The last post on literary theory prompted me to also post this paper I wrote for a grad class awhile back:
Effects on Meaning: Twists in Munro, Lahiri, and Trevor
Many authors use twists, sudden and unexpected changes in a story’s flow of events, but one of the problems inherent to this method is figuring out how to avoid buggering the reader; in other words, authors must consider the nature of twists, asking which elements of a story they may alter and which they may not, so as to ensure a satisfactory ending. Both Alice Munro (in “Fits”) and Jhumpa Lahiri (in “A Temporary Matter”) succeed because their reversals accentuate their stories’ meanings, not create them, whereas William Trevor (in “In at the Birth”) employs a twist that does create the meaning for the story, thereby creating a less-than-satisfying denouement.
To begin, let’s work from a couple of definitions. First, each time a story alters course and heads in a direction unanticipated by the reader, that change might be called a twist, but for the purposes of this discussion, let’s restrict the term to a reversal or revelation in the climax (or the denouement) that affects the interpretation of the meaning or the characters inhabiting the story. Second, let’s define theme; defined simply, theme is “A message or meaning embedded in a narrative, or (preferably) evolving naturally out of a narrative” (Bell 374). More specifically, let’s think of the theme as the meaning that unifies the entire piece.
The three questions I’ll be asking about the twists for the aforementioned stories are as follows: how is the buildup to the twist maintained throughout the story, so that when it happens the reversal doesn’t feel false; what mechanism is responsible for revealing the twist, and is that mechanism appropriate to the character or to the rules for the world established in the narrative; and finally, what are the thematic effects that occurs as a result of the twist?
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1. Maintenance
In order to avoid making the twist feel false when the reader arrives at it in the narrative, the author must drop suggestions about the revelation during the buildup, so that when the turnaround occurs, it feels unpredictable and yet inevitable, as though the story couldn’t have ended any other way. This aspect of the twist is the lengthiest, since clues have to be threaded throughout the breadth of the narrative.
Alice Munro’s “Fits”
In “Fits,” the reader finds out at the end that Peg’s account of how she discovered the Weebles’ bodies was inaccurate: she had told her husband that when she’d gone over to deliver the Weeble’s eggs, she looked for the couple upstairs and found Mr. Weeble’s leg sticking out from his room, from behind the door; upon further investigation, she found that both of the Weebles were dead inside from bullet wounds. However, the reader leans at the end that what she really saw was Mr. Weeble’s severed head, ripped off from the blast of self-inflicted shotgun wound, and that Mrs. Weeble was dead inside, the victim of a murder-suicide, and that Peg ventured farther into the room, despite the sight of Mr. Weeble.
Since most of the story is told from the perspective of Peg’s husband, Robert, his suspicion that Peg didn’t tell him the whole truth is what drives the buildup forward. The first indication that there might be a difference between Peg’s account and the truth appears early-on: “[Robert] pictured what happened. First from the constable’s report, then from Peg’s” (Munro 434); Robert imagines the scene from two different vantages.
When Robert conveys Peg’s account, the reader already knows that the Weebles are dead because the story opens, “The two people who died were in their early sixties” (429), thus signifying that there’s more to learn from the scene than that fact. In other words, the tension of the story must rest on something besides finding these two bodies.
The first solid hint that Peg intuited that the couple was dead is recorded towards the end of Robert’s account of what happened when Peg went to the Weebles’ home:
Peg walked now across the clean, pale carpet to the foot of the stairs, which were carpeted in the same material. She started to climb. She did not call [for the Weebles] again.
She must have known then or she would have called. (436)
Robert obsesses over this idea, since he repeats the thought again a few paragraphs later, saying, “She didn’t call; she didn’t halt again. She climbed the stairs and didn’t look around as she came up; she faced straight ahead” (437), as if he was relating this with a measure of horror. Naturally, the reader has to wonder why Robert is so transfixed on this one detail, something Peg mentioned casually. Because Robert, the central character, is intrigued, the reader is as well.
Robert continues to investigate the matter, even by questioning Peg’s coworker Karen. Immediately, the reader learns that the situation is more complex than Peg let on. Karen relates that when Peg showed up for work, she was distant, and when Karen told Peg that her neighbors were murdered, Peg replies that she knows, that “It was murder suicide… He shot her in the head and then shot himself. That’s what happened” (438), with a marked degree of nonchalance. By comparison to Karen, who is shocked by the revelation, Robert—and by extension, the reader—becomes suspicious of Peg. This investigation continues as such, until the twist is revealed in the final two paragraphs of the story.
The maintenance of twist works well here because the details the reader learns along the way make sense with what Munro shows us of the characters—if the reveal had been different, that Peg had murdered the Weebles, for instance, the buildup would have been false and the ending would have felt like a cheat.
Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter”
In “A Temporary Matter,” the reader finds out at the end that Shukumar has been concealing details from his wife about the death of their baby: Shoba, his wife, had always thought Shukumar hadn’t made it to the hospital in time for the childbirth, when their baby was stillborn (since he was in Baltimore), and that neither she nor her husband knew the gender of their child. However, the truth is that Shukumar did make it, and that he cradled their dead son in his arms, having never spoken of it because Shoba took solace in not knowing anything about the baby.
Since the death of their child, Shukumar and Shoba haven’t been comfortable around one another, so Lahiri uses the inconvenience of city maintenance on a power-line as a catalyst to force the couple together: “The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.” (Lahiri 1). Shoba decides to make use of the time by playing a game: “How about telling each other something we’ve never told before” (13). The reader discovers early on that Shoba’s desire to play this game runs deeper than as a means to pass the time because, as Shukumar observes, “He couldn’t think of anything, but Shoba was waiting for him to speak. She hadn’t appeared so determined in months.” The buildup occurs over the course of the story, as each night passes, and the severity of the revealed-secrets increases, from benign to detrimental. When the power comes back on the last night, the reader has been set up to expect an extreme revelation from one of the two, if not both.
Lahiri lays the groundwork for Shukumar’s admission that he had held their baby throughout. The doubt is first framed when Shukumar reflects on the time his mother-in-law came to visit, and how “She never talked to him about Shoba; once, when he mentioned the baby’s death, she looked up from her knitting, and said, ‘But you weren’t even there’” (9). The notion that Shukumar wasn’t at the birth comes into question, in the reader’s mind, early, when Shukumar is thinking about a rice ceremony for someone else’s baby that Shoba had been to, and how the baby had cried there: “Their baby had never cried, Shukumar considered” (11), leaving the reader to wonder how he knew this so definitively. Another large hint occurs the second night of the game, when Shoba and Shukumar are outside, and Shukumar is wondering what his wife might tell him next: “The worst possibilities had already run through his head. That she’d had an affair…. That she blamed him for being in Baltimore the way her mother did. But he knew those things weren’t true” (16). Lahiri craftily distracts from this revelation by explaining that Shukumar is certain his wife has been faithful, but the author doesn’t address the claim that Shukumar wasn’t present for the birth, leaving the issue open for the ending to address.
Due to the increasing tension in the truth game between Shoba and Shukumar and the emphasis on the husband’s absence from the birth, the climactic reveal feels appropriate, even inevitable.
Trevor’s “In at the Birth”
In “In at the Birth,” two revelations are made by the end: first, the baby Miss Efoss thinks she’s sitting for, the one she’s never been allowed to go upstairs and see, is actually an elderly man—that the Dutts care for old people and think of them as children; second, that Miss Efoss willingly decides to join them and becomes their new child after the elderly man passes away. Trevor builds up to his twist in two ways: Miss Efoss questions, continually, why she’s not allowed to see Mickey, the Dutts’ child; and the Dutts treat her as though she herself is a child, condescending and patronizing her throughout the piece.
From the beginning, the Dutts seek out Miss Efoss as a babysitter. When she arrives at their home to look after Mickey for the evening, Mr. Dutt tells them that if their child makes any noise, they should telephone them immediately, to which Miss Efoss responds, “Oh, but I’m sure that’s not necessary. It would be a pity to spoil your evening so. I could at least attempt to comfort him” (Trevor 105). Mr. Dutt responds, “I would prefer the other arrangement. Mickey does not take easily to strangers. His room is at the top of the house, but please do not enter it.” Naturally, this seems unusual to Miss Efoss (and, indeed, the reader), but even as she sits for Mickey again and again, the Dutts remain insistent that Miss Efoss not meet the child. Even when she suggests that she come early one day so that she can introduce herself, so that if there’s ever a problem she could comfort him, Mr. Dutt says, “But he doesn’t wake, Miss Efoss. He has never woken, has he? You have never had to telephone us” (107).
Though creepy, the Dutts’ honesty doesn’t come into question until Miss Efoss attends a party and runs into an old friend there. When she tells him that she’s been babysitting for Mr. and Mrs. Dutt, whom the friend has met, he is shocked: “I think you must be mistaken…. I cannot help but being surprised. Because, Miss Efoss—and of this I am certain—the Dutts have no children” (108).
Miss Efoss begins to wonder if she herself is losing her mind, that perhaps because she is growing old, she’s confused about what the Dutts have her do. Her lack of faith in her own mental capacity is but one component of her journey from adult to infant in the story. Mr. Dutt is often paternal with Miss Efoss, such as when he drives her home one day and says, “A child is a great comfort. Mickey is a real joy for us. And company for Beryl. The days hangs (sic) heavy when one is alone all day” (106), or when Mr. Dutt offers to pay for her tea later: “It’s a small thing but would give me pleasure. May I pay for your tea? Beryl will be pleased if you allow me to” (111).
While the revelation that Mickey’s actually an elderly man, and not a child, is perfectly consistent with the buildup in the narrative, the notion that Miss Efoss would be willing to become the Dutts new infant at the end, to replace the late Mickey, seems outrageous. For one, the only hint that Miss Efoss is becoming like a child again is contained in small actions like the ones I listed above; second, there’s no valid mechanism described for this to happen, as will be discussed in section two.
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2. Mechanism
The second aspect I’m analyzing is the mechanism that causes the twist. Does the event in the story appear warranted from what the reader knows of the characters (internal forces) or of the world (external forces)? When a twist fails in the latter case, externally, we characterize the plot as having a Deus ex Machina, and in the former case, we consider the story to have inconsistent characters. To avoid these, the mechanism must be consistent with the buildups, which I’ve already outlined above. Since the reversal occurs in the climax or denouement, its breadth is far smaller than the amount of time spent on the maintenance of the twist.
Munro’s “Fits”
Munro conveys the manner in which the twist is revealed quite naturally, on the last page: “[The constable] had described how the force of the shot threw Walter Weeble backward. ‘It blasted him partways through the room. His head was laying out in the hall. What was left of it…’” (453). Robert then realizes that what Peg saw wasn’t Mr. Weeble’s leg, which she claimed made her check the room—instead, she saw the horror of the scene, the gore all over the walls and the severed head, and she proceeded forward nevertheless. Since we followed Robert’s investigation through the entire narrative, the way he discovers the truth makes sense.
Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter”
The manner in which Lahiri reveals the truth was at the end, the night the power is restored, when Shoba confesses that she intends to move out from her and Shukumar’s apartment, and that she had already signed the lease for another apartment earlier that very evening. Shukumar realizes, “This was the point of her game” (21). He’s so hurt by her decision, he decides to inflict the most injury he can in an action perfectly consistent with his character, by revealing all he knew about the baby—all that she never wanted to know:
“Our baby was a boy,” he said. “His skin was more red than brown. He had black hair on his head. He weighed almost five pounds. His fingers were curled shut, just like yours in the night.”
…These were the things he had told her. He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of the hospital. (22)
Trevor’s “In at the Birth”
Since there are two twists in Trevor’s story, there are two mechanisms. The first is how Miss Efoss determines that Mickey is an elderly man; the second is how Miss Efoss decides to join the Dutts and become their new child.
As the buildup suggested, the reader knows something is amiss in the Dutts’ demand that Mickey not be disturbed. Moreover, Miss Efoss thinks she losing her mind, that she isn’t at the Dutts to baby-sit a child after all. With the child being only right upstairs, Miss Efoss decides to look in on him and disaffirm her fears:
In the second [room] she heard breathing and knew she was right…. In one of the far corners was a large cot. It was very large and very high and it contained the sleeping figure of a very old man. (109)
Miss Efoss is disturbed by her discovery, so she decides to not sit for the Dutts anymore, though she doesn’t bring up the point that Mickey is an elderly man with anyone. She therefore goes on her own and doesn’t see the Dutts for a year, until the day she runs into them at a park. Mr. Dutt tells her that Mickey has died and that they are beside themselves with grief, lamenting, “They have all died, Miss Efoss…. One by one they have all died… It’s almost unbearable to be childless again” (110). After their conversation, from which Miss Efoss hurriedly flees, she begins “to feel older.” Sometime soon after, she happens to run into Mr. Dutt a second time, at a café where he stares at her, pondering her appearance:
As he looked at her, his face suddenly cleared. He smiled, and when he spoke he seemed to be entirely present.
“I have great news, Miss Efoss. We are both so happy about it. Miss Efoss, Beryl is expecting a child. (110)
Even though the news should disturb her in light of what she discovered when she found Mickey, she doesn’t leave or balk at Mr. Dutt’s claim. Indeed, when Mr. Dutt offers to pay for her tea, she says, “‘Yes, Mr. Dutt, you may pay for my tea.’ And it was as she spoke this simple sentence that it dawned upon Miss Efoss just what it was she had to do” (111).
Of course, this second mechanism is far weaker than the first—why should she feel she has to now move in with the Dutts and become their new child? No part of the story indicates that Miss Efoss is needy in that extreme, and the only minor indications that she’s becoming childlike was mentioned earlier, that she questioned her own competency and had felt older since finding out about Mickey. So why?
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3. Thematic Effect
The final aspect of the twist is the amount by which the turnaround affects the denouement and the unifying theme of the story—if the writer were to remove the twist and all the maintenance it received, would the story still retain any of its original meaning? Does the point of the story hinge upon this device?
Munro’s “Fits”
Thematically, Munro deals with the destructibility of relationships, further reinforced by Peg’s obsession with seeing something as morbid as the Weebles’ bodies, a fascination with the possibility of it happening to her. The reader gets this sense throughout because so much time is spent describing failed relationships, even beyond the Weebles’. The reader knows that Peg has been married once before, but “got a divorce” (430), and that Robert’s last relationship before he married Peg was with a married woman named Lee, and the story describes how their last argument became so vicious they had to laugh about it with “murderous pleasure” (450).
Finally, the strongest suggestion that Robert and Peg might have problems like this in the future is when Peg’s son, Clayton, responds to Robert’s suggestion that the Weebles were just a freak occurrence, a kind of fit, like a volcano or an earthquake: “[Those] aren’t freaks…. If you want to call that a fit, you’d have to call it a periodic fit. Such as people have, married people have.” When Robert denies that he and Peg have such inclinations, Peg says nothing in return.
The reason the twist works in Munro’s piece is that it punctuates the theme of the story, but doesn’t define it. That Peg saw the horror even before she made it all the way up the stairs, and that she kept going anyway, isn’t an essential detail to convey this theme, but the twist throws focus on her obsession with it and, therefore, its importance.
Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter”
Lahiri’s story is concerned with a failure in communication and what effects that has on a relationship. The couple’s inability to confront the death of their son, deciding to not think about him at all (ignoring the elephant in the room, as it were), destroys their marriage—but as the game they play proves, this decision to not talk about the death is only a symptom, not the problem. They haven’t ever been that honest with one another.
The story ends: “Shoba turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew” (22), the epitome of their inability to communicate.
The relationship seems permanently destroyed as result, since “[Shukumar] had promised himself that day [the baby died] that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she wanted to be a surprise[, the gender of the child].” His decision stems out of spite and doesn’t leave much hope for reconciliation.
Though Shukumar’s revelation is startling, it accentuates the theme, that ignoring such a glaring problem like this would sever the marriage—the turnaround alters our perception of why he was so distant from his wife.
Trevor’s “In at the Birth”
Trevor’s piece espouses the belief that society treats the elderly like infants. The twist that the Dutts are caring for an elderly man upstairs works because of how it was maintained and revealed, as mentioned above, but the decision by Miss Efoss to join them had very little buildup—indeed, the point where she decides to live with them creating the second part of theme for the piece—that the elderly succumb to society’s perceptions that they are infantile.
The story concludes when Miss Efoss sells off all her belongings and comes to the Dutts’ home one evening:
Miss Efoss carried a small suit case. She said: “Your baby, Mrs Dutt. When is your baby due? I hope I am in time.”
“Perfect, Miss Efoss, perfect,” said Mr Dutt. “Beryl’s child is due this very night.”
…Miss Efoss did not sit down. “I am rather tired,” she said. “Do you mind if I go straight upstairs?” (112)
The ending is unsettling to the reader because of how bizarre Miss Efoss’s behavior seems. Indeed, aside from feeling older towards of “In at the Birth,” she gives no indications that would ever consider becoming the Dutts’ child until the very moment it happens—and the manner in which she goes up the stairs is eerie because everyone in the room seems to know that this is the decision she needs to make. Aside from being far-fetched in terms of what a reader would expect from a person, this event has the catastrophic effect of buggering the reader—by creating the point of the story on the last page instead of the first.
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In order to use a twist properly, the author must satisfy the three criteria I outlined at the start: the twist’s buildup must be maintained throughout; the twist’s mechanism has to be consistent with what the reader would expect of the characters or of the fictional world; and the twist must accentuate the theme of the story, not create it.
Munro’s “Fits” and Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” satisfy these fundamental requirements. Munro does so by threading the suspicious nature of Peg’s account throughout the story; by revealing the truth in a reasonable way, as the result of Robert’s investigation; and by using the twist to magnify the theme of the story, which is concerned with the destructibility of relationships. Lahiri does so by increasing the tension of the secrets game and by throwing doubt on how Shukumar wasn’t at baby’s birth; by using the secrets game as the mechanism for the revelation, which is also brought on by Shoba’s decision to leave; and by using the twist to stress how secrets can unravel a relationship.
Trevor’s “In at the Birth” succeeds with the first twist, that the Dutts are caring for an elderly man who is supposedly their child because the twist was built-up through Miss Efoss’s curiosity about Mickey, was revealed in a reasonable way when she went upstairs, and contributed to the theme about how society sees its elderly as infants—though this first twist depends on the second for meaning. When Miss Efoss decides to join the Dutts as their new child, this twist isn’t built-up through the story. The mechanism seems unreasonable because of how out-of-character it seems. Moreover, because the theme is created there at that moment, the story doesn’t hold together as well. If Trevor had thoroughly seeded the notion that Miss Efoss needed caring for, that she was becoming infantile, then the rest would have fallen into place—the eeriness of her decision to join them would have made sense on the character level, and the mechanism would have sufficed enough to pull this off.
As the stories stand, “Fits” and “A Temporary Matter” are strong examples of how to employ the twist method. “In at the Birth” fails in its overdependence on this method, turning the twist into a gimmick.
Works Cited
Bell, Madison Smartt. “Glossary.” Narrative Design. New York: Norton & Company. 1997. 374.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “A Temporary Matter.” Interpreter of Maladies. New York: Mariner Books. 1999. 1-22.
Munro, Alice. “Fits.” Selected Stories. New York: Vintage Contemporaries. 1997. 429-453.
Trevor, William. “In at the Birth.” The Collected Stories. New York: Penguin Books. 1992. 102-112.
