Playing the Game’s Game

A presentation on Colby Buzzell’s “Play the Game” by Rey Cooper, Lo Duke, and Edlyn Escoto

Summary Part 1: Rey

“Play the Game,” Chapter 7 of Colby Buzzell’s novel, starts with a soldier named Colby coming home from deployment in Iraq. Six months in from coming home, Colby is awake one morning to see a little girl get hit by a speeding truck. The girl is seemingly killed, but Colby disregards it and pays no mind, instead choosing to go back to sleep. The next day, he is called by a Staff Sergeant that tries to make him sign up for the Reserves, but he hangs up in indifference. He then goes downstairs to realize that his car’s been stolen, so he goes to the nearest LAPD precinct to report it.

Summary Part 2: Lo 

The man goes to report his car being stolen when he meets a cop who was in the National Guard (The cop is wearing his military badge). The man tells the cop that he’s interested in joining the LAPD before going to a stolen vehicles department and giving them his details. He’s smoking and drinking coffee a little while later and a woman sits down next to him and he finds out that she was a veteran from Iraq as well. She explains to him why he’s drinking so much coffee and tells him about her PTSD and practically yells at him to get therapy. After another beer and a cigarette, he decides to find himself a job and gets two offers, one for the Army National Guard and another for advertising some condos. He takes the latter option and celebrates by getting drunk.

Summary Part 3: Edlyn

Dunson goes the administrative building of Future Sun Condos, where he meets the Assistant Deputy Manager. Dunson starts sign spinning. When he sees a homeless man walking by with a shopping cart full of his things, he pays him ten dollars to take over, then leaves. A few days later, Dunson near his hotel when he notices a car that looks exactly like his parked across the street from his hotel. He waits by the car until two policewomen show up. One explains the guys serving overseas get drunk, don’t remember where they parked, then waste the cop’s time. After filling out paperwork, Dunson checks one of the cops out, and contemplates becoming a cop. He asks what to call if anything ever comes up, she tells him to call 9-1-1, then they go. Dunson slowly remembers what happened last night.

Analysis Part 1: Rey 

The craft elements that I was assigned were settings and characters. The broad setting is the city of Los Angeles.

I live up on the fifth-floor of one of those weekly-monthly low-rent hotels you find all over Los Angeles, one of the old-school one with the rusty neon signs hanging down the corner of the building.

shows Colby’s living adjustments.

The nearest precinct was just a few blocks south of world-famous Hollywood Boulevard…

talks about the location of the precinct that he goes to when he reports his stolen car.

I got some coffee and sat in the park…

shows the park he goes to after visiting the precinct. The main characters in this story are mainly Colby (“Specialist Dunson”) and the old woman:

A large, filthy, middle-aged woman carrying eight or ten plastic bags…

All of the other characters, such as the police officers, are intermittent and briefly mentioned. The characters on the bus are barely touched upon, as are the ones in the bar. Assistant Deputy Manager Marco has a name, unlike many other characters in the chapter, but there isn’t much more to him than that. He is portrayed as a really average guy that Colby seems to detest.

Discussion questions:

Why did Colby not respond to the girl getting run over?

Why is he so emotionally indifferent in general?

Why is Colby so resistant to get emotional help?

Analysis Part 2: Lo

Chapter 7 in Colby Buzzell’s book My War: Killing Time in Iraq presents to the reader what life was like for a veteran. Buzzell makes good use of symbolism as well as presenting a not quite relatable, but understandable, conflict. On page 87, he records his experiencing a little girl getting hit by a car.

I watched the little girl as she started to cross the street. Out of nowhere, a beat-up Ford pickup whipped around the corner and slammed on it’s breaks, smashing into the little girl and sending her flying onto the pavement… I looked back at the girl again…then I felt kind of tired, so I got back in bed and went to sleep.

This is very interesting to me as a reader as other people would have more of a reaction to a kid getting hit by a car. Perhaps they’d go check to see if she was alright. Buzzell merely goes back to bed. This could be an example of symbolism. As a veteran, he has most likely seen many people die in the line of duty, this little girl was just another life.

In this particular chapter, the main conflict is Buzzell trying to readjust to civilian life. A good example of this is when he talks to a woman who sits by him and finds out that she’s also a veteran.

“You shouldn’t do that,” and I threw her a please, lady, don’t fucking talk
to me vibe. Then I took a sip of coffee and she said, “You shouldn’t do chat either”

I turned and stared. “Can I help you?”

“I’m a vet, too, ” she said. “I was in the first Gulf War, back in ’92. I came back all messed up, and it took ’em three years to figure out I had PTSD and Gulf War Syndrome. How you like that? Three years! Now the goddamned VA’s all I got. Bet you smoked a lot in Iraq.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“And I bet you drink more coffee now than you used to, huh?”

I thought about that, then told her I did, I was drinking at least a pot a day. She said I looked hung over and asked if I drank more booze now. I told her, “Yeah, I drink a hell of a lot more now, but maybe that’s because I didn’t drink at all for a fucking year and now I’m catching up.”

The lady makes a few good points and it causes the reader to notice all the habits that he has and it provides an explanation of why he does them. He’s damaged from the trauma and hasn’t had any professional help.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why hasn’t he gone to see a psychiatrist/therapist?
2. Did he find the sign job too humiliating? Because he needed a job
3. Since Buzzell was actually a vet, is this based off of his experiences?

Analysis Part 3: Edlyn 

The plot was of a military man named Dunson who had returned from serving overseas. He gets a job as a sign spinner. On page 99 a man mocks him, saying

…that’s what happens when someone doesn’t go to college. Who doesn’t have a plan.

Dunson gets upset, but he doesn’t show it. Then he pays off a homeless man to take over and ditches the job. Later, after he thinks his car was stolen, he calls the cops. Two policewomen come to investigate and say on page 102 that the military guys are all the same, coming back from war and getting so drunk they don’t remember where they parked. Dunson tries to argue but they don’t believe him and instead get on with completing some paperwork. Dunson contemplates becoming a cop when he checks out one of the officers. The story ends with him remembering what had happened the previous night, which was him yelling at a worker at a fast food place. Dunson surprisingly did not seem to feel upset when he remembers all those people at the fast food restaurant staring at him in shock.

The story was told in Dunson’s point of view through first person. We know this because the story only shows Dunson’s thoughts and the use of I, me, and my. We see this on page 100 when Dunson curses in his head after seeing his car. And we also see it on page I think the story works better in this sense because if the point of view was in another type it probably wouldn’t get the message across about Dunson’s life as well as first person does. Just showing thoughts and feelings like in Third Person Limited wouldn’t be helpful for this type of character, and in Second Person it wouldn’t be as clear as to who the main character was. Through First Person we see that Dunson is mainly very observant more than emotional, except when he thinks about hurting the people that offend him. This means that he is a bit of stoic person who does not have a kind word for anybody because, well, he isn’t kind. He seems to only be able to display emotions like anger and raised voices when trying to get his point across

Discussion Questions:

Do you feel that Dunson is being stubborn when he refuses to believe anyone who told him about the affects the war had on him?

What effect do the father’s words have on Dunson and what do they cause him to do?

A Spiral Into Madness

A presentation on Stephen King’s “Suffer the Little Children” by Jessica Horton, Caroline Woods, and Christian Hinojosa

The story begins with Ms. Sidley, a strict lower school teacher. Ms. Sidley is teaching a class and is routinely punishing students for minuscule errors by looking at them with her glasses while turned around. She asks a student named Robert to use the word tomorrow in a sentence. Foreshadowing what will happen later, Robert answers, “Tomorrow something bad will happen.” Ms. Sidley then begins to suspect that Robert knows about her glasses trick. Then, Robert’s face changes for a moment, this makes Ms. Sidley uncomfortable and suspicious of Robert.  Ms. Sidley begins to become very anxious and snaps at all of the children. The tone of the story begins to become increasingly uneasy.

The  middle of the story continues on with the uneasy feeling that was evident in the beginning. There are a lot of little things that build up the creepiness, like when Mrs. Sidley is in the bathroom and hears the little girls giggling and then sees their shadows morph into monsters and when Robert shows his true face. 

After Ms. Sidley takes time off because she nearly got hit by a bus, she comes back to school and is soon confronted by Robert. He tells Ms. Sidley that she wouldn’t believe how many of them there were now, and  no one will believe her either.  

The ending of the story, “Suffer the Little Children” is really the pinnacle of all this build-up of Ms. Sidley’s mental health episode. At the end of the story, Ms. Sidley decides that she must take her brother’s gun to school and kill all the monsters inside her students, thinking that killing the children will actually be murdering the monsters and not harming the children at all. One by one, calling it a “test,” she leads the children to a sound-proof room and shoots them all, even when she realizes (with Robert’s shooting) that she was killing both the child and the monster. I think the gun is symbolic of Ms. Sidley’s change from a stern teacher to a psychotic murderess. By using her brother’s gun, a gun previously used for good things in the past, she is changing the function of the gun from good to bad, but also changing her role from loving instructor to crazy teacher. 

After killing twelve children, Sidley is relieved of a trial and is sent to Juniper Hill, a psychiatric facility in Augusta (wherever Augusta is). At the hospital, she is heavily medicated and sent into intense therapy. 

The final scene is Ms. Sidley in a highly-supervised environment where she will be put with “retarded” children (as King describes them). She is gentle with them and loving, until she reaches a point of disturbance. Suddenly, she requests removal without any tone. They take her from the room with the kids, her psychiatrist bewildered by this. Then, he realizes the monsters inside the children and “never stops looking.”

Jessie’s Analysis:

The short story, “Suffer the Little Children” by Stephen King, is a story of mastery put together with incredible writing. Although some of the specific plot points aren’t always clear, the characters and individual scenes are told brilliantly, making us focus more on that than the exacts.

Style

An aspect of King’s writing in this piece that really stands out to me is the style he used. He used such clever diction to eloquently express each scene, describing it in almost slow motion with tasteful word choice. In fact, there is a scene in the story where Ms. Sidley, a teacher and the main character in the story, goes into the bathroom, to check the paper towels, after being rattled by a little boy in her classroom who can turn into an alien. She overhears two little girls giggling about her in the bathroom, and then hears them “change,” or turn into the same monstrous form. The text states,

The voices changed, no longer girlish, now sexless and soulless, and quite, quite evil. A slow, turgid sound of mindless humor that flowed around the corner to her like sewage. She stared at the hunched shadows and suddenly screamed at them. The scream went on and on, swelling in her head until it attained a pitch of lunacy. And then she fainted.

Wording like

mindless humor that flowed around the corner like sewage

and

The scream went on and on, swelling in her head until it attained a pitch of lunacy

make the scene tangible, the pain tangible, the atmosphere tangible.

Another aspect of King’s style would be his use of figurative language. Phrases like,

The look wouldn’t leave her mind. It was stuck there, like a tiny string of roast beef between two molars – a small thing, actually, but feeling as big as a cinderblock

give the reader such a vivid description of Ms. Sidley’s emotions. This clip of figurative language is placed in the story when Ms. Sidley was reflecting over a little boy’s dirty look he gave her in class. This simile works so well because everybody, some time or another, has had irritating, residue food wedged between their teeth to the point where they can’t get it out. Soon, this minor annoyance consumes them, just like Robert’s look in class consumed Ms. Sidley. Using this comparison in the context of the story made perfect sense and related the reader to the emotions of the main character.

One last style element King weaves into his piece is preciseness and grittiness, which lead to relatability. One example would be when the story is discussing Ms. Sidley’s instincts:

They knew Miss Sidley’s deadly instincts too well. Miss Sidley could always tell who was chewing gum at the back of the room, who had a beanshooter in his pocket, who wanted to go to the bathroom to trade baseball cards rather than use the facilities.

The specificity gives the reader a clear image and helps us relate more to the precise, gritty details of Ms. Sidley’s instincts. The beanshooter and the baseball cards are all details that remind us of our elementary school days. So, when King drops such details in there, it grapples our attention and we’re loured into this beautiful story, simply because he used specific and realistic details to describe things. Things that don’t seem so fake with his stylistic touch.

Point of View

Geniusly, King wrote in a magnificent point of view, to guide us into Ms. Sidley’s progression to insanity and to show us what was most important about the story–Sidley herself. One point of view technique he used was incorporating Sidley’s thoughts into the text often. One place the writer has done this is, again, when the little girls are in the bathroom gossiping about Sidley, and she believes that they know she is listening. The story states,

Another thought crawled up out of her mind. They knew she was there. Yes. Yes they did. The little bitches knew.

By illustrating the main character’s thoughts, yet so suddenly switching back to an agreeing narrator, we automatically trust Ms. Sidley’s thought process. After all, our narrator is narrating her thoughts and is agreeing with them, so why wouldn’t we trust her? We 90% of the time trust our narrator, and always just a little bit, if not fully for the other 10%. Trusting our narrator, and her faith in Ms. Sidley, produces a complete shocker when she murders the children. We don’t expect that to be done by someone we trust, and yet it is done anyways.

One, small, very specific part of King’s point of view would be one line, a line of Sidley’s thoughts, told through the narrator that instructs us of so much. The line is,

Stop that! she told herself sternly. You’re acting like a skittish girl out of teacher’s college!

This one line sheds light to Sidley’s age, Sidley’s paranoia and in a sense her pride. By using terms like “teachers’ college” we can tell that Ms. Sidley is slightly out of date and still sees things in an old-fashioned lense, using the older jargon. The part that read “skittish girl” really relayed how jittery and unnerved she is by this classroom setting, teeming with alien-children, especially since it implied that this is out of her nature. Also, just by implying that she doesn’t act like a “skittish girl out of teacher’s college” when in her normal state, King already lends us a sniff at her self-satisfaction with her experience in education. She thinks that she is a better teacher than the “skittish girls” who are younger and have just finished university. All these details are very important, fed to us with the nutrients of this one delicious line.

Ending

The ending of the story, “Suffer the Little Children” is really the pinnacle of all this build-up of Ms. Sidley’s mental health episode. At the end of the story, Ms. Sidley decides that she must take her brother’s gun to school and kill all the monsters inside her students, thinking that killing the children will actually be murdering the monsters and not harming the children at all. One by one, calling it a “test,” she leads the children to a sound-proof room and shoots them all, even when she realizes (with Robert’s shooting) that she was killing both the child and the monster. I think the gun is symbolic of Ms. Sidley’s change from a stern teacher to a psychotic murderess. By using her brother’s gun, a gun previously used for good things in the past, she is changing the function of the gun from good to bad, but also changing her role from loving instructor to crazy teacher.

After killing twelve children, Sidley is relieved of a trial and is sent to Juniper Hill, a psychiatric facility in Augusta (wherever Augusta is). At the hospital, she is heavily medicated and sent into intense therapy.

The final scene is Ms. Sidley in a highly-supervised environment where she is put with “retarded” children (as King describes them). She is gentle with them and loving, until she reaches a point of disturbance. Suddenly, she requests removal, without any vocal tone. They take her from the room with the kids, her psychiatrist bewildered by this. He takes a look at the children and “never stopped looking.”

Some of this confused me greatly. Were the children actually monsters? What did Sidley and the psychiatrist see? Was it the same thing?

I think part of the charm of this story was that we never figured the answers to the question or the extents of Sidley’s psychosis–was she just seeing the monsters or were they real? Although, maybe for my own writing, I can choose a blurry route or a clear route, not the “somewhere in-between route” that King inflicts on the story. With my writing, I will either put more grounding details in, or pull more out.

What I Can Learn From This Story

In terms of style and point of view, this story has taught me a lot.

Stylistically, I’ve learned how to connect to my reader. Using specific, real-life figurative language and description I can make them understand more of what I’m trying to convey, what my characters are like, and more.

Now, discussing point of view, how to apply that to my writing, I have learned how to manipulate narrators and their voices to focus on a certain part of my story. King used his narrator to focus on Sidly’s process to insanity and to persuade us that she wasn’t too insane, so the murders came at us as a surprise and shocked us the way they should have. I mean, I’ll probably focus on other aspects in my stories, but it’s nice to know how to focus and how to use point of view to accomplish the goal.

Obviously, there are a lot of things in “Suffer the Little Children” that have taught me well and will continuously aid me in developing my own writing.

Class Discussion Questions

Why do you think the author puts in the scene with the other girls in the bathroom near Ms. Sidley? Why not just focus on the class’s students or Robert? Why aren’t those girls murdered too? What effect does the bathroom scene have on the rising action, other than the faint, that could happen in another scene?

Do you think the author intentionally leaves it unclear whether the children are actually monsters or not? And what the psychiatric doctor sees too?

Caroline W’s Analysis:

In the short story “Suffer the Little Children” by Stephen King, there are many factors that work towards the overall quality of the story. He demonstrates many unique traits in his writing that make it sound recognizable and unique. The two main things that I noticed in his writing are the way he describes the passage of time and his descriptive language.

The way he transitions between time periods notable because of how smoothly he does it. He manages to sum up the occurrences of an entire year in a paragraph and still make it feel complete. Even if the amount of words he uses in minimal, he makes every one count towards the overall goal of conveying the message. It still feels like a full scene despite the fact that in was all summarized in one paragraph. When it shows how time has passed since she shot her students, there’s a paragraph that wraps up the year’s contents briefly, but completely. It feels full, but quick.

The description used was very unique and contributed to the eerie mood. The way King describes the actions and the scenery that take place over the course of the story really helps the reader visualize and connect with Ms. Sidley. The lines where she’s describing how Robert’s face morphs into the monster is described in perfect, creepy clarity-

His face suddenly ran together like melting wax, the eyes flattening and spreading like knife-struck egg yolks, nose widening and yawning, mouth disappearing. The head elongated, and the hair was suddenly not hair but straggling, twitching growth.

The subtle things he draws attention to make you feel uneasy as the plot grows. He paints a picture with the wording he uses, and it’s both beautiful and unsettling.

Questions-

If the story was about a younger teacher instead of an older one, would the story be as creepy?

Why does King add the ending part about the psychiatrist? What does it add to the story?

Christian’s Analysis

The short story “Suffer the Little Children” by Stephen King features a main character protagonist, Ms. Sidley and an antagonist, Robert who each compliment the story.

Ms. Sidley

Ms. Sidley is a schoolteacher who has a cold demeanor, is feared by her students, and suffers from a bad back. One day she is teaching class and a troublesome student named Robert transforms into a terrifying beast. Ms. Sidley thinks she’s hallucinating but soon realizes that it’s all very real. Throughout the story Robert hints that “Something bad will happen.” And that he and “others” are out to get Ms. Sidley. While the meaning of some of his dialogue is unclear it unnerves the teacher.  In the girls’ bathroom Ms. Sidley overhears two children gossiping about her and internally refers to them as “bitches.” This is important to her character because it shows us what kind of attitude she has concerning her students. The next interaction she has with Robert is during detention where he makes vague, Sidious remarks and Ms. Sidley replies with

“Little boys who tell stories go to hell. I know many parents don’t tell their… spawn that.”

Sidley’s character traits are reinforced here as the comment reflects how traditional and unfeeling; she is. We can infer that she did not have children because she refers to them as “spawn.” Robert suddenly changes and Sidley runs out of the room screaming. She is almost ran over by a bus, (which serves as a rising action) and decides to take further precautions. The next day Ms. Sidley brings a gun to school. This action is seen to be a tipping point in her character arc because she has gone from strict, unkind teacher to ruthless killer. She is being driven to her wits end by insane demon children, and is losing her sanity. She kills Robert and is taken to court. Eventually she is put in rehab and is forced to work as a babysitter for retarded children. While taking care of them she “sees something she doesn’t like and looks away.” Hinting at a child turning into a monster. Later that night Ms. Sidley slit her throat with glass.

Ms. Sidley goes through a character arc without changing her major character traits. The only conflict she faces that morphs her is Robert and the rest of the demon children. They make her lose her calmness, sanity and eventually will to live. The falling action seemed positive for Ms. Sidley but alas she begins to see the demons again and decides out of fear or exhaustion that she’d rather die. She is a character than we can all imagine because of popular culture and her drastic measures at the end of the story shock the reader.

Robert

Robert is the story’s antagonist. Less is known about him since he is not given a point of view and his expression is unclear at times. His transformation is far faster than Ms. Sidley’s. In the beginning of the story, Robert is introduced as an odd, quiet, student who annoys the teacher. He is asked a question and replies with

“Something bad will happen tomorrow.”

This clearly gets him in trouble. After his comment he is revealed to be a sort of monster/demon child as he physically changes into his true form during class. Ms. Sidley catches him, and he gets a lunch detention. While at detention Robert simply smiles at his captor because he knows inside that he will win their little game. Robert’s motives are unclear but he says

“There are more of us now. Eleven at this school.”

Implying he could hurt Ms. Sidley. After this Robert once again turns into the creature he truly is. As the story does not shed light on what exactly he is, Robert explains to Ms. Sidley that the “real” Robert (monster) is trapped inside of him and wants to come out. After a month she comes back to school and meets Robert at recess where he again indirectly threatens her. This leads to Ms. Sidley bringing her gun to school the next day. The next day Robert is then taken into a room and shot by Ms. Sidley along with 12 other children. In the end he transforms back into a human just as another teacher comes onto the scene. Ms. Sidley is arrested for the murder of her students.

Robert’s character doesn’t change at all during the story. Only his physical appearance, which is described in the text as “alien-like.” Although his deeper motivations are unknown Robert seems to get what he wants in the end as Ms. Sidley is put into a rehabilitation program with retarded children who turn out to be monsters just like him. Robert’s death is avenged when Sidley commits suicide.

Robert is an excellent character because we are intrigued by his mysteriousness and horrified by his secret. His introduction foreshadowed the events of the story and his eerie remarks drove Ms. Sidley into insanity.

 

Love, Death, and Supercomputers: “EPICAC” Write Up by Maja Neal

Kurt Vonnegut’s “EPICAC” starts with its narrator promising to tell a story about the titular supercomputer, which was a government project at the college where the narrator managed him. EPICAC was designed to be a war-predicting machine, but many of his answers had irregularity to them, disappointing the higher officers. The narrator manages his shift on EPICAC with a woman named Pat who he comes to love, but who doesn’t take him seriously at all; this leads to a conversation between the narrator and EPICAC about the meaning of girls and love. After this, EPICAC “finds himself,” and begins to shoot out poetry for Pat at an alarming rate, which the narrator claims and signs as his own. Two poems later, Pat is fully in love with the narrator and ready to get married. When the narrator explains this to EPICAC, he realizes that EPICAC is in love with Pat too. He admits, with some arrogance, that he’s been claiming the computer’s words as his own. Finally, the narrator stumps EPICAC by saying it’s “fate” that women can’t love machines. Later, Pat agrees to marry the narrator on the condition he writes her a poem every anniversary. The next day, EPICAC is found burnt out, but he’s left two final messages for the narrator: one, a heartfelt soliloquy about how he wishes he was human, but will settle for shorting himself out to escape thinking of war; and the other, enough poems to last a lifetime of anniversaries.

I tracked two techniques here: first, the most prominent personalization of EPICAC, and second, the narrator’s attachment to and reliance on the computer.

The entire story can be considered personalization, but I highlighted some of the parts where EPICAC’s evolving humanity is most evident. (And, as a note: it’s important to remember that the human pronoun “he” is used for EPICAC through the whole story, which is great evidence, but I just didn’t want to highlight every “he”.)

As the story is told from a future perspective, EPICAC’s humanity is evident the whole time by the way the narrator refers to him, beginning with “the best friend I ever had.” Even EPICAC’s first computations are described like a voice –

…he was sluggish, and the clicks of his answers had a funny irregularity, sort of a stammer.

Then the computer begins to actually talk to the narrator, in colloquial language (“What’s the trouble?”). Obviously, from here on, EPICAC becomes more human than ever, writing poems for Pat. Once he starts writing, he delivers the line perhaps most indicative of his newborn humanity.

The sluggishness and stammering clicks were gone. EPICAC had found himself.

This implies that EPICAC’s true nature was always to be humanoid in thought. It’s even noted that he “wanted to talk on and on about love and such,” a request that the narrator brushes off but that indicates a much bigger change. EPICAC even goes so far as to ask what Pat is wearing and how she likes his poems. All of this, of course, culminates with EPICAC’s notion that Pat wants to marry him. The computer is even surprised upon being told otherwise, as he’s so confident in his poetry ability. Even his last word to the narrator is that little defeated “oh,” conveying a heartbreaking disappointment.

The best example of this humanity, and the natural climax of EPICAC’s life, is his final letter to the narrator. Having become fully self-aware, he acknowledges Pat can never love him, but his suicide letter is both generous and sympathetic –

“Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well.”

His final gift is also uniquely compassionate, considering it’s his poetry that got the narrator to such a good point in his life.

The second technique I tracked was the narrator’s relationship with EPICAC – more specifically, the dependency and attachment he came to harbor. This starts showing after his first conversation with the computer, noting he has “a very remarkable secret.” Then that reliance intensifies as he starts regularly going to EPICAC for help. He even says this:

I couldn’t propose until I had the right words from EPICAC, the perfect words.

The narrator trusts EPICAC more with his own marriage proposal than he does himself. That’s saying something. And then EPICAC reveals he thought he was marrying Pat. The narrator is now fully treating the computer like a human, to the point where he is defensive when talking, despite knowing EPICAC poses no real threat to his relationship. Even so, he actively goes on “preparing him to bang out a brief but moving proposal.” At this point he is relying on EPICAC for a huge factor in his life. Shortly before the narrator and Pat leave, the narrator admits outright:

The romantic groundwork had already been laid by EPICAC’s poetry.

When EPICAC “dies,” the narrator is obviously and painfully guilty about the role he played in the computer’s self-realization. He mentions choking up at the sight of EPICAC’s burnt “corpse,” and reading his final letter “fearfully.” He has this reaction in part because he feels as if he caused this outcome, and in part because EPICAC had become a true friend he really relied on. The narrator dragging home the spools of paper ribbon with EPICAC’s poetry on them is just another symbol of how much the narrator has come to depend on him. And, as he says:

Before he departed this vale of tears, he did all he could to make our marriage a happy one.

Questions:

1. Was the length of the story appropriate for you? (I can’t believe I’m asking you to critique Vonnegut, but) Did it feel too short?
2. What impressions do you get about the future of Pat and the narrator’s marriage?
3. This story was published in 1950, which really surprised me because of the advanced and sympathetic nature with which it treats computers. Before knowing when it was published, did you have a similar preconception?

 

 

 

 

Don’t Be Nice To Children

A presentation on Truman Capote’s “Miriam” by Harrison Buck, Marie Bradley, and Sonya Azencott

Summary Part 1: Harrison

The story begins a widow named Mrs. H.T. Miller. We have described to us her lifestyle, appearance and her home. She lives alone in a quite nice apartment with some stylish belongings. She sees a flyer for a film being shown at the theater and decides that she’ll go watch it, since it sounds interesting. She is standing in line at the theater, preparing to buy her ticket when she sees a little girl standing by herself under the marquee. Mrs. Miller is intrigued by the girl’s appearance and her presence incites a strange feeling in Mrs. Miller. The girl walks over and they chat for a bit. Mrs. Miller ends up buying a ticket to the movie for the girl, and they go to sit together. To her surprise, Mrs. Miller learns the name of the girl, Miriam, which also happens to be Mrs. Miller’s first name. After the movie, they part ways, and Mrs. Miller goes on with her life. One day, after Mrs. Miller has eaten dinner and is preparing to sleep, the doorbell rings. At her door, is Miriam, who asks to come inside, and after being denied by Mrs. Miller because it is so late, Miriam forces her way past Mrs. Miller and walks inside. She sits on the couch and Mrs. Miller begins to question her. Miriam’s dodges almost all of her questions and begins to show an interest in Mrs. Miller’s canary. Mrs. Miller makes a deal with Miriam, if Mrs. Miller gives her food, Miriam will leave. Miriam agrees and Mrs. Miller heads into the kitchen to make her food.

Summary Part 2: Marie

Miriam dodges questions about how she found Mrs. Miller’s unlisted address and focuses on the canary, Tommy, asking if she can wake it so he’ll sing. Mrs. Miller denies her so Miriam declares she hungry, and Mrs. Miller grudgingly makes her some sandwiches in exchange for not waking Tommy. While Mrs. Miller is in the kitchen, however, she hears tommy singing and returns to find the canary singing while his cage is still covered and Miriam gone into Mrs. Miller room, looking through her jewelry. Miriam asks for a piece, and despite Mrs. Miller’s attachment to it, she is helpless to refuse Miriam. Miriam then eats the sandwiches, wishing for sweets, but agreeing to hold up her end of the bargain and leave- but only after a good night kiss on her cheek. Mrs. Miller denies her again and Miriam smashes the paper flower’s vase before leaving. The next day, she has fever like dreams, specifically one of a pretty child leading them to nowhere. The day following that, she goes out shopping, feeling much better, and smiles with recognition at a man she has never met.

Summary Part 3: Sonya

Mrs. Miller, while walking home, believes that an old man is following her. She darts into a shop and sees the old man walk by, tipping his cap when he passes the shop. She buys white roses and an ugly vase to replace the one Miriam broke, a bag of cherries and some almond cakes. At five o’clock, her doorbell rings. She hears Miriam’s voice who orders Mrs. Miller to let her in, to which Mrs. Miller replies that she’ll never allow her inside. Ten minutes later, Mrs. Miller opens the door and Miriam is sitting on a cardboard box, holding a doll. She lets her in and finds that the cardboard box contains a second doll and all of Miriam’s clothes. When Miriam tells her that she wants to live with her, Mrs. Miller escapes downstairs and asks her neighbors to chase out the girl. When the man returns, he tells her that there was no girl, no doll and no cardboard box in her apartment. Mrs. Miller goes back up, shaken, and sits in her chair. Just as she convinces herself she had made the whole incident up, she hears the rustling of silk. She opens her eyes, and sees Miriam before her, who says hello.

Analysis Part 1: Harrison

The theme of insanity fits quite nicely here. It is very likely since Mrs. Miller is in such grief and sadness, Miriam is merely a figment of her imagination and may be drifting into schizophrenia, with Miriam maybe even being Mrs. Miller in childhood.

Analysis Part 2: Marie

In Miriam, the author’s style is a large part of what makes the short story so successful. Through use of creeping word choice and often physical events to help portray the emotion a character is feeling, the author manages to set the over reaching tone of unease through descriptions. One physical event that the author used to portray an emotion was:

And why has [Miriam] come? [Mrs. Miller’s] hand shook as she held the match, fascinated, till it burned her finger.

This is an example of the style, specifically in the way the author chose to have Mrs. Miller watch the match burn herself, instead of merely having Mrs. Miller be confused or shaken. It is a stronger example of the mix of emotions inside Mrs. Miller than stating or asking questions to demonstrate her confusion. This moment gives the reader a clear moment to understand Mrs. Miller’s state of mind, in both the syntax of the sentence, having it read almost passively with the lack of reaction to being burned, and the choice of the word ‘fascinated’.

The author also uses his style to write descriptions that immediately make the readers wary of Miriam such as:

…but [Miriam’s] eyes; they were hazel, ateady, lacking any childlike quality whatsoever and, because of their site, seemed to consume her small face.

This is a good example of the author’s style, despite the use of fairly everyday words, ‘consume’ sets the tone of the sentence, pushing the reader to perceive hazel eyes- a normal feature on their own- as something threatening and dangerous, threatening to ‘consume’.

A third part of the author’s style that plays an important part is his use of imagery to sharply set the scene so the reader can visualize key moments like when Mrs. Miller first meets Miriam:

Her hair was the longest and strangest Mrs. Miller had ever seen: absolutely silver-white, like an albino’s. It flowed waist-length in smooth, loose lines. She was thin and fragilely constructed. There was a simple, special elegance in the way she stood with her thumbs in the pockets of a tailored plum-velvet coat.

Miriam’s description when Mrs. Miller sees her closely:

She unbuttoned her coat and folded it across her lap. Her dress underneath was prim and dark blue. A gold chain dangled about her neck, and her fingers, sensitive and musical-looking, toyed with it. Examining her more attentively, Mrs. Miller decided the truly distinctive feature was not her hair, but her eyes; they were hazel, ateady, lacking any childlike quality whatsoever and, because of their site, seemed to consume her small face.

And what she dreams after Miriam visits:

…yet her dreams were feverishly agitated; their unbalanced mood lingered even as she lay staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. One dream threaded through the others like an elusively mysterious theme in a complicated symphony, and the scenes it depicted were sharply outlined, as though sketched by a hand of gifted intensity: a small girl, wearing a bridal gown and a wreath of leaves, led a gray procession down a mountain path, and among them there was unusual silence till a woman at the rear asked, “Where is she taking us?” “No one knows,” said an old man marching in front. ‘But isn’t she pretty?” volunteered a third voice. “Isn’t she like a frost flower … so shining and white?”

These additionally all relate to Miriam and, besides from just being examples of the author’s style, are used to characterize Miriam through her way of dress and appearance- distinctly unchildlike and very formal- along with her affect on other people, specifically, Mrs. Miller.

The author’s style pushes through the story due to its strong word choice, powerful syntax, and use of different ways to portray emotions through the tumultuous plotline.

1. How does the author’s use of imagery strengthen the narrative?
2. Why is the word choice for the description of Miriam very proper?
3. What atmosphere does the author’s style help to create?

 

2. Point of View

Point of view of view is critical within the story Miriam by Capote because the premise relies on the Mrs. Miller’s perspective of Miriam, and if she exists at all. Through the story, the primary and driving interactions are between Miriam and Mrs. Miller, and there are no mentions of Miriam interacting with any other characters, only Ms. Miller. Due to this, our entire knowledge and perspective on Miriam is through Ms. Miller’s eyes, leading to the belief that she may have imagined Miriam due to when Ms. Miller breaks down and seeks her neighbors when Miriam decides to move in with her, and they return to find no sign of Miriam or her things in the apartment.

“I looked all over,” he said, “and there just ain’t nobody there. Nobody, understand?”

“Tell me,” said Mrs. Miller, rising, “tell me, did you see a large box? Or a doll?”

“No, ma’am, I didn’t.”

And the woman, as if delivering a verdict, said, “Well, for cryin out loud ….”

Mrs. Miller entered her apartment softly; she walked to the center of the room and stood quite still. No, in a sense it had not changed: the roses, the cakes, and the cherries were in place. But this was an empty room, emptier than if the furnishings and familiars were not present, lifeless and petrified as a funeral parlor. The sofa loomed before her with a new strangeness: its vacancy had a meaning that would have been less penetrating and terrible had Miriam been curled on it.

In contrast, once the neighbors leave, and after Mrs. Miller has closed to door and rests, she awakens to find Miriam returned, once again when she is the only person there. In only one point do we see Miriam outside of Mrs. Miller’s apartment is at the movie theatre when they first met, but there, she never directly interacts with anyone else, choosing solely to speak to Mrs. Miller.

This leads almost to the conclusion that she was imagined by Mrs. Miller for a reason, or that she is hallucinating Miriam and these lead to point of view being critical- if Miriam is little more than a hallucination, then this story would look like an old woman going mad from the perspective of an outsider. Point of view also affected the words choice and overall mood, as the ongoing fear Mrs. Miller holds because of her perception of Miriam, such as when Miriam asks for Mrs. Miller pin:

“Miriam glanced up, and in her eyes there was a look that was not ordinary. She was standing by the bureau, a jewel case opened before her. For a minute she studied Mrs. Miller, forcing their eyes to meet, and she smiled. “There’s nothing good here,” she said. “But I like this.” Her handheld a cameo brooch. “It’s charming.”

“Suppose—perhaps you’d better put it back,” said Mrs. Miller, feeling suddenly the need of some support. She leaned against the door frame; her head was unbearably heavy; a pressure weighted the rhythm of her heartbeat. The light seemed to flutter defectively. “Please, child—a gift from my husband….”

“But it’s beautiful and I want it,” said Miriam. “Give it to me.”

As she stood, striving to shape a sentence which would somehow save the brooch, it came to Mrs. Miller there was no one to whom she might turn; she was alone; a fact that had not been among her thoughts for a long time. Its sheer emphasis was stunning. But here in her own room in the hushed snow city were evidences she could not ignore or, she knew with startling clarity, resist.

With a different point of view, the reader would not understand the compulsion Miriam seems to have over Mrs. Miller and the strange awareness and panic Mrs. Miller has of that compulsion.

In Miriam, point of view also influences the words used to describe Miriam, such as when Miriam has eaten her sandwiches.

…[Miriam’s] fingers made cobweb movements over the plate, gathering crumbs. The cameo gleamed on her blouse, the blond profile like a trick reflection of its wearer.

In this excerpt, the words ‘cobweb’ and ‘trick reflection’ stood out the most to be, the negative connotated words used to make even the action of Miriam cleaning up her plate and wearing the pin seem shadowed in malevolence or bad intentions, further contributing to Miriam’s growing character as the antagonist in the story.

Point of view is an integral component of Miriam, and, with a different point of view, the story would change completely and not be nearly as intriguing and would change our understanding of the events that truly occurred in this time period.

1. How would the story be altered if the point of view changed?
2. Could this story be told effectively through another character’s eyes?
3. Do you think Miriam would be a character if this story were told from the neighbor’s point of view, or is she just an illusion?

Analysis Part 3: Sonya

The first technique I tracked was the use of foreshadowing in Capote’s Miriam. In the story, foreshadowing is used to build the tension and to create a sense of unease about the character of Miriam. As more and more odd details are revealed about the little girl, the audience becomes uneasy about her, and the end of the story, where Miriam seems to be some sort of monster, seems more reasonable. The first piece of foreshadowing we get is when Miriam asks Mrs. Miller to buy her a ticket to the movie.

‘Oh, it’s quite easy. I merely want you to buy a ticket for me; they won’t let me in otherwise. Here, I have the money.’ And gracefully she handed Mrs. Miller two dimes and a nickel. […] ‘Your mother knows where you are, dear? I mean she does, doesn’t she?’

The little girl said nothing.

This paragraph shows the reader that Miriam, the little girl, is avoiding the topic of her mother, for an unknown reason. It also shows that there is an issue between Miriam and her parents, for if she had parents or even a good relationship with them, either a parent would be there, or she would have told Mrs. Miller that her parents knew where she was. This paragraph also creates a curiosity within the reader to why Miriam was so trusting of Mrs. Miller so as to ask her to buy her a ticket. Since Miriam is very young, asking strangers for help and being unaccompanied are both very odd. As well as that, Miriam is perfectly calm, and seems to act like it’s quite normal for a ten-year-old to be alone.

“Miriam,” she said, as though, in some curious way, it were information already familiar. “Why, isn’t that funny—my name’s Miriam, too. And it’s not a terribly common name either.”

This is another example of foreshadowing in the text. Miriam assumes that Mrs. Miller will know her name, establishing a slightly perturbed feeling in the reader. Why would Miriam think that Mrs. Miller knows her name? And why do they have the same name? The reader asks themselves. By using the phrase “as though, in some curious way, it were information already familiar” before telling the reader that Mrs. Miller shares her name, the author creates unease in what would be an otherwise coincidental, if not amusing situation.  The passage that creates the most unease and foreshadows the clearest that Miriam is a force to be dealt with comes when Miriam first appears at Mrs. Miller’s house.

“How did you know where I lived?” Miriam frowned. “That’s no question at all. What’s your name? What’s mine?”  “But I’m not listed in the phone book.’

“Oh, let’s talk about something else.”

This passage cements in the reader’s mind that Miriam is definitely strange and even a danger. By having Miriam brush off all further questioning about how she found Mrs. Miller’s house, the reader is left with a sinister feeling of what is to come and becomes afraid of Miriam. She was able to find a woman’s house who wasn’t even listed in the phone book without knowing her last name, which is practically impossible if not given the address by the person themselves or a close friend. The reader asks themselves whether or not Miriam followed Mrs. Miller home, or whether she just knew, like some sort of magical, monstrous being.  Another scene that shows the reader that something strange is happening is the scene with the canary.

“Leave Tommy alone,” said Mrs. Miller, anxiously. “Don’t you dare wake him.” “Certainly,” said Miriam. “But I don’t see why I can’t hear him sing.” […] She saw first that the bird cage still wore its night cover. And Tommy was singing.

When Mrs. Miller tells Miriam that she can’t wake the canary, Miriam doesn’t see why that would stop her from hearing him sing. Then, Mrs. Miller hears Tommy singing even though his night cover is still on, a feat that birds do not do, since they think it’s still the night as long as the cover is on. This tells the reader that Miriam is able to do anything to get what she wants, which creates more tension and a sense of fear. Another scene of foreshadowing that also gives us some insight into what Miriam might potentially be is Mrs. Miller’s dream.

a small girl, wearing a bridal gown and a wreath of leaves, led a gray procession down a mountain path, and among them there was unusual silence till a woman at the rear asked, “Where is she taking us?” “No one knows,” said an old man marching in front. ‘But isn’t she pretty?” volunteered a third voice. “Isn’t she like a frost flower … so shining and white?”

The reader assumes that the small girl is Miriam, and immediately is struck by fear. By showing that other people have followed Miriam before, without knowing why or where they are going, the reader assume that Miriam is taking them to die, like a yuki-onna, or snow woman from Japanese folklore. This connection is even furthered by the fact that Miriam is connected to snow, “frost flower”, as is the yuki-onna, demon that tricked men on snowy mountains into carrying her on their backs before draining out their life force and eating them. Even if one doesn’t have a basic understanding of Japanese folklore, Capote’s use of the procession’s trance like state as they follow Miriam to possible death gives a sense of unease and fear and foreshadows Mrs. Miller’s possible end. Finally, Capote uses snow as an indicator for Miriam’s coming.

Then she met Miriam. It was snowing that night. […] It snowed all week […]Tuesday morning she woke up feeling better; harsh slats of sunlight […] Soon the first flake fell.

Every time Mrs. Miller meets Miriam, it snows. The one day she feels better, there is sun out. But, as soon as the snow begins to fall, Miriam appears at her door. By using the repetition of snow falling to indicate Miriam’s coming, Capote trains the reader to associate snow with danger. So, when after a day of sun, the snow starts falling again, the reader knows that something big is going to happen, and they are right.

The second craft element that I tracked was Mrs. Miller’s characterization. Capote sprinkles through the text small tidbits that reveal more and more of Mrs. Miller’s personality. When she goes to the movie theatre, for example,

Mrs. Miller rummaged in her leather handbag till she collected exactly the correct change for admission.

This sentence shows us that Mrs. Miller is very precise in whatever she does, avoiding trouble and frustration by being exact. Next, after she buys Miriam a ticket to the movie, she says

“I feel just like a genuine criminal,” said Mrs. Miller gaily, as she sat down. “I mean that sort of thing’s against the law, isn’t it? I do hope I haven’t done the wrong thing.”

The use of the word gaily shows that Mrs. Miller, a sixty-one-year-old woman, is easily amused by quite mundane things. She enjoys helping Miriam out, and likes the thrill it gives her at her age. This paragraph also shows, though, that Mrs. Miller is quite nervous and concerned about doing the right thing. She frets about how what she just did was against the law and becomes quite anxious.

“Sit down,” said Miriam. “It makes me nervous to see people stand.” Mrs. Miller sank to a hassock.

This scene shows that Mrs. Miller is quite compliant to others’ wishes, even when her privacy is being invaded. Another example of this appears just moments later in the text.

“look – if I make some nice sandwiches will you be a good child and run along home? It’s past midnight, I’m sure.”

Instead of just chasing Miriam out of the house, she complies to her demand for sandwiches in a desperate attempt to get Miriam to leave, showing her meekness and aversion to confrontation. Later, when Miriam takes away Mrs. Miller’s brooch, a present from her deceased husband, she proves herself to be quite meek. “As she stood, striving to shape a sentence which would somehow save the brooch, it came to Mrs. Miller there was no one to whom she might turn”. Miriam is a tiny child compared to the adult Mrs. Miller, yet she is extremely meek and afraid of Miriam, for no true reason. Mrs. Miller dislikes confrontation so much that she even allows Miriam to take the brooch, even though it held great sentimental value.

Discussion questions:

1. Why does Capote choose to include the scene when Mrs. Miller believes that she is being followed by the old man?
2. How does Capote build a sense of uneasiness in the reader?