#52 Soon- Alice Munro
Returning to your childhood home as an adult can be tricky,
the emotions confusing, the disconnect infuriating. It evokes feelings of
resentment against unsaid expectations, embarrassment for past failures, and
shame about unfulfilled promises. What we are as children will always define us
in that place.
These are the same characters as in the previous Munro
story, Chance. Juliet returns to her parent’s house as a young unwed mother.
This fact has preceded her and caused chatter and conflict between her parents
and the town folk. Her place in the
house has been taken by a care-taker, Irene.
Irene seems intent of being miserable. “[Her] wariness
seemed hardened and deliberate.” When being asked about her husband’s fatal
accident she makes Juliet feel bad by telling her: “’Yeah. Right in time for my
twenty-first birthday.’ As is if misfortunes were something to accumulate, like
charms on a bracelet.”
Irene’s indifferent, and uncompromising countenance seem
cold and judgmental to Juliet and makes her feel inadequate. Irene seems to
make the whole family feel that way. Juliet’s father removed the print she had
given them, I and the Village, because it was modern and might upset
Irene.
These feelings turn from passive shame to aggressive
resentment. “Just what is so wonderful about all this misery, does it make her
feel like a saint.” Juliet “felt no real sympathy. She felt herself rebelling,
deep down, against this retched litany.”
There’s quite a bit of Oedipal relationships developing
in the house. Juliet sees Irene as a
sibling rival. Juliet also gets jealous
of the attention her father gives her mother. Her father has a crush on Irene,
and that feeds further into Juliet’s jealousy of her. It’s quite a Freudian
case study going on in there, too i guess.
Faith vs. fact is also a theme. Juliet has a drag-out argument with a
minister about the existence of God, which ends with the minister nearly having
a diabetic seizure. Fact literally wins out when Juliet is able to use reason
to deduce the cause and cure of the ailment and save the ministers life.
Life goes on, and “home” eventually shifts from childhood
house to adult house.
Word of the day: Thaumaturgy- The working of wonder or
miracles, magic.
Notable Passage: (not meaningful but I found it funny)
“Chagall, I like Chagall…Picasso was a bastard.”
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