November 2007
Every story has a beginning, middle and end. Something happens in a story which either changes a character or has the potential to change him or her but ultimately does not. Stories also have conflict, either between characters or within characters. Conflict is an important part of drama. Freitag’s triangle illustrates that narrative is “exposition, followed by a complication (or nouement, ‘knotting up’, of the situation), leading to a crisis, which is followed by a ‘falling action’ or anticlimax, resulting in a resolution (or dénouement, ‘unknotting’)” (Burroway, 40). In Screenplay, Syd Field defines drama in much the same way. He discusses, “Setup, confrontation, resolution---the parts that make up the whole” (Field, 12). A character has a “need” and it is the writer’s responsibility to “create obstacles to that need” (Field, 38). Janet Burroway writes that only “trouble is interesting” in fiction (Burroway, 32). She uses a hypothetical picnic as an example. If a picnic goes well, you do not have much to say about it, whereas if something disastrous happens, it makes for a captivating story (Burroway, 32). Conflict prevents the story from ending too soon and keeps the reader hooked.
Burroway dedicates a section of her second chapter to conflict, but also points out that there is another way to look at a story’s structure. In every story “characters make and break emotional bonds” with other characters (Burroway, 38). In addition to conflict, “narrative is also driven by a pattern of connection and disconnection between characters that is the main source of its emotional effect” (Burroway, 38).
In her article, “The Power And Importance of Human Connection To A Great Screenplay,” Claudia Johnson discusses the role conflict has played in the definition of drama over the years, quoting George Bernard Shaw, Ferdinand Brunetiere and Syd Field. While conflict is important, Johnson advances the idea of connection and disconnection. Connection and disconnection are, according to Johnson, “the emotional tide” of a story, whereas “conflict and surface events are like waves” (Johnson, 3). Johnson quotes Ursula Le Guin, who used Romeo & Juliet as an example of a story in which there is conflict, but also “something else” and it is “something else” that makes the “otherwise trivial tale of a feud” tragic (Johnson, 3).
It is not just about the characters’ abilities to connect and disconnect with each other, but also about the reader’s ability to connect with the characters. Janet Burroway states, “Drama equals desire plus danger. One common fault of talented young writers is to create a main character who is essentially passive” (33). She quotes Charles Baxter, who refers to this as “the fiction of finger-pointing” (33). Baxter states, “When blame has been assigned, the story is over” (33). Burroway writes, “In fiction, in order to engage our attention and sympathy, the protagonist must want, and want intensely” (33). If the reader can understand what it is the character wants, then it is easier to connect with him or her. In Johnson’s article, she writes about an accused killer named Ruby McCollum. “Immersed in Ruby’s story, I wondered why it engaged me so deeply. She and I had nothing in common except for our gender and the small North Florida town where we lived” (Johnson, 3). She soon realized that “it was connection itself. Underlying the conflict of Ruby’s story, underlying the events of her life and mine--underlying any good story, fictitious or true--is a deeper pattern of change, a pattern of connection and disconnection” (Johnson, 3). All humans experience connection and disconnection in their life, and so it is something to which a reader can relate.
Conflict and connection work together. Burroway writes, “Patterns of conflict and connection occur in every story, and sometimes they are evident in much smaller compass” (Burroway, 38). She quotes Robert Morgan: “A story which is only about conflict will be shallow.” Morgan also writes that stories are not only about “conflict between good and bad” but “more often about conflicts of loyalty.” When a story involves “conflicts of loyalty,” there is the potential either to connect with others or to lose connections. Morgan writes that it is the writer’s goal to “bring art to a level where a story is not so much a plot as about human connection” (Burroway, 39).
Conflict draws the reader in, but in this paper I will analyze the ways in which stories can also examine the complex nature of relationships. I will also show the ways in which conflict and connection serve as a backbone for theme. I have selected eight short stories. Four of these works of fiction feature conflict. I will explore different kinds of conflict in this paper. Conflict can be external or internal. External conflict occurs between characters and internal conflict occurs within a character. The other four stories feature connection and disconnection. One of the stories ends with connection and two end with disconnection. Another story ends with a sense of both connection and disconnection. Johnson writes, “[C]omedy ends in connection, tragedy in disconnection” (Johnson, 3). Comedy ends with marriage and tragedy ends with death. She also adds that, “Even death, the ultimate disconnection, is less fearsome for some than life without connection” (Johnson, 3). In the examples I will use, connection and disconnection mean different things to different people.
I will analyze the moments of conflict and connection in each of these eight stories and show how these moments contribute to theme.
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” “How Far She Went,” “Everyday Use” and “A&P” all have conflict in common. There are also moments of connection and disconnection, and these moments add to the tension. Conflict drives the stories forward and brings the characters to the point where they consider change.
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” by Flannery O’Connor, is about a family on a vacation. Near the end, they get into a car accident and, while stranded on a deserted road, they run into three killers. The story examines the ways in which life and death situations can bring out a false goodness in people.
The story opens with the line, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.” The grandmother is the protagonist. Most of the conflict is between her and the members of her family. In the first paragraph, we learn of the conflict between the grandmother and her son, Bailey. He wants to go to Florida whereas his mother wants to go to Tennessee. The grandmother argues that a criminal who goes by the name of The Misfit is “aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida” (431). This is the first mention of The Misfit, and it foreshadows what comes later in the story. The Misfit is the second character. He does not appear in person until the end, but his existence casts a shadow over the family from the beginning.
The grandmother causes much of the trouble, but the other members of the family are not particularly close. The little girl, June Star, is rude to her grandmother and to strangers. The parents do not seem to notice their daughter’s behavior. The father, Bailey, is the grandmother’s son, and there is obvious tension them. He does not say much to her, but it is clear that he does not respect her. Bailey’s wife is not named and mostly fades into the background. In the beginning, the external conflict is between the grandmother and her son and it carries on throughout the story.
The primary conflict comes when the family gets into a car accident and they are left stranded in the woods, in need of assistance. The children are excited to have gotten into an accident but June Star is disappointed that their grandmother was not killed. While the little girl has been horrible to several people during the trip, this is the most hateful she has been. Her statement foreshadows the ending, but is disturbing on its own because it reveals the deep hatred the girl harbors for her grandmother.
The Misfit’s existence hangs over the family from the first page, and his appearance is inevitable. When he and his two henchmen stop to help the family, the grandmother, of course, recognizes him. It is unknown what The Misfit would have done if she had not recognized him. He says that she’d have been better off if she had not figured out who he was, but it is possible that he would have killed them all anyway. However, the grandmother has been causing problems for the family since the beginning of the story, and it is ironic that she should say the thing that leads to their deaths.
The overriding question, at this point, is whether or not any of them will survive. The family does not truly accept the gravity of their situation, even when they are being killed one by one. Naturally, the children are particularly naïve. June Star insults one of the criminals. She says, “He reminds me of a pig” (441). She is too young to understand the necessity of insincerity. She is as brutally honest as ever when interacting with the men who hold her life in their hands. The grandmother knows what is going on, and, while she shows some concern for her son, she is mostly concerned with her own safety. Before her son is taken away, she prepares herself to go along with him, but at the last minute, changes her mind. “The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground” (439). These lines show that the grandmother has accepted the fact that there is nothing more she can do for her son. She makes a feeble effort to keep him with her, but, deep down, she has accepted defeat. She calls out her son’s name a few times, but she does not seem to consider her grandchildren. The conflict remains mostly between her and The Misfit. She tells him, “I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady” after half of her family has been killed, including at least one child. She even tries to bribe him with money after it is too late to save anyone but herself. The family is not redeemed and the grandmother accepts the fact that she can not save them. She tries, instead, to save The Misfit. Religion plays a big role in the story. The grandmother tells the Misfit to pray because it is her only hope of reaching him. He tells her that the one thing that bothers him about Christianity is that he was not there when Jesus raised the dead, and, as a result, he does not know whether or not the scriptures are true (442). When he was a child, he always had to question everything (439), and it is clear that, even as an adult, he still questions the way the world works. Like June Star, he is unable to be false. After he shoots the grandmother, he says, “She would have been a good woman…if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (442).
In the moment before her death, the grandmother refers to the Misfit as “one of [her] own children” (442). She has experienced a connection with him. This is one of the only moments of connection in the story. It is immediately followed by the grandmother’s death. Death is a form of disconnection. By shooting her, the Misfit has destroyed that connection between them.
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is about the rarity of genuine kindness. Life and death conflict can bring out an imitation of it, but ultimately, such goodness is a result of self-interest and self-pity. There is a brief connection between the Misfit and the grandmother, but it is immediately lost. This underscores the idea that true compassion is an uncommon trait among humans, and that most people would rather look after their own interests than reach out to others. They are unable to connect with each other, not because they are different, but because they are exactly the same. The conflict between the characters illuminates the distance between them, but it also shows how similar they are. They are all interested in looking after themselves, and as a result, they are unable to find peace with each other. The conflict is important to the story because it results in tension and it also forces the grandmother to confront her flaw. Through this confrontation, the theme is revealed. The reader does not necessarily sympathize with the characters, but he or she understands why it is that they came to the end they did.
The conflict in Mary Hood’s “How Far She Went” also places the characters in a life or death situation, but when the grandmother, in Hood’s story, has an epiphany she is able to save herself and her granddaughter by sacrificing the dog she loves. “How Far She Went,” like Flannery O’Connor’s story, mixes family tension with danger. Danger causes the grandmother to react in a way that she might not have otherwise. She and the granddaughter rely on each other in order to survive, whereas in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the family is unable to run, and, even if they could, we assume that they would fail to stick together in the end. In Hood’s story, the conflict strengthens the grandmother and helps her to understand that she must take responsibility for her part in her relationship with her granddaughter. She tells her granddaughter, “Around here, we bear our own burdens” (57). The grandmother is willing to put her own self-interest aside for the benefit of another. Love is not a gift, but rather a reward achieved through sacrifice, and in “How Far She Went”, the protagonist comes to understand this in time to save herself and her granddaughter.
The story begins with conflict. The first line of the story is, “They had quarreled all morning, squalled all summer about the incidentals: how tight the girl’s cut-off jeans were, the ‘Every Inch a Woman’ t-shirt, her choice of music and how loud she played it, her practiced inattention, her sullen look” (51). The conflict between the woman and the girl seems, at first, no different from the conflict between any mother and her daughter, only, in this story, it is between a grandmother and her granddaughter. On the second page, the reader learns that the granddaughter lives with her grandmother. When the girl learns that she will not be going home as soon as she thought she would be, she gets into a fight with her grandmother. It is likely that the girl blames her father, and that she is taking her anger out on the messenger. She is frustrated and must also feel abandoned. The father and daughter relationship has little to do with the grandmother’s feelings toward the girl, but the tension between the girl and her father helps explain why she is so angry. Her mother’s death, which we learn about later on, also explains her anger.
At first glance, the generational gap between the grandmother and granddaughter is part of the problem. The grandmother takes issue with things the girl does that many other teenagers do, but it runs much deeper than that. The conflict is external and is shown through dialogue, but it is also internal. The grandmother reflects on the fact that her relationship with her granddaughter echoes her relationship with her own late daughter. She recalls her daughter’s birth, and what she said shortly after being shown her child for the first time: “Tie her to the fence and give her a bale of hay” (53). The doctors dismiss her comment, but she understands that it is not just the drugs that made her think this way.
She knew, and the baby knew: there was no love in the begetting.
That was the secret, unforgivable, that not another good thing could
ever make up for, where all the bad had come from, like a visitation, a punishment. She knew that was why Sylvie had been wild, had gone to
earth so early, and before dying had made this child in sudden wedlock,
a child who would be just like her (53).
The grandmother is reliving her years with Sylvie. Her complaints about her granddaughter’s behavior are just “the incidentals,” as the first line states.
External conflict appears again when the grandmother catches the granddaughter with two older men. The girl is riding on the back of a man’s motorcycle. This scene connects past and present. Her mother is described as “wild” and as having had a child in “sudden wedlock” (53). One of the bikers has “the invading sort of eyes the woman had spent her lifetime bolting doors against” (54). The grandmother is upset because the girl is only fifteen, but there is also the fact that the granddaughter is so much like her mother.
The men chase after the woman and girl, ready to shoot them. The woman and girl hide under a dock, and, in order to keep the dog from giving them away, the grandmother sacrifices his life for her granddaughter’s.
As in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the conflict starts out as a rift between two family members, but, toward the end, becomes about something bigger, as the grandmother and the granddaughter have to depend on each other in order to stay alive. In the end, there is a connection between the two characters. The grandmother realizes how important the girl is to her and the sacrifices she must make if they are ever to have a relationship. The grandmother sees the granddaughter as a chance to make up for the mistakes she made with her daughter, and the granddaughter learns the realities of love. The conflict makes it clear for both the characters and the reader what is at stake.
In Everyday Use, the conflict is between mother and daughter and also between the sisters, Dee and Maggie. The protagonist is the mother and the second character is her older daughter, Dee. The tension between them is apparent throughout the story, with small moments of conflict that the mother overcomes in order to hold onto a semblance of peace between her and her children. The showdown is over two quilts that were hand-stitched by the protagonist’s mother. The older sister feels that the priceless quilts ought to be preserved, not used. The mother would prefer that her younger daughter, Maggie, take them, knowing that she will put them to good use. The title of the story comes from this basic conflict, but this is not the only conflict in the story. The final conflict is emblematic of all that is wrong between the members of the family. It also proves to be the revelation the mother needs. She realizes that it is more important for her to live her life the way she wants to than it is to preserve her relationship with her eldest daughter.
The mother and Maggie have a different view of life than Dee has. The mother feels disconnected from Dee. This disconnection creates tension and conflict. Dee is more confident than the rest of her family, and more concerned with her “heritage” (109). She criticizes her mother for the way she lives. Little conflicts throughout the story hint at this underlying issue. These minor conflicts weave their way into the larger one.
The mother’s conflict with Dee is, at first, more internal. She describes herself as passive, and the first page only reveals her thoughts. But she reveals a lot about her relationship with Dee. She thinks about the way she must appear to her daughter as opposed to how she imagines she should be. She imagines herself on a television show on which people are reunited with loved ones and everyone is happy. In her dreams, her relationship with her daughter and with others are a lot different than in real life, but it is not just their relationship that is different. She dreams about looking as her daughter would want her to look. “I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens…Johnny has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue” (103). When she wakes up, she realizes that everything is wrong about this picture, and it is not just her relationship with her daughter that is all wrong. “Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight” (103). Dee, on the other hand, is more confident. She knows her value in the world and does not cower from life. She is more educated than her mother, who was not educated past second grade. Her school was shut down and black people did not demand answers back then (104). The mother lets things happen, as opposed to taking a stand.
The first conflict between mother and daughter occurs shortly after Dee arrives with her boyfriend. Awkwardness is evident between the four characters, but the mother tries not to cause a scene. Dee announces that she has changed her name to Wangero because she does not want to keep a name that is reminiscent of her oppressors. The mother claims that her name came from her grandmother. It looks like the two might get into a long-winded argument over the origins of the name, Dee, and the daughter finally relents and says that her mother can call her by her birth name, if that is what she wants to do. The mother accepts Wangero reluctantly, still thinking of her daughter as Dee. Near the end, after Dee has made a scene over the quilts, the mother thinks of her as Miss Wangero, revealing irritation and distance. The mother also feels disconnected from Dee’s boyfriend. She does not know if Dee is married to him or not. She thinks of him as Asalamalakim because this is the first word he utters to her. In this way, she turns him into a word rather than a person. She is unfamiliar with the language he speaks and stumbles over his name. She connects him with the “beef-cattle peoples” who live nearby (106) because they also use the expression “asalamalakim.” He says, “I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not my style” (106). He does not tell her anything more about himself or his family. When they eat dinner, he refuses the collards and says that “pork [is] unclean” (107). It does not cause external conflict, but it adds to the tension between the characters.
The younger sister also feels disconnected from Dee. The conflict between the sisters is evident in the way that Maggie avoids Dee. On the first page, the mother thinks, “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (103). The reader sees some of this behavior firsthand just before Dee’s visit. Maggie asks her mother to give an opinion on her outfit, yet she stands with most of her body blocked by the door, so that her mother can barely make out her figure. When Dee arrives, Maggie tries to run back to the house and spends much of the visit “cowering” away from her sister and “Hakim-a-barber,” Dee’s boyfriend. She utters strange sounds in response to them. Maggie is not confrontational, but her discomfort is obvious. Maggie attempts to run away. Later on, when Dee demands the quilts, Maggie tells her mother to give them to her. Until this point, the mother has done her best to placate Dee. When she sees the resignation in Maggie’s face, she is certain of what she must do. She takes the quilts from Dee, and in this way, severs the tentative bond between them. The story ends with disconnection. She realizes that she can not live this way, desperately trying to preserve a relationship that has made her and her daughter miserable. The disconnection is necessary to end the conflict. The story ends with the line “And then the two of us sat there just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed” (Walker, 109). The disconnection from Dee does not bother the mother and Maggie because their forced connection to her caused tension and fear. The story is not about the need for connection so much as it is about the need to be comfortable with one’s own life.
In “A&P,” by John Updike, the protagonist, Sammy, makes a stand, much like the mother does in “Everyday Use”. In “A&P”, though, Sammy is not happy in the end. He discovers that it is easier to let your surroundings define you than it is to create your own identity.
A teenaged cashier at an A&P, Sammy quits his job after his boss reprimands three female customers who enter the store in bathing suits. It is clear, though, that it is not just this incident which has set him off. The incident is unique, of course. Sammy says, “It’s not as if we’re on the Cape: we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town haven’t seen the ocean for twenty years” (17). This explains why the girls attract attention, but it also sets up an atmosphere of boredom and monotony. Nothing as exciting as a beach ever enters his life. At the same time, the incident is rather mundane when seen in context. Everything about Sammy and his job and his town has led to his dissatisfaction, not just this one moment. Sammy has worked at the A&P long enough to become familiar with the store and the people who frequent it. He has grown weary of the routine. He is friends with another cashier, Stokesie, and the two young men are comfortable with each other. They have clearly known each other for a while. He says that there is not much difference between himself and Stokesie, besides the fact that Stokesie is three years older, and married with two kids. Inside the A&P, the two young men lack individuality.
Even though Sammy is not satisfied with his life, “A&P” could have been a day in the life of a cashier, but for the appearance of the girls in bathing suits. They serve as a catalyst and they appear in the first sentence: “In walks three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (15). The phrasing of the first sentence indicates that this is not only a bizarre occurrence, but also that the girls will cause a disruption. Their presence distracts Sammy and leads to the first example of external conflict between him and an angry customer. His distraction causes him to ring up a box of crackers twice, and, when the customer complains, he thinks she is a “cash register watcher” (15). He is so familiar with customers like her that he has a name for them. He refers to her as a “witch” and says, “If she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem…” (16). It is clear that he is not happy with his job. Three times, he refers to the customers as “sheep” and also says, “I bet you could set off dynamite in an A&P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists…” (17). “Sheep” are those who blindly follow others. By using this word, Sammy reveals his contempt for conformity and the banality of everyday life. This explains his unhappiness with his job and why he decides to quit in the end. While the girls provoke him to make this decision, it is clear that his discontent has been building for a while.
The main external conflict comes when the manager, Lengel, sees the girls’ bathing suits. Sammy prefaces this scene with the statement, “Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says it’s sad but I don’t think it’s sad myself” (17). This suggests a conflict between him and his parents. His parents want him to keep working at the A&P for who knows how long and may even have helped him get the job in the first place. Lengel warns him that his resignation will hurt his parents, so it appears that he knows Sammy’s family well. Sammy quits anyway because, “Once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it” (19). The story ends with the sentiment, “I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (20). Sammy watches from outside the store as Lengel takes over his spot at the register. At the A&P, there is order, but, on the street, the first thing Sammy comes across is a mother “screaming with her children“ (19). He rebels, but it is clear that he realizes that rebelling against unfairness is a lot more difficult than submission. As a result of his conflict with Mr. Lengel, he is disconnected from the only world he knew. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that he has to accept.
In each of these four stories, the conflict goes beneath the surface. Characters fight one another, but their problems are much bigger than the external conflict of the moment. It is their connections and disconnections with others that best help the reader understand them. At the same time, the moments of conflict force them to confront the issues that are at the heart of the stories. There are moments of connection and disconnection, but the conflict is what moves the stories along.
As stated in my introduction, in every story “characters make and break emotional bonds” with other characters (Burroway, 38). Claudia Johnson refers to connection and disconnection as “the emotional tide” of a story, and says that “conflict and surface events are like waves” (Johnson, 3). The bonds between characters enrich a story and help the readers understand what is at stake. This is the case with the previous four examples. As for, “Araby,” “Interpreter of Maladies,” “I Stand Here Ironing” and “The Comedian”, these stories exhibit conflict but they are mostly about their protagonists’ relationships with the second characters. In some cases, the protagonist barely knows the second character, but still feels a connection with her.
“Araby,” by James Joyce, is told from the point of view of a boy who is attracted to his friend’s sister. He fails to connect with her in the end and, instead, comes to see himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity” (617). The story is about what happens when one’s own vanity causes the outside world to disappear.
In the conflict stories discussed above, the sources of the tension are present in the opening lines. In “Araby,” Mangan’s sister does not appear until the middle of the third paragraph. The story opens, instead, with the lines, “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two stories stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors…” (613). There is a sense of community. The occupied houses face one another and Joyce describes them as being “conscious of decent lives within them” (613). They “gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (613). The houses are personified in these lines. While there is a sense of community, there is also a sense of self-absorption and vanity. A “blind end” is a dead end. On one end, the street is unconnected to any other, and it is described as quiet, except for the hours when the boys are playing. This is one of the few examples of human interaction in the story. The main character interacts briefly with his friends and with Mangan’s sister. Also, on a couple of occasions, he interacts with his family, and, near the end of the story, he witnesses interactions between a group of people at the bazaar. Other than that, there is a strong feeling of isolation that makes the story of a young boy’s crush--and his desire for a relationship with Mangan’s sister--- that much more compelling.
When the boys play outside together, they try to shut out the world. “If my uncle was seen turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely
housed” (613). When Mangan’s sister calls her brother inside, they try to avoid her for as long as possible, and, if she remains outside, they finally give in. It is clear, at this point, that the protagonist has a crush on Mangan’s sister. She is not named--and neither is he--but the mention of her name is “like a summons to all my foolish blood” (614). The reader is distanced from the sister in this way, though the protagonist feels connected to her. He describes his encounters with her in a way that underlines the distance between him. He sometimes sees her behind a partially closed door or across the street when he is looking out his partially open window shade.
His love for her is an obsession. “Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance” (614). He finds himself praying, as if to her: “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand” (614). In the “back drawing-room in which the priest had died” (614), he listens to the rain outside. “All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: O love! O love! many times” (614). Mangan’s sister is treated as a goddess, someone holy and unattainable. He has not been able to convey to her his feelings and has instead spent days trying to form a connection with her in his mind.
After he chants, “O love!” he describes their first conversation and gets his opportunity to win her affection when he learns that she wants to attend the bazaar (Araby) but is unable to go. He offers to buy something for her. He thinks that if he does this, he will win her love. He feels connected to her because of this promise. They are still disconnected, though, because he has not won her over yet. The bazaar, Araby, is his link to her. “What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days” (615). The days that separate him from his goal disconnect him from Mangan’s sister. His uncle further complicates matters by coming home late on the night of Araby. These obstacles would not seem important, without the boy’s intense reaction to them.
He does go to the bazaar, but he has lost his enthusiasm for it. He gets there just before it closes. He looks around but decides not to buy anything. He becomes disgusted with himself: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (617). His disconnection from Mangan’s sister contributes to the theme of the story. He searches for connection, but in the end, his selfish pursuit of it results in his isolation from others.
There is not any conflict between characters in the story, but obstacles get in the way of the boy winning the girl’s approval. We cannot care, though, whether or not the boy achieves his goal unless we understand why he feels as he does. He attributes his infatuation with her to vanity, but the childhood crush is described in a way that is understandable to the reader. More important than whether or not he achieves his goal is what drives him to pursue it and what he learns about himself in the end.
“Interpreter of Maladies,” by Jhumpa Lahiri, is similar to “Araby” in that the protagonist finds himself drawn to a woman he barely knows. In Lahiri’s story, the man, Mr. Kapasi, knows Mrs. Das even less than narrator of “Araby” knows Mangan’s sister. He has only just met her. In the end, as in “Araby,” the tentative connection between them is broken, and Mr. Kapasi realizes that his desire is nothing more than a fantasy. The story is about what happens when an initial connection between two people gives way to a deeper knowledge that is not entirely welcome.
The story is about Mr. Kapasi’s perceived connection between him and a married woman who comes to rely on him for advice. Though there are examples of connection and disconnection between all six of the major characters, I will focus more on the interactions between Mr. Kapasi and the second character, Mrs. Das. There is little conflict in the story, though there is tension between the two and also between Mrs. Das and her family.
Mr. Kapasi, notices the ways in which the Das family interacts, and sometimes fails to interact, with one another. Mrs. Das picks a fight with her husband over the lack of air-conditioning in the car (41), and, when she does her nails, her daughter wants hers done too. The mother responds, “Leave me alone” and, “ You’re making me mess up” (40). Mrs. Das seems bored or impatient with her family.
Mr. Kapasi does not understand the Das family’s behavior. When the husband asks the daughter where her mother is, he refers to her as Mina. Later on, Mr. Kapasi thinks that Mr. and Mrs. Das act more like siblings who are “in charge of the children only for the day; it was hard to believe they were regularly responsible for anything other than themselves” (41).
Mr. Kapasi connects the relationship between Mrs. Das and her husband to his own marriage. He thinks that Mr. and Mrs. Das might be “a bad match, just as he and his wife were. Perhaps they, too, had little in common apart from three children and a decade of their lives. The signs he recognized from his own marriage were there---the bickering, the indifference, the protracted silences” (43). The little conflicts that arise among the family members are not as important as the fact that it is Mrs. Das’s visible disconnection from her family, in contrast to her interest in the things Mr. Kapasi says, that leads Mr. Kapasi to believe that there is a connection between them. The interest she shows in him contrasts with the lack of interest she shows in her family. Mrs. Das asks about his job, and, when he explains that he is an interpreter for a doctor, she refers to his job as romantic. She refers to her own husband as romantic, but Mr. Kapasi does not believe that she behaves in a way that suggests she truly feels this way toward him.
Mrs. Das’s gestures toward Mr. Kapasi suggest a connection between them. On page 42, after showing an interest in Mr. Kapasi’s job, she takes off her sunglasses and meets his eyes. She offers him gum. Earlier, she was eating puffed rice and Mr. Kapasi noticed that she did not share it with anyone else. Later, when they’re sitting alone together, she offers some to him (49).
One of their more crucial moments of connection occurs at a restaurant. She asks him to sit with the family. Her husband takes photos of everyone and Mrs. Das offers to send copies to Mr. Kapasi. He gives her his address and imagines the letters she will write to him. “She would write to him, asking about his days interpreting at the doctor’s office, and he would respond eloquently…” (45). The slip of paper with his address on it is the only tangible thing that links the two of them.
Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das stay behind in the vehicle while the rest of the Das family go out exploring (48). Mrs. Das confesses to Mr. Kapasi that her son, Bobby, is the result of an affair. Mr. Kapasi is the only person to whom she has confessed this. She admits that there was a time when she felt connected to Mr. Das. “ We married when we were still in college. We were in high school when he proposed. We went to the same college, of course. Back then we couldn’t stand the thought of being separated…” (49). Her close relationship with her husband in college prevented her from forming relationships with others, and, after she married him, she became overwhelmed by her responsibilities. “Always tired, she declined invitations from her one or two college girlfriends, to have lunch or shop in Manhattan. Eventually the friends stopped calling her…” (49). She grew weary of her life and her husband, and she did not have anyone “to confide in about him at the end of a difficult day, or to share a passing thought to or a worry” (49). Mrs. Das admits to Mr. Kapasi that she feels anguish over keeping the affair secret for eight years and that she has disturbing thoughts. “. . . I have terrible urges, Mr. Kapasi, to throw things away. One day I had the urge to throw everything I own out the window, the television, the children, everything. Don’t you think it’s unhealthy?’” (50) She asks for his advice, because it is his job to interpret afflictions. He does not give her the advice she wants to hear. He asks her if she feels guilt. “She opened her mouth to say something, but as she glared at Mr. Kapasi some certain knowledge seemed to pass before her eyes, and she stopped. It crushed him; he knew at that moment that he was not even important enough to be properly insulted” (51). At the end, when the piece of paper with his address on it falls out of her bag and flies away, it is the symbol of the disconnection between them (52). Mr. Kapasi allows the paper to float away, acknowledging the end of their relationship, which never truly existed, except in his mind. This moment resembles the one in “Araby,” where the boy, who has been so determined to win Mangan’s sister, abandons this dream for reality. As he comes to understand Mrs. Das, he begins to grow distant from her. Their connection results in disconnection. There is conflict in the story between Mrs. Das and her family members. Mr. Kapasi learns, though, that there was not always this much tension between the husband and wife. Like in “Araby”, where the boy shuts out the world, Mr. and Mrs. Das distanced themselves from others and retreated into their relationship. Over time, Mrs. Das was forced to confront the less pleasant side of intimacy. It was the same with Mr. Kapasi. Once the initial thrill was gone, he had to face the harder realities that come with knowing a person well. The conflict between the characters is a result of their disenchantment with each other and the disconnection that can come from knowing the deepest secrets of another.
“I Stand Here Ironing,” by Tillie Olsen, is about a woman’s connection and disconnection with her oldest daughter. Unlike the previous two stories, Olsen’s is about parent and child relationships. The mother in the story can not help but blame herself for the ways in which her daughter, Emily, is different from others, but at the same time, she realizes that is not beneficial to desire perfection.
The mother speaks, in first person, to a social worker about her daughter. The second character is Emily. The mother feels guilt for her disconnection from her daughter, and she reflects on the things she has done that may have caused this distance between them.
In the first paragraph, the mother admits that she has regrets about the way she raised her daughter. “And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I will start and there will be an interruption…Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do…” (688). It is implied that she feels guilt and that this guilt is caused by disconnection from her daughter. She describes her daughter as having a low self-esteem. The mother has done many things that may have led to Emily feeling abandoned and insignificant. She feels as if she has lost her connection to her daughter over the years and it is evident, from what the mother says, that Emily feels disconnected from a world where she does not think she belongs.
The mother has good memories of her daughter as a baby. The phrase she repeats is, “She was a beautiful baby” (688). She describes the first eight months of her daughter’s life as a time of connection. She breast-fed Emily because she felt a need to follow exactly what “the books said” (688). She thinks of what “a miracle” her daughter was (688), but circumstances get in the way of this natural connection between parent and child. The mother goes through a list of things she did wrong with Emily and their effects on her daughter.
At eight months the mother and daughter are disconnected for the first time. The disconnection is physical. She leaves her baby with a neighbor. She claims that, to this neighbor, Emily “was no miracle at all” (688). There is clearly a contrast between how the mother views Emily and how others view her. She sees Emily as “a miracle” because of their natural connection. Around this time, Emily’s father leaves because he cannot stand “sharing want with us” (688). The mother is left to take care of her daughter herself, and, after work, she rushes to get home, only to be confronted by Emily’s “clogged weeping, a weeping I can hear yet” (688). This is the first sign of an emotional disconnection between the mother and daughter.
When the mother gets a night job, she is able to spend the days with Emily. “But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her” (688). She leaves Emily with her ex-husband’s family while she tries to raise enough money to bring her home. By the time Emily returns, she has changed. She looks like her father and “the baby loveliness” is no longer present (688). This implies that the mother now sees her daughter as her ex-husband’s child rather than her own. She is disappointed. It is possible that Emily senses this disappointment.
Though Emily returns home, the mother is unable to maintain the connection she has had with her daughter in the early months of Emily’s life. She sends her daughter to a nursery school Emily does not like. Though she does not like it, she does not complain. They are not only disconnected physically, but emotionally as well. There is a lack of communication between the mother and daughter. The daughter sends out clues and the mother ignores them. Emily tries to be the perfect child, perhaps to compensate for her insecurities. “She always had a reason why we should stay at home. …But never a direct protest…” (689). The mother wonders what she has done wrong with Emily to cause her to be so obedient. “What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness” (689)? A neighbor tells the mother: “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her” (689). The mother takes his advice when it comes to her other children, but she believes it was “too late for Emily” (689).
Their relationship is further complicated by the addition of a second child to the family. At this point, the mother not only has problems balancing work and parental responsibilities but also dividing her time between Emily and the new baby. Emily has nightmares and the mother does go to her, except when she has to check on her other daughter. The mother claims that things are different now. “Now when it is too late…I get up and go to her at once at her moan or restless stirring” (689). Emily responds by sending her mother away. It is implied that her reaction is a result of disconnection. The damage has been done.
There is physical disconnection between them once again when the mother sends Emily to a convalescent home. During visits, the children and their parents are kept separated by “the invisible wall. Not to be contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection” (690). The parents were able to write to their children by letters but the children were not allowed to keep the letters. When Emily comes home, the mother tries to get close but Emily draws away, and it is apparent that the disconnection has further strained their relationship.
There is also a strained relationship between Emily and her sister, Susan. When they stay at home and play Kingdom, there is a “peaceful companionship between her and Susan” (691), but Emily feels a “corroding resentment” toward her sister (691). The sister is blond, “quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner that Emily was not…”(691). The mother has said before that she blames herself for Emily’s demeanor: “…it was the face of joy, and not of care or tightness or worry I turned to them--too late for Emily” (689). The mother says that Susan would tell her sister’s jokes to others; this is an example of a way in which Emily was deprived of the attention given to her sister. The mother admits that Emily resented Susan because she was the second child; she confessed earlier that she treated her other children differently than she treated her first.
Emily is uncomfortable with her identity. She wants to look the way other people look, and she wants to conform. The mother blames herself for making her daughter feel insecure. The disconnection between the mother and daughter helps explain Emily’s feelings of disconnection from those around her, as well as her low self-esteem. By the end of the story, though, Emily has found her niche. She performs in a amateur show at school, and “suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in anonymity” (692). Emily is a great mimic. Standing on the outside, she is able to see people as they really are, and then convey these observations to an audience She is able to connect with others in this way. Her mother does not recognize her own daughter when she watches her perform. “Was this Emily? The control, the command, the convulsing and deadly clowning, the spell, then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this rare and precious laughter out of their lives” (692). The word “rare” underscores the disconnection between Emily and those around her. She is different, but it is this difference that appeals to the audience when she is on stage.
The mother reflects on all the things she has done wrong but is convinced that her daughter will be OK (693). The mother tells the social worker in the end, “So all that is in her will not bloom---but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know---help make it so there is cause for her to know---that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron” (693). Over the years, the mother has lost her initial connection to her daughter, but she has learned to accept that not everything can be changed, and even if she could make things perfect, she probably should not. It is Emily’s desire to conform that makes her feel insignificant. It is when she stands on the outside, and sees others for who they are, that she is able to find her strength and connect with people.
Emily and her mother do not connect in the end. Emily brushes off her mid-terms, and says, “in a couple of years when we’ll all be atom-dead they won’t matter a bit” (693). It is clear that she does not care--or at the very least, does not allow herself to
care--about the future. The mother understands that it will be difficult for her daughter because of experiences from her past. She also trusts that her daughter will survive. The last line, “Only help her to know---help make it so there is cause for her to know---that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron” (693), indicates that the mother believes it is better for Emily to be herself than for others to force her to conform.
“The Comedian”, by John L’heureux, is also about familial relationships. A pregnant woman, Corinne, forms a bond with her unborn child. At first, Corinne is unsure of whether or not she wants the baby, but over time she becomes determined to go through with the pregnancy because she hears the fetus singing to her. The singing is a way for her to bond with her child, but it also makes her feel alive. At times she appears to be detached from life, uncertain about her purpose and what she is supposed to do. She is a comedian, drawing jokes from her own life. Her manager tells her, “she’s gotta get gut, she’s gotta get feeling” (276). She wonders if she has “ever felt” (276). The only times she really feels anything are when she is with her husband and when she is listening to her baby sing to her. The story is about her connection to her child and the emotional level it brings to her career and life. The baby that she, at first, does not want proves to be the thing that she needed. Though her husband, Russ, plays an important role in the story, I will focus on the baby as the second character.
The story opens with the lines, “Corinne hasn’t planned to have a baby. She is thirty-eight and happy and she wants to get on with it” (273). In the beginning, she feels disconnected from her baby. She is not happy to be pregnant. She considers an abortion. The problem is the unplanned pregnancy, but what drives the story is the effect it has on her and her relationships with others.
When she discusses her pregnancy with Russ, he is happy about it but tells her that he will go along with whatever she chooses. She decides to have the baby. She imagines babies flying through the air and sailing through basketball hoops. The next day, for a few moments, she changes her mind. She refers to the baby as an “invader” and an “insidious little murderer” (273). Both of these terms express her distance from the fetus. When she tries to “expel” (273) the fetus on her own, she hears it singing. “Some of these days, you’ll miss me, honey…” The singing is “slightly off-key,” but during the rest of her pregnancy, the singing improves along with her connection to the baby.
The second time she hears the singing, she is in the middle of a stand-up routine. It reminds her of being a child at school and watching the children sing in choir. “Their voices are pure, high, untouched by adolescence or by pain; and, with a conviction born of absolute innocence, they sing to God and to Corinne, ‘Cal-i-for-nia, here I come’” (274). The singing means so much to her because it stirs up memories and emotions. She has made connections between the voice she hears and real events and people in her life.
Later on in the story, Corinne connects the baby’s singing to her job as a comedian.
“The baby sings only now and then, and it sings better at some
times than at others, but Corinne is convinced it sings best on weekend
evenings when she is preparing for her gig. …There is some connection,
she is sure, between her work and the baby’s singing, but she can’t guess
what it is…” (276).
For much of the story, Corinne is trying to figure out who she is and what meaning can be found in her life and her work. There are times when she feels disconnected from her husband. He does not understand what is going on with her. When she first tells him about the singing, he assumes that she is joking. She feels that “[s]he has never been so alone in her life” (275). Despite this, she kisses him. She pretends that there is nothing wrong, when really, she is questioning everything in her life. “She gazes into his eyes and smiles, so that he will not guess she is thinking: Who is this man? Who am I (275)?” The pregnancy, and its effect on her and on those around her, has forced her to look hard at her life.
She not only feels disconnected from her husband, she also feels disconnected from her job. She is not sure why she is a comedian in the first place. She tries to think of jokes to tell, but realizes that “[s]he hates jokes” (276). She is looking for answers both to what she should do about her job and what decision she should make about her baby. The baby answers her questions by singing. Corinne’s bond with the baby is shown through the singing. As time passes, the singing becomes stronger, and she becomes more sure of what she should do. By now, the baby’s “voice is filling out nicely and it has enlarged its repertoire considerably” (276). She recognizes some of the songs. They reflect the emotions she is going through. After a fight with Russ, she hears the baby singing “Oh, my man. I love him so” (276).
The husband begins to think that there is something wrong with her. Both he and her doctor think an abortion is best, but she does not give in until she learns that the baby will be deformed. At this point, “[t]he baby has not sung in three weeks” (279). Though Russ has recommended an abortion before, the decision to abort causes a rift in their relationship: “They talk very little about their decision now that they have made it. In fact, they talk very little about anything” (279). Corinne realizes that she will be aborting a “formed fetus,” but she has decided that they will be better off without this “baby who sings. This deformed baby. Who sings” (279). She is unsure of how she feels about the abortion. She has decided that it is for the best, but she can not get the singing out of her mind. The dilemma is made more difficult by the fact that her bond with her baby--a bond she has grown to rely on--is at stake. In the end, she does not get the abortion. She finds that her pregnancy has resulted in positive changes in her life. She is succeeding in her job, now that she has made her decision. She holds the audience’s attention. “They follow her; they are completely captivated” (280). Corinne has “got gut. She’s got feeling” (280). She believes it is the baby that has done this for her. She knows that her baby will be deformed, but she thinks to herself, “The baby will be fine, however it is…” (282). The love she feels for her child is more important to her than any problems that arise. Her connection with her child helps get her through.
The obstacle in the story is her pregnancy and her uncertainty about how to handle it. However, a story about an unplanned pregnancy would not mean much without the emotions that go along with it, and the ways in which the pregnancy changes the protagonist. Corinne’s pregnancy brings feeling back into her life. She grows to appreciate the bonds between her and her husband and her and her baby.
All four of these stories use connection and disconnection to express their themes. “Araby” ends with a boy understanding that his pursuit of Mangan’s sister is a result of his own vanity. In “Interpreter of Maladies,” Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das seek shallow companionship as an antidote for the disconnection in their lives. “I Stand Here Ironing” is about the relationship between a mother and child and the influence of that relationship on the daughter. In “The Comedian,” Corinne’s life has lost its meaning. Her pregnancy helps revitalize her. The connection between her and her fetus lends purpose to her life. She does not get what she initially wanted, but instead, what she needed.
Both conflict and connection can be found in all eight of these stories. Conflict provides the tension, and the connections between characters provides the emotion. Claudia Johnson compares conflict and connection to the waves in the ocean and the tide. The conflict (like a wave) is on the surface, but it is only one part of the picture. Conflict makes a story exciting, but the “emotional tide” gives it depth and emotional power (Johnson, 3).
There are different levels of conflict and connection in stories. In some stories, there is little conflict. They are more about the relationships between characters. In “How Far She Went,” the grandmother and granddaughter are in constant conflict with each other, whereas in “I Stand Here Ironing,” the mother and daughter have a strained relationship but there is no overt conflict between them.
There are, also, different kinds of conflict. There is external and internal conflict, as is seen in all four stories of the first group. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the external conflict is between the members of the family as well as between the grandmother and the Misfit. In “How Far She Went,” there is external conflict between the grandmother and the granddaughter, as well as between them and the men on motorcycles. In “Everyday Use,” the external conflict is between the mother and her oldest daughter, as well as between the two sisters. The external conflict in “A&P” is between the girls and the manager and between Sammy and the manager. There is also internal conflict within the protagonists, for example, in “A&P,” Sammy is frustrated by the conformity of everyday life. In the end, he chooses to rebel. There is also internal conflict in “How Far She Went.” The grandmother worries that she is making the same mistakes with her granddaughter that she made with her own child. The internal conflict in Hood’s story is an extension of the external conflict. The grandmother feels that history is repeating itself through her relationship with her granddaughter and this brings back unpleasant memories of her own daughter’s youth. Internal or external, the conflict helps bring the characters to a point where they must make a crucial decision. A story is not about a day in the life, but about the day when something changed. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” “How Far She Went,” “Everyday Use” and “A&P,” the protagonists make a decision that alters their relationships with others. It is conflict that drives them to make this decision. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” a life and death situation forces the grandmother to reach out to the man who is about to kill her. She does not do this because she is a compassionate person so much as she does it because it is in her best interest to do so. “How Far She Went,” is the exact opposite of Flannery O’Conner’s story. In Hood’s story, a life and death situation inspires the grandmother to sacrifice what she wants for the sake of her granddaughter. She and her granddaughter connect in the end as a result. In “Everyday Use,” conflict between the mother and the eldest daughter ends in disconnection. This is not a bad thing for the mother, though. She did not want to connect with Dee so much as she wanted to find comfort in her life. At the same time, she is able to connect with Maggie. In “A&P,” Sammy quits his job because of external conflict between him and his boss, and between him and his environment. He does not seek connection, though he does find himself sympathizing with the girls. In the end, he gets what he set out to get, but his victory is bittersweet because he understands how hard it is to be disconnected from others, even if disconnection from those people is what he wanted. In each of these stories, the character desires
something---which is not necessarily connection. There are others who stand in their way. It is not as simple as overcoming the obstacles, though. They have to make sacrifices, and it is these sacrifices that define them. These sacrifices result in both connection and disconnection.
Connection also occurs between the protagonist and the reader. Burroway writes, “In fiction, in order to engage our attention and sympathy, the protagonist must want, and want intensely” (Burroway, 33). In the stories by Flannery O’Connor, Hood, Walker and Updike, the protagonists’ desires either relate to their relationships with others, or else the protagonists become disconnected from others as a result of pursuing their goals. The conflict drives the plot forward, but it is the choices the character makes in response to the conflict that defines him or her, as opposed to the choices others make. As stated in Writing Fiction, a story that only sets out to blame someone will fail.
In “Araby,” “Interpreter of Maladies,” “I Stand Here Ironing,” and “The Comedian,” there is little conflict, but, in each, the protagonist still has a want. Their desire is to connect with another person---either a love interest or a family member. As is the case with the first four stories, it is where the protagonists end up that is most important. Both “Araby” and “Interpreter of Maladies” end with disconnection, whereas “The Comedian” ends with connection. Going back to what Johnson said about comedy and tragedy, “The Comedian” could be viewed as comedy, whereas “Araby” and “Interpreter of Maladies” could be viewed as tragedies, though none of them are comedies or tragedies in the Shakespearean sense. “I Stand Here Ironing” is more complicated because it ends with disconnection, but the mother has hope for the future. A story’s ending reveals much about its message. The moments of connection and disconnection carry the protagonists through the stories and help them arrive at a point where they get what they need. At the very least, they come to understand themselves and their situation better. As a result, the reader understands them better as well, and the theme becomes clear.
Both conflict and connection between characters move a story along. There does not have to be major conflict in a story, but the protagonist will always have a desire, which they pursue. They may not desire connection, but in order for the reader to care, the reader must be able to connect with the characters and relate to their desire. Levels of conflict and connection vary between stories. Some stories end with connection, whereas others end in disconnection. In all stories, though, the character follows the path his or her desire has laid down. In the end, the reason for the conflicts and the struggles is made clear through theme. Even if there is no solution, there is a conclusion, for both the protagonist and the reader.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Flannery O’Connor, Mary. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” An Introduction to Fiction. 9th ed. Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Goia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Hood, Mary. “How Far She Went.” Writing Fiction. 6th ed. Burroway, Janet. New York: Longman, 2003.
Joyce, James. “Araby.” An Introduction to Fiction. 9th ed. Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Goia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
L’Heureux, John. “The Comedian.” Writing Fiction. 6th ed. Burroway, Janet. New York: Longman, 2003.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Interpreter of Maladies.” An Introduction to Fiction. 9th ed. Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Goia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Olsen, Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing.” An Introduction to Fiction. 9th ed. Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Goia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Updike, John. “A&P.” An Introduction to Fiction. 9th ed. Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Goia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” An Introduction to Fiction. 9th ed. Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Goia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Secondary Sources
Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction. 6th ed. New York: Longman, 2003.
Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. 3rd ed. New York: Dell Publishing, 1979.
Johnson, Claudia H. Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect. 2nd ed. USA: Focal Press, 2005. 1-6.
