he spews out a series of explanations, frantically spoken, until he looks again at the nurse as “something stony seemed to enter the nurse’s features as she listened, taking another step into the room, nodding slightly, looking down at the boy and then up at Cavanaugh” (27). This is a perfect portrait of the encounter, the kind of paranoia that can only come from someone else believing you have abused or are abusing your child. It’s the kind of accusation, similar to the pedophilia of Humbert Humbert, that immediately puts the kindest, most honest person in a horrible shadow of doubt. The type of accusation that owes nothing to the truth and everything to the impression, regardless of its accuracy. Deftly, Means is able to portray this perfectly in a couple of pages, and it is not only a portrayal, but an actual involvement on the part of the reader. The use of third-person POV is interesting; despite my initial reaction to that, which was heavily doubtful that it was the correct choice, I feel that the writer accomplishes everything he needs to, as well as giving the story a unique voice from the typical first-person, neurotic narrator.
No comments:
Post a Comment