Excellence in First-Year Writing 2010/2011

his female friend represents the incompatibility of his imaginary friends with real people. So while the former instance is much more positive, both men’s fantasies are eradicated in the presence of, and even because of, a woman.

Examining each story alone might lead one to attribute vastly different meanings to Anderson’s decision to approach the end of their fantasy lives in such a fashion. It seems that there are many possible complicated and specific explanations for God being presented in the form of a naked woman, or for imaginary friends to fear a female acquaintance. When examined together, however, the individual distinctions of what each woman represents to each man are put aside for the benefit of determining what this plot device is saying about the nature of isolation and fantasy in general. For both stories, the central female figure represents most simply what each man was lacking in life: connection and companionship. Although Curtis’s desires towards Kate are much more sexual than Enoch’s toward his friend, it is still a compensation for the lack of an emotional attachment with God, and so Kate represents more to him than just sexuality: “From wanting to reach the ears of Kate Swift, and through his sermons to delve into her soul, he began to want also look again at the figure lying white and quiet in the bed” (150).

Without the tale of Enoch Robinson, the reader is likely to focus too much on the sexual nature of Curtis’s desire, and so the example of a woman used in a similar way in another story allows one to embrace the full significance of Kate’s role.

Enoch’s story also forces readers to confront that the realness of Kate Swift in terms of Curtis’s fantasies is somewhat relative. Due to the fact that her window is easily visible from the church, Curtis’s fascination with her as opposed to other women is one of convenience. Had that same room been occupied by Helen White, Belle Carpenter, or any other woman in town, Curtis would likely engage in the same behavior. After all, when Kate Swift is first introduced as the object of his desires, she is described as “a woman lying in bed,” with “the bare shoulders and white throat of a woman” (148-149).

42 Excellence in First-Year Writing 2011