Character Interiority and Narrative Movement in Munro’s “Dimensions” and Berriault’s “The Stone Boy”

The Individuality of Grief: Interiority and Narrative Movement in Alice Munro’s “Dimensions” and Gina Berriault’s “The Stone Boy” by Nathaniel Krause

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree

MFA Program for Writers Warren Wilson College

October 8, 2014

!2 Narrative Movement as Emotional Consequence

Loss is a deeply personal experience, yet one that is inevitably tied to and shaped by cultural norms and expectations. Theoretical models of the grieving process, for example, have organized our emotional trajectories into a predictable framework. Ceremony and ritual can impose a sense of methodology onto the experience, and our prior associations with loss, direct or indirect, invariably sway how our own coping takes place. Despite the individuality of grief—and all emotion, for that matter—there exist standards of attitude and behavior deemed rational, natural, and acceptable by society at large. These expectations and influences, while not necessarily detrimental, inevitably alter what might otherwise be a more authentic experience of bereavement. What, then, might this “pure” experience look and feel like in its distilled form, unfiltered and unbiased? What constitutes true grief, and what are its possibilities for manifestation?

Alice Munro’s “Dimensions” and Gina Berriault’s “The Stone Boy” could be considered explorations of these very questions. These are stories of characters situated in the wake of tragedy, faced with the challenge of moving ahead through almost unimaginable emotional turmoil. “Dimensions” finds Doree, the story’s protagonist, isolated and worn amid the wreckage and intense grief following the loss of her children, murdered by her psychotic husband. When Arnold, the central character of “The Stone Boy,” accidentally kills his beloved older brother, the tragedy leaves him oddly emotionally vacant, much to the perplexity and eventual admonishment of his family and community. It is the emotional worlds of these characters—their isolation, deprivation, and pain in the fallout of disaster—that shape their respective narrative arcs and ultimately create the stories before us.

!3 Doree and Arnold are characters living in exile of their own lives, in a sense, abruptly deprived of the things that give them comfort, connection, and love. In her loss, Doree’s prolonged numbness and grief have left her broken and emotionally frail. Outwardly, and even to herself, she is powerless, barely able to sustain a day-to-day existence. Yet her intense grief moves her to act, despite her fragility and weakness, in ways that even she herself does not initially understand. Arnold’s peculiar reaction to the death of his brother is equally inexplicable. These surprising and unexpected behaviors reveal the presence of emotional truths of which the characters themselves might not be cognizant; character interiority, as we will see, can influence independently of a character’s awareness. In the “The Stone Boy” and “Dimensions,” this subtle and mysterious yet immensely powerful quality of embedded emotion—the quiet, urgent influence of grief and isolation—brings these stories into being.

Just as Arnold and Doree lack consistent and full awareness of their own experiences of grief, we as readers often find ourselves without access to their thoughts and feelings. Gaps in either the character or narrator’s reporting of interiority are frequent throughout both works, informational voids that impede our ability to chart the course of the narrative as led by emotion.

These strategic choices by Munro and Berriault affect our reading of the stories—they instill tension, preserve mystery, and perhaps act as projections of a character’s absent inner awareness.

Yet even when hidden from reader, character, or both, Doree and Arnold’s impulses continue to work as driving forces of their behavior and consequently the narrative itself. In charting the relationship between these characters’ emotional landscapes and the progression of their narratives, we’ll observe the specifics of how these points of absence function, and how interiority meanwhile continues to influence and progress the stories.

!4 Munro’s story, in relation to “The Stone Boy,” provides a straightforward demonstration of character interiority and the direction and movement of a narrative. Doree’s experience, while confounding at times, is ultimately one we can comprehend—that is, her actions and behaviors make sense given the extremity of her predicament, and the horror of her grief. Examining “Dimensions” first allows us to establish an understanding of the basic causal pathway from interior to exterior that results in the construction of a story, largely because Munro provides the information that makes visible the necessary connections. Berriault’s story, by comparison, is arguably more confounding in that the core motivations behind Arnold’s behavior at a pivotal moment in the story are never revealed. This significant absence, along with less overall access to Arnold throughout the entirety of the narrative, makes for an ambiguous story and a relatively complex and layered analysis—one that I believe is better suited to follow and build on the more direct interpretation of Munro’s piece.

In “Dimensions” and “The Stone Boy,” Doree and Arnold struggle to navigate their respective emotional turmoil, and in doing so share a common desire: relief. Amid the sudden loss of his brother and ensuing contempt of his family, Arnold descends into isolation from all that he knows and loves. Poised for permanent abandonment, the boy’s meek desperation tears at him.

Doree, alone and deadened by grief, loses herself in the need for hope. Under the weight of tragic loss, these characters move shakily, unexpectedly, ahead.

!5 One Special Thing: Interiority of Grief in Munro’s “Dimensions”

Alice Munro’s short story “Dimensions,” is perhaps atypical in that its most dramatic event—the murder of the protagonist’s children by her husband—actually serves as backstory to a more predominant narrative thread. Though “dramatic” is a subjective term and the statement above could certainly be challenged, perhaps it is valid here in describing the immediate and shocking nature of a single event relative to the more subtle and menacing progression of events that constitute the foreground of the narrative.

In “Dimensions,” the crime itself, horrific as it may be, is only one aspect of a larger story being told—that of Doree’s existence in the aftermath. Despite this wider scope, Munro does not let the drama of the event itself go unfelt. By preserving its revelation until midway through the story, its shock and horror are powerful and real, an effect amplified by the tension and mystery that’s been built up around it beforehand—specifically, the question of what has happened to Doree to have caused such a state of desolation. In her strategic and gradual interweaving of backstory, Munro retains dramatic intensity, enabling earlier events to impact the real-time reading of the story.

I mention these structural attributes to preface the following disclaimer: that in order to most effectively analyze the ways in which Doree’s interiority drives narrative movement, I will look at the story as it unfolds chronologically in the fictional reality, in a linear arc, rather than as it is presented on the page. Essentially I’ll be referencing the story in sequentially “correct” terms, so as to best observe and demonstrate the lines of causality. While Munro’s architecture provides movement of its own in that it creates a compelling experience for a reader, the intent

!6 here is to examine how Doree’s thoughts and feelings, rather than structure, propel the narrative.

In order to do so, a linear framework needs to be imposed, if only for the sake of clear discussion in this essay.

In beginning to chart the relationship between Doree and narrative movement, it’s necessary to establish a sense of Doree’s inner condition and life situation. It’s been close to two years since the deaths of her children, Sasha, Barbara Ann, and Dimitri. Lloyd is locked away in a “secure institution,” having been deemed criminally insane and unfit for trial. Since not long after the murders, Doree has been regularly seeing Mrs. Sands, a counselor/social worker who is helping her to reestablish her life. We learn of Doree that “she had cut her hair short and bleached and spiked it, and she had lost a lot of weight. And she went by her second name now: Fleur. Also, the job they had found for her was in a town a good distance away from where she used to live” (Munro 4). Doree is content with her employment as a motel chambermaid, as “She didn’t want to have to talk to people,” and “it occupied her thoughts to a certain extent and tired her out so that she could sleep at night” (Munro 3).

In gleaning a sense of a character’s internal world, it is sometimes required that the reader make inferences based on available information and context. We don’t always have full or direct access to interiority, as with Doree’s case at this particular point in the story. It seems safe to make the assumption that her life is quite bleak. She’s living in the fallout of an immense tragedy, a complete upheaval of her life, and the loss of everything meaningful. What can we surmise someone would be feeling in the aftermath of such a thing? Intense grief, numbness, emptiness, and a feeling of having been gutted all seem likely. It would be a momentous struggle to simply maintain one’s functionality throughout a single day. We can see that Doree has at-

!7 tempted to take on a new identity, in a sense. She feels compelled to disguise herself from others, or perhaps her drastic change in appearance serves as a way of distancing herself from who she was in her prior life, an effort to separate from the associated pain. Her sole ambition on a dayto-day basis seems to be to remain mentally distracted as much as possible, to avoid the slow torment of grief: In all the time since what had happened, any thought of the children had been something she had to get rid of, pull out immediately like a knife in her throat. She could not think their names, and if she heard a name that sounded like one of theirs she had to pull that out too. Even children’s voices, their shrieks and slapping feet as they ran to and from the motel swimming pool, had to be banished by a sort of gate that she could slam down behind her ears. (Munro 29) And so the story could potentially go on—with Doree eking out an isolated and painful existence, perhaps improving in time, perhaps not. Quite curiously, however, we find her seated on a bus, engaged in what we learn is her third attempt at visiting Lloyd (her first two attempts having been unsuccessful due to his refusal). Of Lloyd, we know that “Doree never thought of him if she could help it, and then only as if he were some terrible accident of nature” (Munro 10). Such persistence for a face to face meeting with the man who subjected her to years of emotional abuse and murdered her children is shocking, even baffling. Yet, strangely, there she sits on the bus. With this action, Doree has created a new branch of the story; she has pushed it forward into new territory. How then, did Doree’s decision to act come about? What was the emotional and/or intellectual rationale behind it? How did her internality—her thoughts and feelings—lead to a choice that affected the progression of the narrative?

!8 The motivation behind Doree’s attempts at seeing Lloyd is unclear at first, even to the protagonist herself. This is remarkable in that she’s experiencing and responding to impulses within her that she doesn’t necessarily understand and can’t articulate. Yet obviously they are strong and persistent enough to elicit a response, compelling her to action on repeated occasions.

No one is forcing her to see Lloyd or even suggesting that she do so; the process is entirely internal to Doree. Knowing the history, we might attribute the impetus for her compulsion to be embedded somehow within the complexities of grief—the arising of some unmet need, perhaps, or rage, or the longing for answers—though the specifics are unclear. We can’t answer with certainty how or why Doree’s internality has spurred movement here; we can only note that it has. The narrative track we now find ourselves on has been brought into being by this as-yet-indeterminate but deeply personal compulsion.

It’s only just before arrival on her third trip to the institution that Doree begins to understand the why of what she’s doing. As she reflects upon an argument that occurred the day before Lloyd killed their children, she remembers his accusations of negligence and malice: “Who but a crazy woman would buy poison for her family?…Was she planning to try it out on the kids or on him?” (Munro 19-20) Her impulse reveals itself as a product of this recollection: “So was that what she had been thinking—that she could make him see, finally, who it was who was crazy?…

When she realized what was in her head, she should have got off the bus” (Munro 20).

The latter part of this quotation is revealing, suggesting that had Doree been fully aware of her intentions from the beginning, she might have considered it against her better judgement and never gone at all, thus preventing this part of the story from taking place. But because the impulse was felt but not available to her in specific terms, it slipped through. Her interiority su-

!9 perseded her own decision-making process in order to achieve or resolve its inclination.

A reflection from another moment in the story seems to confirm Doree’s suspicions: “Maybe when she decided to try to see him it had been with the idea of making him take it back.

Making him see, and admit, how things had really gone” (Munro 19). It’s true that this thought occurs after the fact and is part speculation on her behalf—Doree still isn’t exactly sure. But her hypothesis seems reliable, regardless of whether or not it is the definitive underlying reasoning behind her journeys. The following excerpts substantiate her theory: “I did it to save them the misery…of knowing that their mother had walked out on them,” Lloyd was quoted as saying after the killings (Munro 19); “That was burned into Doree’s brain” (Munro 19). “You brought it all on yourself,” he tells her (Munro 18). These quotes point to a strong motivating factor: that Doree needs exoneration in the eyes of Lloyd. The fact that he implicated her in deaths of her children, his notion that she was ultimately at fault, is what has moved Doree to action. Regardless that he has been labeled criminally insane, that the law, the public, even she herself knows she is blameless, she needs to be cleared of the accusation by him. His blame holds sway over her, and she has responded to it, pushing against its weight and confinement. Doree’s need for Lloyd to acknowledge the truth of what happened has prompted her to action, catalyzing the narrative into motion.

Upon at last visiting with Lloyd at the institution, Doree finds his appearance and manner affecting: It cost her such an effort to look at him, to get him into her vision as this thin and gray, diffident yet cold, mechanically moving yet uncoordinated man…it had not really seemed to be him she was seeing. It was almost like seeing a ghost.…so strange and wasted. Not

!10 a person worth blaming for anything. Not a person. He was like a character in a dream.

(Munro 9, 19, 20) Lloyd’s weakened and unexpectedly frail presence creates an interesting separation in Doree’s mind. “I wouldn’t hardly have known him,” she says later to Mrs. Sands (Munro 7). This scenario is reminiscent of Doree’s own radical change in appearance, of her own attempts to separate from herself. The person before her isn’t the domineering, manipulative “Lloyd” she married, not the murderer of her children, and it’s here that a significant shift begins to take place in Doree’s interiority and motivations. Doree isn’t delusional—she knows Lloyd is deranged and hasn’t forgotten what he has done. But because Lloyd seems so unlike himself, so unlike an actual person at all, her perception of him softens; she sees him as unthreatening, an object of pity, even. In fact, their conversation during the visit consists primarily of her asking after his wellbeing—his spirits, his nourishment, the availability of physical exercise. Her impulse for vindication never manifests outwardly here; rather it seems to dissolve and transmute, albeit subtly, into an inclination toward caregiving—of assuming the role she was robbed of with the loss of her children.

Doree returns to visit Lloyd on multiple occasions following this first interaction. As earlier, the question of why she continues to see him isn’t made explicit. Doree never verbalizes her reasoning, nor does the narrator offer omniscient perspective—yet the narrative course remains tightly reliant on Doree’s whims. Our task is to find the logic herein, to trace the origins of her actions (and thus the storyline) back to her driving internal compulsions.

It isn’t clear to what degree Doree’s desire for Lloyd's acceptance of responsibility for the deaths of the children is still in play during these succeeding visits. This compulsion doesn’t

!11 have a conspicuous presence at this point in the story, though it would be rash to dismiss it entirely just yet. She doesn’t appear to be continuing her visits with this agenda, but as above, it’s possible that our lack of access to information is creating the impression of its absence. Realistically speaking, it seems unlikely that such a deeply rooted and driving force would vanish quite so suddenly. Also, though Doree herself might not be aware of it and perhaps would vehemently deny such conjecture, the hints at her nascent inclination to nurture Lloyd are curious, and could conceivably attest to her repeated visits. As far-fetched as it may appear superficially, when we consider Doree’s struggle to recognize the old Lloyd in the person she now sees, paired with the maternal void she suffers, the idea of her instinctually caring for him isn’t unimaginable.

Rough speculation aside, there is evidence that may offer a more convincing explanation for her behavior. At several points in the backstory, prior to the deaths of the children, Doree’s sense of and belief in a deeply rooted connection between herself and Lloyd is revealed: The truth of things between them, the bond, was not something that anybody else could understand and it was not anybody else’s business. If Doree could watch her own loyalty it would be all right…No matter how worn out she got with him, he was still the closest person in the world to her, and she felt that everything would collapse if she were to bring herself to tell someone exactly how he was, if she were to be entirely disloyal. (Munro 14, 16) It’s easy to see that this bond was one-sided and ultimately false, developed as a defense mechanism by Doree as a way to assuage her fear of isolation, and to downplay the severity of Lloyd’s ongoing emotional abuse. The idea of the bond and the need to remain faithful to it were self-reinforced enough by Doree throughout her marriage to have become imbedded as habits of

!12 thought and as truths of her subjective reality. She was protective of the bond, and proud of it.

The present-day Doree is not especially naive and would probably balk at the notion of maintaining loyalty to Lloyd in the wake of what happened; likely she would be able to recognize and acknowledge the absurdity and pretense of a bond all along. Even so, it’s plausible that her continued visits to Lloyd are a vestige of this ingrained conditioning, and of her pride. A low-level yet lingering sense of loyalty seems to be affecting her rational capacity here—not entirely, but enough to cause her to keep returning to see him. Considering that everything truly has “collapsed” as she once feared, Doree might be operating out of a habitual sense of responsibility to Lloyd, motivated by a feeling of guilt, of imagined failure and disloyalty on her part. Though she does not recognize it herself, it is feasible that Doree acts out of warped obligation to Lloyd, her continued presence for him being a means of penance.

Given that Doree is immersed deeply in loss and acute emptiness, it’s likely that she is drawn to Lloyd, even in his unfamiliar state, because he is an artifact of sorts—virtually the only facet remaining of Doree’s bygone life. As before, the extremity of her state gives rise to a need for connection and familiarity that can bypass cognition, that can move her to do something that seems so intuitively wrong.

Though we don’t have definitive answers as to the motivation for Doree’s repeated visits to Lloyd, we have credible and likely possibilities, all derived from the sound evidence of Doree’s dialogue, thoughts, behavior, and the context at hand. In analyzing her disposition and inclinations, we have to respect both the complexity of her situation and of the human mind, and resist the urge to ascribe any single, specific impulse to a scenario. It seems that Doree is experiencing a fluctuating combination of the thoughts and emotions identified earlier—the need for

!13 absolvement, pity and the desire to nurture, responsibility and lingering attachment, seeking comfort in the familiar, as well as fear and grief. Doree’s own awareness of these impulses fluctuates as well. Her grief-borne urges have driven her to Lloyd, wherein an array of enigmatic, embedded behaviors have stirred and moved Doree to continue her visits.

It’s here that an “extrinsic event” occurs for the first time, the arrival of a letter to Doree from Lloyd. The narrative movement to this point has been carried exclusively by Doree’s interiority; however, now something happens directly to her, something she did not explicitly cause by way of her inner motivations. It could certainly be argued that she indirectly caused the event— that Lloyd sent the letter as a result of her visits—but this is out of bounds for discussion here in that its impetus was exterior to Doree’s mind. What is of interest is Doree’s response—that is, how the letter affects her inwardly, what decisions and/or actions are prompted as a result, and how those responses become or contribute to the progression of the narrative.

Toward the end of his letter, Lloyd writes: “There is one special thing I wanted to tell you about but cannot write it down. If you ever think of coming back here then maybe I can tell you” (Munro 26). This entices Doree, and we find her again at the institution. The impression at this point is that her visits were becoming routine, and that she would have returned anyway for reasons already outlined. However, curiosity clearly emerges from the nebula of potential motivators here; the mystery of what Lloyd is withholding is at the forefront of her mind: “What she really wanted to talk about was whatever he has said was impossible to put in writing” (Munro 26). The question is: why is she curious; why does she care what he has to say? What value or meaning might she see in it? We aren’t given access to Doree’s thoughts here, but we can hypothesize. Perhaps she’s hoping Lloyd will admit fault in the murders of the children, that he will

!14 alleviate her of blame. We know this to be one of the principal forces behind her initial visit attempts, one of the few desires that she expresses directly. Then there is Lloyd’s implication that because he cannot write what he wants to say, he is keeping back something emotionally substantive. This in itself is highly provocative and attracts natural curiosity. The possibility that Lloyd's information is somehow potent or “special,” as he says, sparks a craving in her. Her eagerness is overt: “Still, you better tell me. If I walked out of here and was struck down by a car, then I would never know, and you would never have the chance to tell me again,” she tells him (Munro 26). Also probable: that because Lloyd's crime is so incomprehensible and the subsequent wreckage of Doree’s life so bewildering, Doree seeks to understand the loss, to make some sense of what happened. Lloyd is the creator and the source of the tragedy; only he could offer true insight.

Lloyd refuses to share his “one special thing” during Doree’s visit, and she leaves unfulfilled. Theoretically, this could create a scenario in which Doree pursues her desire to know what he won’t tell her. The narrative might then progress by whatever actions Doree took to find out, and these impulses would shape the continuation of the story. But this is pure speculation for the sake of demonstration. In actuality, the story gives us no indication of what happens directly afterward, internal to Doree or otherwise. Instead, we’re immediately presented with another letter from Lloyd—another extrinsic event that imposes itself on the protagonist. In it, Lloyd writes: “I have seen the children…seen and talked to them…They do exist and it must be that there is another Dimension…I have got across to whatever one they are in” (Munro 27). He goes on to briefly recount his interactions with the children in this “Dimension,” describing them as “really happy and smart” (Munro 28), and not having any memory of the trauma that befell them.

!15 Lloyd’s revelation has a gradual but immense effect on Doree: “Doree did think that he was crazy…Days went by. Weeks…She didn’t alter her opinion, but she still held on to what he’d written, like a secret” (Munro 29). At this point the story gives us detailed access to Doree’s inner world, allowing us to see directly her internal reaction. Out of prolonged misery comes relief: “It was the idea that the children were in what he had called their Dimension that came sneaking up on her in this way, and for the first time brought a light feeling to her, not pain” (Munro 29).

Her husband’s claim of supernatural contact with the children creates in Doree a genuine respite from grief and protection from future pain: “What was different now was that she had a refuge she could go to” (Munro 29). We can see the extent to which Doree’s extreme grief is present within her; the alleviation provided by Lloyd’s letter is such that she will commit whatever rationalizations are necessary to keep it. By avoiding Mrs. Sands, Doree is denying what she knows to be better judgement for the sake of the security she now feels. She is covetous, understandably, of her newfound consolation, protective of it. It doesn’t matter that she believes Lloyd to be mentally ill, and that she knows he hasn’t changed entirely as he asserts in the letter. “And who had given it to her? Lloyd had given it to her. Lloyd, that terrible person, that isolated and insane person” (Munro 29). She acknowledges him as solely responsible for her sense of relief.

In order to validate and thus preserve what Lloyd has given her, Doree must justify his insanity: Insane if you wanted to call it that. But wasn’t it possible that what he said was true—that he had come out on the other side? And who was to say that the visions of a person who had done such a thing and made such a journey might not mean something?…This notion

!16 wormed its way into her head and stayed there. (Munro 29-30) This rationalization allows for a kind of credibility on Lloyd’s behalf, in Doree’s eyes.

Doree uses Lloyd’s insanity to not only account for his visions, but to give them legitimacy and meaning. Because of her need to believe in what Lloyd has told her and because of her attachment to the relief from pain, she reconciles things in a way that permits and retains these interests. As witnessed in her past insistence of a “bond” between herself and Lloyd, Doree has an inclination for practicing self-delusion as a mechanism for survival. A similar situation has developed here.

And, as in the past when Doree’s self-delusion only served to buttress and sustain an already toxic situation, so it serves her at this point in the narrative. Her defense of Lloyd (a necessity of her rationalization) invites a kind of empathetic softening and a sense of responsibility toward him. Our earlier suspicions of her instinct to assume a nurturing role are made explicit: “…Lloyd, of all people, might be the person she should be with now. What other use could she be in the world…what was she here for if not at least to listen to him?” (Munro 30). In this we also see a nearly exact mirroring of her old loyalty: “Going to meet Lloyd in those days…she had felt no guilt, only a sense of destiny, submission. She had felt that she was put on earth for no reason other than to be with him and to try to understand him” (Munro 30). Doree now sees herself and Lloyd as two people whose respective isolation resulting from the same event—the murders—provides them a connection, a bond. Cyclically, Doree again uses this illusion of a bond to artificially mend her own tragic situation. “Who but Lloyd would remember the children’s names now, or the color of their eyes?” she thinks (Munro 30). Indeed, as we suspected earlier, Doree values Lloyd as an artifact, as evidence of her previous life and the children; he is

!17 a vessel of memory in which the children are preserved. But now he holds additional value: he has a direct link to the children in the afterlife, supposedly, in their “Dimension.” True or not, it is only the idea, as the narrator says, that matters to Doree.

Lloyd’s claims to have had visions of the children has relieved Doree of the full weight of her grief. In order to sustain that relief, Doree has had to make certain rationalizations about Lloyd’s sanity, which, in turn, have affected an empathetic shift in her attitude toward him and reactivated a sense of kinship and responsibility. Now, Doree believes that her purpose in life is to “be with” Lloyd.

Having mapped Doree’s drastic internal shifts here, we can examine how they contribute to the movement of the narrative. In the immediate, temporal world of the story, they prompt Doree to set out on a return to the institution: “So she found herself travelling on the bus again, heading down the highway” (Munro 30). If we were to assume a panoramic view of what’s happened in a purely temporal sense, the story has essentially consisted of a series of Doree’s visits to Lloyd. I would argue, however, that the true movement and substance of this narrative lies in the behavior of the protagonist’s mind.

At this point in the story, Doree’s interior movement consists of a course charted toward attachment, delusion, and desperation—a lack of any true healing, manifested outwardly as a bus ride back to Lloyd’s institution. This trajectory is interrupted, however, by an extrinsic event in the form of a single-vehicle accident in the road ahead. This event halts the carrying-out of Doree’s latest impulse, her regained sense of alliance with and commitment to Lloyd. As before and all along, it is Doree’s reaction to this scenario, this impediment, that will determine the future path of the narrative.

!18 It’s important to remember that Doree’s self-delusion and destructive impulses have arisen from natural, fundamental human desires: relief from pain, intimacy and fellowship, and fulfillment of her idle maternal faculties. And it is these very core motivations that allow Doree to undertake her next action: resuscitation of the boy badly injured in the accident. In a sense, her grief and suffering have prepared her for just such a set of circumstances: the injured boy presents an opportunity to resurrect life. Her longing for her own children and the heartbreak of her loss effectively enables her to respond to the dying boy with focus and ability. Doree recognizes this opportunity for redemption—subconsciously, it seems—and is compelled to carry it out fearlessly. In doing so, Doree’s designs of seeking solace in Lloyd are exposed as false; here the falseness falls away, wilting before true deliverance. An excerpt from Lloyd’s second letter aptly describes the completion of Doree’s narrative arc: “So after such suffering and solitude there is a Grace that has seen the way to giving me this reward” (Munro 27).

Doree’s inner state both created the staging of the bus ride and accounted for her ability to save the boy, and, in essence, save herself. The narrative ends here because her underlying impulses—the ones that have driven the entire story—are quelled.

Despite the significant gaps in direct access to interiority in “Dimensions,” we see upon a full reading how Munro has provided information throughout that allows us to make informed deductions as to what’s going on in Doree’s mind. By piecing together fragments of known information, using contextual clues, examining subtext, and looking for patterns, it’s possible to arrive at an understanding of her inner processes, and from there, to trace how these processes affect the development of the narrative. “Dimensions” is fundamentally a story depicting the degrees by which a character’s extreme emotional state governs the course of her life. As such, its

!19 intent closely mirrors our topic.

!20 Picking Peas: Ambiguity and Mystery in Berriault’s “The Stone Boy”

Gina Berriault’s “The Stone Boy” eludes certainties. As with Munro’s “Dimensions,” Berriault’s work uses sudden and dramatic loss as a context through which to explore the fundamental desires and impulses of human nature, and, like Munro, how the manifestation of those impulses can clash with accepted ideas of normality and rationality. Arnold, the story’s protagonist, is a young boy growing up on a farm within a close-knit rural American community. Accidentally, he shoots and kills his older brother, his idol. Arnold’s inexplicable reaction in the moments thereafter creates the story to follow, sparking the emergence of a deceptively understated yet deeply moving narrative progression.

“The Stone Boy” challenges readers and characters alike with its ambiguity and mystery in regard to Arnold’s internal world. Indeed as we will see, it is the lack of information itself that shapes the fictional world; the absence of access to thoughts and feelings becomes an active component partly responsible for the narrative arc. Even without revelation to the reader or awareness of the character, interiority can affect consequence. Like the story’s characters, we as readers may find ourselves eager to appoint judgement or apply speculation to the mystery—and while this mystery is no doubt compelling, dramatic, and overt—like the murders in Munro’s story, it only accounts for a portion of the narrative unfolding in front of us, a boy’s gradual separation from all that he knows. Through the lens of Arnold’s experience, observing his unique attempts to navigate and cope, we’ll examine the extent to which his thoughts and emotions influence the progression of the narrative, or even comprise the narrative itself.

The first characteristics of Arnold’s interiority we observe are the very same attributes

!21 responsible for sparking the story into motion. Awake before his older brother Eugie, Arnold, watching his brother sleeping, felt a peculiar dismay; he was nine, six years younger than Eugie, and in their waking hours it was he who was subordinate. To dispel emphatically his uneasy advantage over his sleeping brother, he threw himself on the hump of Eugie’s body. Get up! Get up! (Berriault 79) Arnold is made uncomfortable by his brother’s vulnerability in sleep, and the temporary superiority it affords him. He becomes significantly more at ease when the hierarchy is restored; he finds comfort in his own inferior role. Though not envious of Eugie’s elder status, Arnold is intensely fascinated: “Arnold never tired of watching Eugie offer silent praise unto himself. He wondered, as he sat enthralled, if when he got to be Eugie’s age he would still be undersized and his hair still straight” (Berriault 81). In his brother, Arnold has a link to the alluring world of the older, stronger, the more capable and knowledgeable, yet someone more accessible and relatable than a father figure. To Arnold, Eugie represents what he himself might eventually become; Eugie is Arnold’s potential future self in the flesh. Yet despite Arnold’s captivation with his own eventual maturation and the idea of young adulthood, we can see from his earlier dismay that he also fears it. The sudden weight of the role, having shifted to Arnold as his brother sleeps, is unwieldy and intimidating, something he feels he isn’t yet capable enough to properly manage. Eugie’s existence then, in a figurative sense, shields Arnold from the very responsibilities and uncertainties that so fascinate him. Eugie’s vulnerability in sleep translates, in Arnold’s mind, as a threat to this protective boundary. To Arnold, even Eugie’s derision and mockery are ultimately comforting affirmations of their brotherhood and of Arnold’s subordinate but sheltered status.

So it is Arnold’s impulse to reestablish a sense of security, as well as his broader desire to

!22 relish in the fraternal bond, that manifest outwardly into the playful act of jumping onto the bed and waking Eugie. He wants to spend time with his brother while enjoying the ease his youth affords. The connection seems clear and supported by direct evidence of Arnold’s interiority as reported by the omniscient narrator. This causal movement from feeling and thought to action demonstrates Arnold’s culpability in activating the narrative here.

The boys set out for a morning of duck hunting and pea picking, Eugie in the lead. On their way, Arnold’s rifle snags on a fence wire and discharges when he instinctively attempts to pull it free. The bullet kills Eugie instantly. Here, the gunshot is an extrinsic element, in the sense that it isn’t derived from any character’s internal impulses. Arnold is responsible for the staging, as we noted above, but the firing of the rifle itself is due to habitual, even thoughtless reaction.

The shot is unintended and entirely accidental.

The narrator tells us that after observing his brother’s motionless body and noticing the blood on his neck, Arnold “was feeling the same discomfort he had felt when he had watched Eugie sleeping” (Berriault 83), and that he calls to Eugie with “an anxious nudge in his voice” (Berriault 83). Aside from these initial indications of unease, Berriault—quite curiously— offers no additional access to Arnold’s internal world in the immediate aftermath of the accident, and oddly, Arnold’s reaction is ambiguous, not indicative of any specific emotion. With Eugie unresponsive, Arnold walks to the garden and begins to pick peas. From a reader’s point of view, the shock of Eugie’s sudden demise is overshadowed nearly immediately by the striking oddity and unexpectedness of Arnold’s reaction, or apparent lack thereof.

As he harvests the vines, we learn that “his hands were strange to him,” initially suggesting a state of dissociation to account for his lack of visible distress; however this potential clue is

!23 discredited with Arnold’s practical realization that “the pods were cold with the night…numbing his fingers” (Berriault 83). Is the informational void here meant to reflect a barren emotional landscape? Is Berriault’s narrator withholding in order to evoke mystery? We might reasonably attribute Arnold’s peculiar behavior to shock or an involuntary response to emotional trauma. But from an evidentiary standpoint, it’s impossible to truly know the contents of Arnold’s inner world at this point, nor can we be certain of the author’s intentions. The best we can do is observe Arnold’s behavior, keeping in mind that, like all behavior, it is the outward manifestation of some inner workings—that however incongruous to context or our expectations that behavior may seem, it is ultimately an inevitable product of interiority. Behavior indicates the presence and influence of internal motivators, regardless of their availability to the reader or the character’s own awareness. In this case, Arnold’s inner workings have caused him, whether he knows it or not, to behave outwardly as though nothing urgent or unordinary has happened, despite having just shot and killed his brother. In doing so, Arnold’s internality sets the narrative down a unique path.

At home, Arnold reports that “Eugie’s dead,” his reason for the announcement being that his family “would want to know why Eugie wasn’t coming in for breakfast” (Berriault 84). This glimpse of the boy’s logic sheds some light on his inner processes. On one hand, it shows us Arnold’s awareness of Eugie’s death—that he isn’t in denial, or wasn’t somehow prevented from acknowledging or remembering the event. While picking the peas, he knew Eugie had been killed. Whether or not Arnold understands the meaning or implications of Eugie’s death—its permanence, potential effect on him and the family, etc.—remains unknown. Also, it’s revealing that his reasoning for informing the family isn’t “they would want to know that Eugie was dead.”

!24 Arnold seems to consider Eugie’s absence at breakfast as more pressing than the fact of his death.

By way of his odd rationale, Arnold’s reporting of Eugie’s death progresses the narrative.

Bringing the loss into a greater sphere of awareness triggers reactions from the story’s other characters, activating the narrative and increasing dramatic potential. It also communicates to the others the question of Arnold’s peculiarity. His mysterious behavior, known before only to the reader, becomes known to the family.

At this point, there seem to be three main concerns at play: the most immediate being the loss of Eugie, the matter of Arnold’s reaction as it relates to him personally, i.e. the question of how he has been affected, and lastly Arnold’s reaction as it affects the other characters. Speaking to the latter, though we haven’t yet witnessed conflict as a result of Arnold’s behavior, we anticipate its arrival.

Arnold senses impending conflict as well, withdrawing to the barn loft as the others go to find Eugie. He “lay still as a fugitive…he heard a terrifying sound coming toward the house… sounds sharp as knives were rising from his mother’s breast” (Berriault 84). He’s poising himself for exile, expectant of it: “…he would stay up in the loft forever, out of the way. In the night he would sneak down for a drink of water from the faucet…and whatever food they left for him by the barn” (Berriault 84-54). His impulse to hide, his interpretation of his mother’s screams as “terrifying,” and the fact that he considers shunning by his family to be a real threat, all demonstrate that Arnold possesses a sense of culpability in the matter, though we don’t know in what regard. Is it because he sees in their reactions that something is generally wrong, or is there a greater awareness of the potential inappropriateness of his delayed reaction to Eugie’s death?

!25 Does his family’s visible distress trigger in him a realization that he should have done something differently? Does their grief alert him to the sense that perhaps he, too, should be reacting as they are, and does he expect that his lack of display will bring him trouble? Is he assuming he will be blamed for the incident? It isn’t explicitly clear what motivates Arnold’s impulse to hide out in the barn, or why he anticipates rejection and scorn from his family. While there are many possibilities—probabilities, even, the exact source(s) of his concern can’t be pinpointed from the available information.

Even so, Arnold’s retreat to the barn and the moments of internality revealed therein are significant to the story’s progression, in that they demonstrate narrative movement as it pertains to the evolution of Arnold’s inner world. In the barn, we witness for the first time since the shooting a sense of self-awareness, Arnold’s recognition of a relationship between himself and the external. He shows us he understands that his own thoughts and behaviors have the ability to effect the world beyond himself, that his own actions can have, and indeed have had, consequences.

This isn’t to say that he’s discovering this for the first time in his life or that he comprehends the calamity at hand—but in displaying this level of awareness Arnold illuminates a potential narrative pathway, indicating to us that what he thinks and feels might constitute its own narrative arc within the larger story.

As Arnold’s inner concerns begin to reveal themselves in the barn scene, events in the external world, meanwhile, have continued to unfold following the news and discovery of Eugie’s body. The sheriff and undertaker are called to the property, and Arnold’s family no doubt enters into their own nascent grief. It’s likely that nearly identical events would have occurred at this point even if Arnold had reacted expectedly and returned home immediately after the shoot-

!26 ing. These necessities and formalities are independent of Arnold’s interiority, unaffected by its influence. Arnold is summoned to provide an explanation: …when they had asked him why he hadn’t run back to the house to tell his parents, he had had no answer—all he could say was that he had gone down into the garden to pick the peas. His father had stared at him in a pale, puzzled way, and it was then he felt his father and the others set their cold, turbulent silence against him. (Berriault 86) Arnold’s disclosure has the effect of mystifying the other characters. They are confounded by Arnold’s response to his own brother’s death because his behavior conflicts with their expectations of response to tragedy. Regardless of what Arnold’s true feelings about the incident were or are, they have produced behavior that gives the outward impression of indifference—a morally repugnant and practically unimaginable reaction in the wake of such a tragedy. Bewildered by Arnold’s seeming indifference, the others respond in a way that to Arnold feels cold and antagonistic.

The narrative has shifted here in two significant ways: first, an interpersonal distancing is occurring between Arnold and the others. In the world external to Arnold, a sense of conflict has been instilled; a figurative division is forming between the boy and everyone else. Secondly, the potential for Arnold’s interiority itself to feature as a continuing dramatic element of the story has increased. His acute awareness of the others’ distancing is likely to have an emotional effect on him, thus altering the course of his internal narrative. Though we’ve yet to see its actual emotional impact, we can predict, based on his earlier fear of abandonment and/or rejection in the barn, how his awareness of this distancing might threaten him further, affirming and compounding his fears.

!27 For the moment, however, this fear doesn’t materialize. Following the onset of the others’ cold silence, Arnold’s “only feeling was a small one of compunction imposed by his father’s eyes” (Berriault 86). This is curious, considering the above developments. Arnold’s minor sense of contrition here—his only feeling, the narrator reports—comes from sensing something in his father’s demeanor, rather than any of the larger imminent circumstances. The feeling is a superficial one, only the vague impression of guilt versus the knowing of it; a compulsory shame without foundation—at least in this moment, anyway. Thus far we haven’t been able to say with any authority what Arnold has or hasn’t felt in terms of his brother’s death or his involvement in it; in fact, this is only the second occasion since the accident we’ve learned explicitly of his emotions.

However, at this point it’s clear by default—his only feeling being a small one of compunction— that he’s not feeling anything about the incident at all. This isn’t to say that he hasn’t felt anything about it, only that in this particular moment he doesn’t.

Taken by his father and his uncle Andy to the town courthouse, Arnold is questioned by the sheriff as to why he we went to pick peas for an hour rather than return home right away.

Arnold thinks “it seemed odd now that he had not run back to the house and wakened his father, but he could not remember why he had not” (Berriault 88). The only answer he can think to give is, “I come down to pick peas” (Berriault 88). Pressed further by the sheriff to explain himself, Arnold replies that “The sun was gonna come up…It’s better to pick peas while they’re cold” (Berriault 88). We wonder if this was truly Arnold’s motivation at the time, or if he’s simply giving the practical answer because he has no other explanation to offer.

Again, while it is possible to speculate at length as to what prompted Arnold to act as he did, there is nothing yet to suggest any certainties. We’re just as much in the dark as Arnold’s

!28 father, Uncle Andy, and the sheriff. Regardless, the purpose here is to observe how Arnold’s interiority drives the story throughout its entirety, not just from one point, however significant or influential that one point may be. While the effects of Arnold’s early interiority are key to the progression of the narrative, to dwell on solving the mystery of Arnold’s initial behavior alone is to neglect the role his subsequent states of mind play in shaping and comprising the remainder of the narrative arc. Although the characters, understandably, are intent on getting an answer to the lingering question of why Arnold acted as he did, our objective is to examine the role of Arnold’s interiority within the context of their scrutiny—to see how his own evolving internal world continues to affect the fictional present, and to what degree it constitutes the story itself.

Arnold is unable to account for his behavior in a way that makes logical sense to the sheriff. The boy’s seeming indifference, a byproduct of some emotional response to which we are not privy, has effectively led to the judgment which befalls him: “Andy and his father and the sheriff had discovered what made him go down into the garden. It was because he was cruel, the sheriff had said, and didn’t care about his brother” (Berriault 89). While we can’t answer the question of why Arnold acted as he did after Eugie’s death or explain his inability to remember his motivations, we can refute the sheriff’s claim of cruelty and carelessness. We know from the story’s beginning that Arnold admired his brother dearly, and that “Arnold had wanted to be with Eugie more than with anybody else” (Berriault 87). Arnold, rather heartbreakingly, cannot counter this condemnation. His own behavior is inexplicable to him for reasons we don’t have access to. According to the others, if he had cared about his brother he would have run home—yet clearly he did not run home. How can he justify his love for his sibling—perhaps the person he cared about most in the world—to himself or anyone else when his actions indicate the contrary? He is essen-

!29 tially defenseless against their accusations: “…Arnold saw that his uncle’s eyes had absorbed the knowingness from the sheriff’s eyes…Arnold lowered his eyelids meekly against his uncle’s stare” (Berriault 89).

Arnold’s inner reaction to Eugie’s death manifested in a way that has led others to conclude Arnold does not care about his brother—a verdict which strongly contradicts Arnold’s actual feelings for Eugie. Arnold has caused, albeit entirely unintentionally, the situation that now comprises his life; his interiority has led the narrative to a point of emotional and situational instability. Arnold must now react against the very circumstances he inadvertently created.

The disparity between the others’ judgment and Arnold’s honest love for his brother becomes the driving conflict from Arnold’s point of view. In the immediate aftermath of their judgment, Arnold isolates himself from the rest of the family. We know Arnold is cognizant that others have deemed him cruel; he’s aware of what everyone thinks about him. We might infer then that his withdrawal demonstrates an awareness that his physical presence could be upsetting and unwanted, or perhaps it is a sense of shame (or both) that causes him to avoid conspicuousness. Additionally, Arnold’s earlier fears of abandonment and shunning have reemerged: “At evening…He was afraid that they did not want him to eat supper with them. But in a few minutes another fear that they would go to the trouble of calling him…”(Berriault 89). Arnold wants to avoid any disturbance that might contribute to his possible rejection.

The precariousness of both Arnold’s internal and external atmosphere, the uncertainty and volatility of both, constitute the forefront of the developing narrative. The question of how to continue on with normal life amid the potential scorn of the family has become the immediate problem for Arnold and the predominant thread of the narrative. Does Arnold still have a place

!30 among them? What will life look like now, and how will things go on from here? Arnold is entirely alone in the world, vilified in the eyes of his own family. Though we do not see explicit evidence of it, we can imagine his sense of isolation here. He perceives the jars of peas in the kitchen as “a reproach to him,” demonstrating the weight of their contempt upon him (89). Curiously, however, there remains a complete absence of information as to how Arnold feels about the death of his brother, or whether or not Arnold has a true understanding of why the others view him as they do. We only see his concern of admonishment in terms of how it inhibits his sense of acceptance, rather than relating to any personal sense of guilt or shame corresponding with the loss of his brother. Yes, he understands that the others disapprove of his going to pick peas and that they consider him uncaring of Eugie, but it isn’t clear if he comprehends the connection therein.

Later, when visitors come to pay their respects to the bereaved family—an act of ritual, another formality that would occur regardless of Arnold’s actions and apparent attitudes, fully independent of his internality—Arnold makes an interesting decision: Even as he had been undecided before supper whether to remain outside or take his place at the table, he now thought that he should go upstairs, and yet he stayed. If he stayed, he thought, as he always stayed and listened when visitors came, they would see that he was only Arnold and not the person the sheriff thought he was. (Berriault 90) Arnold’s action here is motivated explicitly by his desire to be seen by others as normal, and to challenge the labels imposed upon him. He is compelled to stay, trusting that his mere presence will work in asserting his love for his brother. These compulsions work to progress the narrative by setting the temporal staging, in that Arnold’s physical presence amid the others

!31 arranges potentially conflicting elements in open confrontation. Convinced of his own capacity for redemption—or the capacity of the others’ recognition, rather—Arnold creates an expectation that will either be met with success or failure. His motivations have led to actions that not only increase the opportunity for conflict, but will inevitably produce consequences.

Finding himself in the company of the visitors, Arnold perceives an unspoken scrutiny: “He knew that the story had got around to them during the day…that although they were talking only about Eugie they were thinking about him…if he even moved his foot, they would all be alerted” (Berriault 91). Whether they are truly all thinking of him, despite its likelihood, we can’t be sure. We might surmise that his body language—“He sat with his arms crossed and his hands tucked into his armpits and did not lift his eyes”—is doing little to revive his reputation (Berriault 90). Regardless, Arnold’s presumption of their attention generates self-consciousness. Wishing to be inconspicuousness rather than noticed, Arnold cannot move: “He knew without looking up that the men were watching him” (Berriault 91). Though we aren’t given access to Arnold’s realization, it seems likely from his sudden paralysis that he understands his attempt at exoneration has failed, that the others have not seen “that he was only Arnold” (Berriault 90). In fact, his presence seems to have only affirmed the very impression of indifference he had hoped to refute: “Not a tear in his eye,” observes Arnold’s uncle Andy (Berriault 91), directing the attention of the others.

The boy’s desire for vindication, likely spurred by his fear of abandonment and wish for acceptance, impelled his presence among the visitors—a move that essentially backfired, ultimately reinforcing any preexisting disdain. It also prompts verbal derision from Uncle Andy: If we’d’ve shot our brother, we’d’ve come runnin’ back to the house, cryin’ like a baby…

!32 What would of been the use of actin’ like that?…If your brother is shot dead, he’s shot dead. What’s the use of gettin’ emotional about it? The thing to do is go down the the garden and pick peas. Am I right? (Berriault 91) Uncle Andy’s words may do more work than he intended. Earlier I mentioned the possibility that Arnold might not comprehend what the inappropriateness of having gone to pick peas has to do with the others’ opinion of Arnold’s indifference toward his brother. Uncle Andy’s rant connects all of the dots, essentially providing Arnold an explanation for the entire dilemma and the reasoning for the judgment imposed upon him. While we don’t actually witness here if any such clarification or fuller understanding takes place within Arnold’s mind, we know by his having heard Uncle Andy that the chance exists.

After the visitors depart and Arnold is finally alone, he goes upstairs to his room. The narrator reports that “He felt nothing, not any grief. There was only the same immense silence and crawling inside of him…” (Berriault 92). Does this “same” silence and sensation refer to the “cold, turbulent silence” Arnold felt earlier upon first noticing the others’ distancing (Berriault 86)? It’s possible, and would make sense in this context. Using our knowledge of Arnold’s previous emotional responses in conjunction with his current one, and considering the context at hand, we might infer that following the incident with the visitors, Arnold feels exceptionally isolated; the question of his separation and disgrace seem to have been confirmed and his fate has been sealed, so to speak. The others did not recognize what Arnold perceives as obvious—his normality. Having no explanation for his own actions, having been publicly disparaged, and being entirely alone, we could interpret his “crawling” feeling to be vague or indefinite helplessness, doom, and/or isolation. Yet it could be something different altogether—something he’s felt ever since

!33 the moment he understood Eugie was dead. It could be what he feels in place of grief; that immense silence could be grief itself.

Awakened abruptly in the early night, Arnold goes to his parents’ room. He moves with urgency, clearly intent on some as-yet-unknown purpose. Calling to his mother from behind the closed door, Arnold expected her to realize that he wanted to go down on his knees…and tell her that Eugie was dead…expected her to tell him to come in and allow him to dig his head into her blankets and tell her about the terror he had felt when he knelt beside his brother…He had come to come to clasp her in his arms…grieving with her for Eugene. (Berriault 92) So we see that Arnold is suddenly compelled to convey his grief. But is this compulsion a result of an actual need to express these emotions, or rather the desire to demonstrate his capability in doing so? Is he truly experiencing the feelings he envisions himself expressing to his mother, or might this be an enactment of sorts meant to appease the expectations of others—an attempt at forgiveness, sympathy, or acceptance? Does this indicate that Arnold now understands that he “should” have felt these things initially, and has he realized that his scorning is the result of not having done so? His intent, as he waits behind the door, is ambiguous. Denied entry by his mother, Arnold has “a stricken moment” before returning upstairs. We might speculate that his mother’s rejection is distressing regardless of the authenticity of his grief. Like before, when convinced that the others would see the truth of his character, Arnold’s expectations of recognition and understanding remain unfulfilled. He continues to be shut out, unrelieved of the burden of judgment.

Whatever Arnold’s true motivation here, its resultant action affects the progression the

!34 story. In the narrative of Arnold’s interiority, he has reached a resignation of sorts. The following morning, Arnold “kept his eyelids lowered to deny the night…He would never again, he vowed, ask them for anything…” (Berriault 93). His fruitless attempts at validation have led to Arnold’s acceptance of a perceived fate as an outcast. Arnold seems to have interpreted his mother’s denial as definitive evidence that redemption is beyond hope. He steels himself against the bleakness of this reality, hardening in the face of what he presumably imagines to be a lonely and meek existence. When Arnold’s father passes him a pitcher of milk at the breakfast table, however, Arnold sees that he may not yet be as doomed as he thinks: “relief rained over his shoulders at the thought that his parents recognized him again…had they realized together why he had come down the stairs and knocked at their door?” (Berriault 94).

Before this resumed hope can translate into any specific course of action or further thought on Arnold’s behalf, Arnold’s father reports that one of the cows has gone missing and is likely up on the mountain giving birth to her calf. This is an entirely extrinsic event that intercepts the path of the narrative. Arnold recognizes that fetching the calf would have been Eugie’s job, and subsequently decides he will be the one to bring the cow down the mountain this time.

His exact rationale, unsurprisingly by this point, is unavailable to us. The act as homage to Eugie, as assuming the responsibility of his brother’s now vacant role, or as a means of gaining respect and forgiveness in the eyes of the family are possible candidates, though no direct evidence for any are given.

His impulse immediately gains the attention of his parents: “At the door he paused reluctantly, his back to [his mother], knowing that she was seeking him out, as his father was doing” (Berriault 94). Arnold’s decision to go after the calf seems to elicit a softening of his

!35 mother’s harsh attitude toward him. She invites Arnold to say what it was he had wanted to say the night before, and does so “humbly,” suggesting that perhaps she regrets her earlier lack of compassion (Berriault 95). Arnold opts to forgo the opportunity to express the grief he had so urgently wanted to display: “I didn’t want nothing,” he says before leaving the house (Berriault 95). Arnold’s inflectionless reply, sudden disregard for his own acceptance, and the fact that he was “frightened by his answer,” are curious (Berriault 95). The intention behind his response is vague, yet in terms of narrative movement, it allows the story to end while not being finished; in its ambiguity, it leads us past the ending to question the future of both Arnold and the family.

Paradoxically, it is the absence of Arnold’s interiority regarding the death of his brother that emphasizes and empowers its own presence in “The Stone Boy.” Arnold’s interiority at the time of the shooting acts almost as an independent entity despite having originated from him. Its causal influence continues long after its initial manifestation, and works to reshape Arnold’s reality. Ultimately, it is Arnold’s attempts to cope with the very consequences he involuntarily catalyzes and unwittingly perpetuates, that progresses and comprises the narrative arc. Without the thoughts and feelings that caused Arnold to pick peas instead of run home, his behaviors would not have conflicted with the expectations of others. And without this behavior and its attendant inexplicability, Arnold would not have been met with such harsh judgement and alienation.

Lacking these elements, the stage would not have been set for the emergence of a more subtle tragedy—the potential damage of the experience on Arnold.

!36 The Undeniable Inner World

Doree devotes herself to the murderer of her children. Arnold walks to the garden and pick peas as the morning sun rises, his brother newly dead in the nearby field. In each of these stories, interiority drives characters to behave in ways that are unexpected. As we’ve seen with Doree and Arnold, interiority acts as its own entity at times, a presence capable of influencing in ways that contradict rationality, norms and expectations, or a character’s best interests. In fact, it is this very quality that lies at the root of both “The Stone Boy” and “Dimensions;” the outwardly irrational and seemingly absurd behaviors of Doree and Arnold in their times of loss are the same attributes that generate the stories. In the case of “Dimensions,” Doree’s compulsions drive her to increasingly far-fetched convictions. The story we witness is the process of this insanity unfolding—Doree’s clandestine and desperate journey. Arnold, however, follows a rather expected, natural, understandable set of compulsions born from one baffling, inexplicable impulse.

Unlike Munro’s story, in “The Stone Boy,” the effects of interiority take on a life beyond the protagonist. In “Dimensions,” Doree’s interior progression is intensely private; she closely guards both her inner narrative and actions. As such, the chain of causality never diverges far from her if at all, never spills out into her world. The shape of “The Stone Boy,” by contrast, is forked. As soon as Arnold’s family discovers that he went to pick peas instead of running home, a deviation occurs, sparking a branch of development over which Arnold no longer has control yet which affects him severely. Arnold’s internal narrative exists in parallel with and responds to the “external” narrative he inadvertently triggered.

As readers, our access to these inner worlds varies greatly not only from one story to the

!37 next, but within the stories themselves. While Munro gradually provides information that allows a reader to assemble a comprehensive understanding of Doree’s motivations and subsequent actions, Berriault leaves us more in the dark. Not only does Berriault use the mystery of Arnold’s interiority to catalyze the story into being, she preserves it as an undercurrent of the narrative, a persistent question that lingers long past the story’s conclusion. Munro, while periodically withholding internality throughout in order to retain a sense of mystery and tension, (and possibly to mimic Doree’s own numbness or lack of self awareness), still provides us enough to empathize with Doree’s plight, to know the truth in Doree’s logic even when she doesn’t. We see that despite however deeply flawed her rationalizations and actions may be, they are ultimately blameless and perhaps inevitable—that even we might fall prey to the same desperate hope. And although Berriault’s windows into Arnold’s mind are spare, like Munro, they are enough to build an understanding of his discomfort amid the scrutiny and increasing isolation following his brother’s death. But while Doree comes fully to light, Arnold remains an enigma. Berriault never gives us the answer we and the story’s characters most want to know.

Yet no matter how much or how little these stories’ narrators and characters reveal to us —regardless of the consistency or fullness of our knowing—“The Stone Boy” and “Dimensions” share their origins in fundamental human concerns. Their fictional worlds and the narratives in front of us exist as they do because of the manifestation of Doree and Arnold’s innermost thoughts and feelings. However self-destructive or outwardly incomprehensible Doree’s returning to Lloyd may appear, her actions stem from the need for hope, to nurture, to be relieved of pain. Why Arnold went to the garden after shooting his brother, we won’t ever know. But it is his growing sense of alienation, his reaction to the condemnation of his family, his state of mind

!38 within the fallout of the accident that are the true heart of the story.

Both works use the experience of loss and attendant isolation to lead us to something more revealing about these characters and even ourselves—that perhaps it is the presence and quality of these irrepressible inner truths, these core human motivators that ultimately determine character—fictional or otherwise. There’s something in their undeniability, their inevitable influence, in their control and power, that brings into question what constitutes the essence of a person. And while these analyses have not necessarily shown me how to know what my own characters should think or feel (that is perhaps a different exercise altogether), they have clarified for me the interconnectedness of internal and external fictional realities, demonstrating how what constitutes a narrative is frequently wrought from elemental human compulsions. It was striking to see the influence a character’s inner world could wield, to realize how much of what was had its origins in human impulse. A character’s inner world is a continuous, fluid reality, just as “real” and fictionally significant as anything extrinsic or temporal; ultimately it’s this inner reality that shapes the external reality. Regardless of whether or not an author makes evident the relationship, inner and outer realities are inextricable, married into a continuum of causality.

In this sense, the universally human concerns of one’s characters—their thoughts, feelings, and dispositions—can serve reliably as craft tools for narrative development. By regarding a character’s inner world, one can use interiority as a compass by which to guide the story. In doing so, a narrative’s progression doesn’t happen by arbitrary or forced means; it grows outward as a result of itself, from rudimentary elements that bridge the fictional and real worlds.

!39 Works Cited

Berriault, Gina. “The Stone Boy.” Stolen Pleasures: Selected Stories of Gina Berriault.

Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011. Print.

Munro, Alice. “Dimensions.” Too Much Happiness. New York: Vintage, 2009. Print.