Senior Portfolio Seminar

If I am honest, I tend not to read fiction, but much to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning chapter of the novel.  After having read the assigned chapter, I considered reading the next. Strout’s sentences don’t continue at length, nor does she ramble idly. She writes about unremarkable, quotidian moments in such a way as to engage the reader in her seamless prose style. She doesn’t often use words that aren’t widely known. It seems she focuses, instead, on the way the sentences are arranged, grammatically. An example of this is on page 9: “He always remembered that hug, because she had been so thin; he could feel her bones and her small breasts, and because he wondered later how much — how little — that girl had ever been hugged.”  Another example is on the 11th page, after Tommy left Marilyn Macauley’s store: “Tommy thought what other people thought, it was because her husband had been in Veitnam and had never afterward been the same; Tommy would see Charley Macauley around town, and he always looked so far away, the poor man, and poor Marilyn too.” I also quite enjoyed the passage of the 24th page, after Tommy leaves Pete to take down his mother’s sign: “He saw the boy — the man — hit the sign again and again with what seemed to be increasing force, and as Tommy’s car dipped down just slightly, losing sight for a moment, he thought: Wait. And when his car came back up he looked again in the rearview mirror and he saw again this boy-man hitting the sign with rage, with a ferocity that astonished Tommy, it was astonishing, the rage with which that man was hitting that sign.” I don’t know if what I love about this passage are its contents, or the beautifully, clean prose in which it’s written.

I finished “The Sign” by Elizabeth Strout a few minutes ago, and I’m still not quite sure what exactly it is that I am feeling about it. It was kind of a weird story but a completely ordinary story at the same time, and I feel uneasy, I guess. There’s a completely normal, simple story of a man driving home, thinking about his life, and then stopping by his neighbor’s to see how he is doing. As the story goes on, the background to the story becomes more complex with possible arson and abuse, so the plot gets a little more bizarre. However, I think the character of Tommy makes me the most uneasy, which I’m guessing is how Strout wants me to feel; otherwise she would have written a book about rainbows.

She accomplishes this uneasiness about Tommy in a couple of different ways that all tie together in the end. In the beginning of the story, he seems like a genuinely good, laid-back kind of person. He cares about his kids; he gives his wife credit for dealing with their barn burning down. He deals with the terrible events of his life quite well. He seems almost too easy-going and too okay with everything. That threw me off for most of the story, especially when he was talking to Pete about his father possibly burning down Tommy’s barn. What kind of person is just okay with their whole existence being changed (possibly through someone else’s maliciousness)? And then, he knows all the names of the kids at school and he seems to care about them and he is the kind of person who checks in on his neighbors. On a base level, he left me uneasy because of how flat he seemed, purely kind and laid-back. Then, under that, there was a weird obsession with Lucy Barton, and it seems as though nothing happened and maybe it was just a kindly janitor caring about a small girl, but it also seems to be more than that. Strout left it ambiguous enough to leave me quite unsure about him and her. If she had flat-out said something creepy was going on, the mystery would have been solved and it would have been more conclusive and wouldn’t have left me wondering about it.

Then, all of a sudden, Tommy stops wanting to see Pete, and he’s still going to visit him, fitting in with the nice-guy persona, but he doesn’t want to and he focuses on his bad smell. At this point in the story, I had just come to terms with Tommy’s niceness and then learned that underneath it, there was something more going on with him, and that threw me off again. If he had just remained as a kindly, old janitor, then I don’t think it would have left me with the same sense of uneasiness.

I thoroughly enjoyed Atwood’s writing style. As I’m sure others may have mentioned, her imagery is lovely. Like Mary Lavin and Elizabeth Bowen before her, Atwood immerses the reader in thick description. The line beginning the story is among my favorites. Atwood writes: “The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant. Wherever it hits, it crystalizes. . .” (1) The imagery continues throughout the first chapter. Another favorite line is on the ninth page. She writes: “[Ewan] likes to watch as their clothing — their silken robes, their embroidered vestments, their fur lined capes, their shining veils — are ripped to shreds, and they plead and writhe attractively.” (9) In trying to distinguish more carefully what about this sentence I enjoy, I’ve realized my fondness for the words ‘plead’, and ‘writhe’ —  words I don’t often see.

Perhaps more than her descriptions, I also loved the way Atwood structures her sentences. She uses sentence variation very well. An example of this is also on the first page, further down the paragraph. She writes, “She, [as in Constance, the narrator] ought to be considering the dangers, the hazards, the grief this ice storm is going to bring to many; is already bringing. . .” (1) I’m excited to read more. Thanks for choosing this book, Lydia!

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood speaks during an interview at a hotel in Havana, Cuba, February 8, 2017. Picture taken on February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini – RTSY5HP

As I began Atwood’s “Alphinland” I started to picture the narrator as a child, or at least much younger than is revealed. There’s something whimsical about the first few lines with “fairy silver” and “handfuls of shining rice.” This kind of childlike sense of wonder continues throughout the story but is complicated by Constance’s painful past. Towards the end, it seems her wonder and happiness are confined to Alphinland and its imaginary rooms.

We quickly learn that Constance is anything but a small old woman who’s stuck at home with the ghost of her husband. Atwood creates her as a witty, sarcastic, funny, and generally likable character. Early on she writes “Condo is a euphemism for retirement home.” Constance is not a tragic character when she could have easily become one we pitied. She has more interaction with her dead husband than with anyone in the real world, spends more time in Alphinland than outside of her home, and has had two relationships that seemed almost loveless. She could be the weak, helpless woman the store clerk sees but her sense of humor leaves us laughing and somewhat hopeful.

Atwood is careful to reveal the source of Constance’s thick skin and sarcasm, slowly exposing the details of her unfortunate relationship with Gavin, the man who was more interested in her ass than her brain. We begin to learn more about Alphinland when we’re introduced to Gavin. This magical place became her refuge and needed her in ways Gavin didn’t, cared for her in ways Gavin wouldn’t. I’m interested in the way Alphinland continued to serve the same purpose, becoming so much of an escape that it interfered with her relationship with Ewan and became a source of resentment. We’re never told of Ewan’s affair but because we know of Constance’s past with Gavin, we’re given enough information to assume.

Another thing that caught my eye: Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” and the sacred river “Alph.” It’s a small detail, maybe what Constance had in mind for Alphinland, but the poem involves a dream, one Coleridge tries to remember and almost seems confused with reality. Constance is lost in her dreams and her “Aural hallucinations” of Ewan much like Coleridge was lost in the “measureless caverns” of Xanadu.

I found the language in “Alphinland” to be particularly compelling. I knew this would be true of Atwood’s writing from the very first line, “The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant.” The italicized words, especially when spoken out loud, have a distinct cadence due to the repetition of -ing and the one syllable “i” words. There is even repetition in the -fts and -ce sound.

I think the elevated language and control of syntax is intentional because it lends to the character’s voice, who is an author herself. Even though the story is in third-person, it feels as if the the narrator’s voice and the character’s voice become one. On page two, the narrator describes the ending scene on the news as one with “a minor touch of pathos.” That is a description/observation on the narrator’s behalf, but also something that Constance would notice as an author. This creates a very intimate third-person experience. This is a story of blurred boundaries.

Constance spreads ashes on her walk as she leaves the house (page 8), and the ashes are used in Alphinland later (page 33). She acknowledges that she has alternate fates for those who wronged her in the Alphinland world (28), and this mirrors the complicated alternate truths in her real life. Ewan has died, but she can still speak to him. Did he have an affair, or not, and how does that information shape her life, as she has shaped the world of Alphinland?

Also, I think the snow storm setting is perfect. It isolates the character to deal with all of this, and as it takes place over the course of the night, there is a clean beginning and end.

Go here to read the text of the speech.