Leigh
Dillard
ENGL
1102
April
16, 2002
Writing can often be considered a reflection. Sometimes authors resonate on certain
experiences or aspects of their life, and express them through the art of
writing. Alice Munro, a renowned
short-story author, creatively displays this technique. It is important to first understand that
Munro is a writer of fiction, yet her writing has chronologically progressed
through situations and experiences in her own life. Being a Canadian native,
Munro is often compared to great Southern writers such as Faulkner and OíConnor
due to her ability to place her characters in confrontation with tradition. Because of her implicit style of
writing, many readers can easily relate to the characters, settings, and plots
of her stories. Through the use of
complex characters, setting, ironic humor, and symbolism, Munro elegantly
creates fictional short stories that easily survive in a non-fiction
lifestyle.
Munroís characters are the backbone of her stories. One could assume that Munro first
creates her characters, then delicately places the plot around them. In An Ounce of Cure, the main
character recalls one of the most embarrassing moments of her adolescence, a
crush she thought she would never get over, and how she has grown into a mature
young woman in spite of it all.
In an interview with renowned writer Graeme Gibson, Munro describes the
feelings and expectations she encountered while growing
up:
ìAs a child, I
always felt separate, but pretty happy to be so. Then in high school,
Suddenly with puberty and everybody getting
down to business - girls especially
Getting down to what their role would be - I
began to feel terribly out of things and
in a way superficially unhappy about that
because I wanted to be an ordinary girl.
I wanted to be very attractive to boys, and I
wanted to go out, and I wanted to get
married, and get a diamond: those things,
more or less as signs of being a fully OK
kind of womanî (Munro
1985).
Not only does
Munro identify with the character in her story, but she also creates a character
many of her female readers can relate to.
Munro even created a generic mother in the story who thinks that signing
a non-drinking pledge card in the seventh grade was ìÖ just nonsense and
fanaticism,î and ìÖignoranceÖis not always such a fine thing as people thinkÖî
(Munro 451).
As mentioned earlier, Munro is often compared to Faulkner and OíConnor
because of her use of regional settings in her stories. Not only does rural Ontario hold the
setting for most of Munroís short stories; it also embraces the title of her
birthplace. Setting her stories to
unfold in a quaint, quiet town allows her to create traditional boundaries and
set rules to automatically be broken.
Not only does this enhance the plot of her stories; it also helps fully
develop her already multifaceted characters. This technique also enhances
Munroís extraordinary style, as writer R.Z. Sheppard commented, ìReticence is
the pervading style of Munroís rural Ontario, where drawbacks and adversity were
not to be noticed, not to be distinguished from their opposites. Munro breaks the silence, but without
devaluing the styleÖnot many writers can pull that offÖ (Sheppard
119).
Munroís characters are fully developed through the use of ironic
humor. Munroís unique style of
writing gives each of her characters a distinct personality. In Prue, the main character is a
middle-aged woman who engages in sporadic love affairs with a recently divorced
man named Gordon. The story is
sprinkled with brief, clipped sentences of dialogue between Prue and
Gordon. At one point Gordon states,
ìThe problem is that I think I would like to marry you,î then Prue quickly
responds, ìWhat a problemî (Munro 468).
Dr. Walter Martin, of the University of Waterloo English Department,
comments that ìÖthe short clipped sentences generate a dry ironic humor, and the
joke is largely at the expense of PrueÖî (Martin 178). By using humor to reveal her characterís
personalities, Munro indirectly reveals our own impulses and feelings. One critic assessed that ìMunro is a
satirist for whom disorder, chance happenings and meetings, and the bizarre
characters who reveal us to ourselves are all parts of an absurd yet real worldî
(McMullen 354). The use of humor is
also another method Munro utilizes to create a fictional world her readers can
associate with. By applying humor to her stories, one can assume that Munro has
once encountered situations in her own life that involved amusement as a
remedy.
Symbolism, humor and complex
characters combine to create an inevitable force that drives to the center of
meaning in Munroís writing. The use
of symbolism in Munroís stories is a direct reflection of her character. Munro is a very non-excessive,
straightforward person. This is not
only revealed from the many biographies published about her, but through her
writing. Munro uses symbols that
offer their meaning with directness, reinforcing the already undeviating
plot. By placing a simple symbol or
two throughout her stories, Munro allows for the power of association to be
revealed; it is through other aspects of her writing that the true significance
of these symbols are presented. In
Prue, the main character, Prue, steals a cufflink from her divorced
lover. She places the cufflink in a
tobacco tin where she keeps other small objects that she more or less forgets
about. The stealing of the cufflink
is not introduced until the last couple of paragraphs in the story. Yes, the cufflink holds significant
meaning by symbolizing Prueís feelings about her lover, but it is the intense
description of her character and interaction of her personality with other
characters that reveal true meaning.
The simple symbolism Munro uses also enhances her ability to connect with
her readers. By providing symbols
that literally mean what they say, readers can better relate with the characters
and situations throughout the story.
Alice Munro re-defined the definition of a short story. Through the combination of her many
distinct writing talents, she creates a new complexity through which short
stories can be discovered. Part of
Munroís success lies within her straightforward style, allowing almost any
reader to easily relate to the tribulations of life. And although her techniques may seem to
create a recipe for the perfect short story, the real secret lies within her
ability to create absolutely no structure at all. As non-fiction writer Sharon Butala
stated, ìÖshe didnít twist and pound and wrench her material into the given
structure, but thought of herself as creating a houseÖfull of tides and
emotionÖHer ëhouseí is a place inside which the reader lives tooî (Butala
875). Munro molds life into
thoroughly enjoyable fiction; she does not try to change anyoneís life, or add
new meaning to already definite situations, she simply writes on what is
real. As Munro said herself, ìThe
problem with issue-driven fiction is that it doesnít arouse feelings or disturb
us in the way I think good fiction should.
The message becomes more important than the questions or puzzles nurtured
by human experience or behaviorî (Munro 1995). Word Count: 1,425
Works Cited
Butala,
Sharon. ìAlice Munro.î University of Toronto
Quarterly 10 October 1999:
875.
Martin, W.R. ìOn Prueís Suppressed Passions.î The Bedford Introduction to
Literature. 6th
ed. Ed. Micheal Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St.Martinís, 2002. 487-488.
McMullen, Lorriane. ìShameless, Marvellous, Shattering
Absurdityí: The Humor of Paradox in Alice Munro.î Probable Fictions: Alice Munroís
Narrative Acts. Ed. Louis K.
MacKendrick. Toronto: ECW Press,
1984. 354.
Munro, Alice. ìAn Ounce of Cure.î The Bedford Introduction to
Literature. 6th
ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St.Martinís, 2002. 451-458.
Munro, Alice. ìPrue.î The Bedford Introduction to
Literature. 6th
ed. Ed. Micheal Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St.Martinís, 2002. 467-469.
Munro, Alice. Interview with Graeme Gibson. ìAn Interview with Munro on
Writing.î The Bedford
Introduction to Literature.
6th ed. Ed.
Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martinís, 2002. 484-486.
Munro, Alice. Interview. Meanjin. 5 September 1995:
222.
Sheppard, R.Z. ìOn Alice Munro.î Time 30 November 1998:
119.