The Nuances of the Second Person

We've talked quite a bit about Lorrie Moore's use of the second person to narrate most of her stories. Recently we touched on the fact that there seems to be different types of the second person that she uses in different stories, I just wanted to elaborate on the wide variety of "flavors" of the second person that we get in Self-Help.

The first of these, in "How to be an Other Woman," is a mix of imperative commands that narrate the plot and descriptive sections that tell you what you are doing and help build the setting. For example the first line of the story is one of these imperative commands: "Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night." and later, "First stand in front of Florsheim's...Draw a peace sign..." (3). But the whole story isn't just commands. Later in the first section we are exposed to the more descriptive, "setting the scene" flavor of Moore's second person: "You are waiting for a bus...You climb on together, grab adjacent chrome posts, and when the bus hisses and rumbles forward, you take out a book" (3). This "flavor" is the basic foundation for the other varieties that Moore uses.

The next flavor of the second person, in "How," is similar to that of "How to be an Other Woman" with one major difference: the addition of uncertainty. "How’s” narrative voice presents the reader with a number of alternatives of how a situation could have come to be. For example, "Begin by meeting him in a class, in a bar, at a rummage sale. Maybe he teaches sixth grade. Manages a hardware store. Foreman at a carton factory" (55). One important thing about this flavor is that even if it seems like there is some choice or variability in how the situations described in "How" came to be, the outcome is always the same. 

The last example of a new variation is seen in "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)." This story is written almost entirely in the "imperative command" style. Short commanding phrases that are telling you to "do this" or "say that." There are examples of this throughout the story. "Learn to repeat things.... Make apple crisp for the first time" (89). "Eat Chinese food for the first time with a lawyer from California...Attack his profession. Ask him whether he feels..." (91). This flavor creates a more choppy, "scene by scene" kind of effect that works well in this story since "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" is written as a timeline of short events.

Of course there are probably other examples of many other subtle "flavors" of Lorrie Moore's second person but these were the ones that stuck out to me. Each flavor is unique, but not necessarily better or worse than the others, they each work well with their respective stories. Overall I was mostly surprised how Lorrie Moore was able to create so many different "flavors," especially considering that the second person is a narrative voice that isn't used very often at all. 

Two Different Environments

After reading "Sonny's Blues," I thought back to the first story of the book, "The Rockpile" and the lifestyle that Johnnie and Roy lived in comparison to that of Sonny and the narrator in "Sonny's Blues." Their thoughts and ideas on their lives seem to be polar opposites and I believe this to be a result of the environments of their upbringings.

The environment that the boys in, "The Rockpile" are brought up in is a very strict God-fearing household in a neighborhood full of "saints and sinners" Their whole life is characterized through the filter of the church, especially since they fear their father who is a deacon. This fear, although potent, offers clear guidance throughout their life and keeps them from straying off of the path set out for them by their parents. Their "shelteredness" goes so far as to make it a cardinal offense that Roy goes downstairs and plays on the rockpile with the other "sinner" kids. This fear is more apparent with John ("John said nothing: he was afraid of the rockpile and the boys who played there" (15)), but even Roy is afraid of his father as he is unable to tell Gabriel (his father) what had happened to him.

In stark contrast the environment that the boys in Sonny grow up in is one of suffering and hardship. As they grow up in an area of poverty, living in run down housing projects, they are offered a limited number of ways out of this lifestyle. While the narrator chooses the military, hoping to be able to make a better life for himself and his family once he gets out, Sonny seems to take an easier route by getting involved with the drug scene. Even though the narrator seems to have "made it out," and has created a decent living for his family by being a teacher, he is still living in the same area, in a similar run down housing project. Even the kids he is teaching remind him of younger versions of himself and Sonny, and after Sonny is caught he wonders if they are finding similar outlets for their pain and adversity ("Yet it happened and here I was, talking algebra to a lot of boys who might, every one of them, for all I knew, be popping off needles every time they went to the head" (104).)

Despite the seemingly similar economic standings (perhaps the Grimes family is a little better off, but not by much) between the two families in "the Rockpile" and "Sonny's Blues," it is really their environments that sets them apart and creates two completely different narratives for two sets of similarly aged boys. This dynamic really makes me wonder how the Grimes boys would have turned out if their father hadn't been a deacon and they hadn't had such a strong influence of the Church in their lives. And conversely, it makes me wonder how the brothers in "Sonny's Blues" might have turned out if they might have had some strong influence in their adolescent lives (such as the Church).

More Than Meets the Eye

As we read and discussed "Teddy" in class on Friday, and talked about how unexpected it was that Teddy was so intelligent and outspoken and spiritually knowledgeable, I thought back to the other children that we see in Salinger's stories and realized that there is more to them than meets the eye as well. They all seem more perceptive than the average child and seem to get progressively more observant and knowledgeable the deeper we get into Nine Stories. We discussed a bit in class how there seem to be a lot of children in Salinger's stories and going back through we find that more than half of his stories have main characters or important that are children.

From the very first story, Salinger presents us with an important child character in Sybil. While she may seem like a regular four year old that likes playing in the ocean and searching for fun, made-up creatures such as the bananafish, she is also much more perceptive than one might think. She picks up on small details that the average four-year old wouldn't think to notice, such as how Seymour allowed Sharon Lipschutz to sit with him on the piano bench.

The next child we meet, Ramona in Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, who's seemingly normal child behavior (having an imaginary boyfriend) becomes more than that when we find out that her "beau" died and she replaced him with another friend. This quick replacement seems very similar to her mother's own replacement of Walt (after he dies) with her new husband Lew.

Another good example of this can be found in the story Down at the Dinghy, where we learn that Lionel (the young boy in the story) has run away again. At first this is presented as fairly commonplace especially for this kid, but as we move deeper into the story we learn that he overheard the maids insulting his father when they thought he wasn't listening. This again shows how the children in Salinger are much more perceptive than they seem to be when we first meet them in each story.

As we progress through the collection we meet Esme, in For Esme:-- with Love and Squalor, who is overall a very intelligent and discerning girl, especially being only about thirteen. She immediately picks up on the fact that the narrator is an American soldier who is being trained on the secret base in preparation for the D-Day assault, and without reservation approaches him and asks him about it. As their conversation moves on, she is presented more and more as a very bright, if a little blunt, young girl. This is further confirmed with her offer to write him letters and her request that he write a story about her.

The image of astute/smart children that are more than meets the eye that Salinger presents us with is culminated in the final story of the collection: Teddy. As I said earlier Teddy is extremely intelligent and spiritually aware, despite being ten years old. In fact he is on his way back from the UK where he was being interviewed about his belief that he is the reincarnated spirit of an Indian holy man. As the story progresses he engages in a debate with a man aboard the ship, Bob Nicholson, where he dictates his ideas on how people should be taught and even goes so far as to predict his own death and its repercussions.

Throughout Salinger's Nine Stories we, as readers, are presented with a very interesting view of children. They appear in more than half of the stories as important (and sometimes main) characters and they are always shown to be more intelligent or perceptive than the average child their age or than how they first appear. This dynamic allows for Salinger to move the plot along in a new way, making the readers choose if they are willing to believe the ideas/thoughts of a young child or not. Overall I found this very refreshing, especially since Salinger has shown himself to be very good at writing the dialogue and interactions between adults and children.