Personal Response to Dear Life by Alice Munro - Essay Example

Teacher Personal Response to Alice Munro’s Dear Life Munro’s book en d Dear Life is engaging because of the insight it provides to the reader about human character. It includes our struggle as well as our flaw and dilemma as persons as Munro derived from her personal experiences. The book is made up of 14 stories and has won 2013 Nobel Peace Prize in Literature and endeared to her readers including me. Unlike a typical book or novel where characters are elevated to a lofty status that are nowhere within our reach to relate, the characters in Munro’s book are as human as we are. They are as flawed as everyone else and struggled like everyone else they also faced the same dilemma like we do. For example, the sibling rivalry in The Eye as Munro narrates her five year old self of how she disliked the idea of having another brother of which any young person with a sibling can relate. The book begun with the story “To Reach Japan” which involved Greta and her husband Peter. The title actually alludes to a bottle in the sea coming from Vancouver and hoping that it will reach Japan. This story is engaging because it is full of allegory that one has to read between the lines. Munro may not be explicit in narrating that this marriage is about break except by hinting their differences that Greta is sentimental who like to romanticize things while Peter is a pragmatist (being an engineer). Munro was not direct that Greta will leave Peter except that we understand what she intends to do. In the train station, there was this scene that the people there are calling and waiting for her but someone is holding her back. This is basically an allegory of Greta’s struggle to leave Peter. I find this story told in the allegory because there are several sub meanings in the narration that the reader had to read between the lines and not just read the text literally. This could be the reason why the novel is very engaging and enjoyable to the readers because there are multiple meanings in the texts. To Reach Japan is then followed by Amundsen which I did not exactly know what it meant until I read the story. It is actually a place associated with a new teacher at a tuberculosis “san”. It is a strange place because when people do not show up at work, it is expected that something horrible happened to them. Here Alice Munro told us the story of Vivien, Mary and Dr. Alister Fox. The story may sound morbid to me but nevertheless Munro showed her ability to put in stories with complex plot in such a small space of few pages. This may be the least of my favorites in terms of plot but this piece is a good example of how to put in several sub plots in such a short space. Amundsen was then followed by the moving story of Leaving Maverley which revolved around a theater owner (Capital) whose name is Morgan Holly who was asked to keep quite because an employee is going to give birth who was replaced by an odd character Leah who does not like to talk. Later Leah also did not like watch movies because of her father’s order to the delight of the theater owner Morgan Holly. She was also not allowed to walk home alone so a police officer had to walk her home. The juice of the story however was not the attitude of Morgan Holly towards Leah but the budding relationship between Ray and Leah. The untold romance between the two just keeps the reader glued to the read particularly when Ray protested that her walking of Leah home made him a lucky a man considering that Leah was a beautiful girl. Ray on his part did not like the idea of him being perceived as lucky because he fell in love with Leah. I personally like the dilemma of Ray that he did not like how his classmates perceive him as lucky one to have walked the beautiful Leah home because he is in love. This short story spoke of the innocence of a young girl and the love of a young man which makes an engaging read. There was not much of a romantic dialogue between the two but what was left unsaid kept the imagination of the reader preoccupied. There are other short stories such as The Eye where Alice Munro assumed the character of a five year old with an upcoming brothers. As expected, the arrival of other siblings changed the relationship of five year old Munro with her mom. Of course her mother would convince her that she would like to have little brothers and she was nice to say that she was not sure. Here, Munro talked about sibling rivalry common among households. As a young student, I can relate with the plot having my own siblings and friends who also complains about their siblings. I can only say that “sure, her mom would tell her she wanted a brother even if she knows that he will bully her when he grows up”. Not exactly the same will happen but this reflects the common thought of a teenage kid. The plot may be predictable for a young person like but it also has a subplot which talked about generational gap of how different the perspective of a young Munro to her mother. I already know that eventually the kid will have to argue with her mother when she grows up and very possibly, with her brothers too. Finally, there was the last short story entitled Dear Life which is basically a narrative of Alice Munro’s personal life albeit told as a fiction. It began with a description of the place where Munro spent her childhood which includes description of her home and childhood school. And just when we travel back to Munro’s childhood to rub on us a sense of innocence and bliss, then comes the spoiler in the character of a neighbor named Mrs. Netterfield. I am not sure what to make out of Mrs. Netterfield but she something that kids do not like and mothers’ do not trust. There was something about her for Munro’s mother to watch out for Mrs. Netterfield and felt guarded upon seeing her. Again in this story, the reader must go beyond the obvious text about a despicable neighbor. I would like to understand more this as the “coming of maturity” “seeing the world” as it is. It is like us being sheltered in the comfort and love of home and families then we have to grow up and face world including its ugly faces. Our parents would like to shield us from it but deep inside, they also know that we have to deal with it ourselves. We too do not like everything we see in life and wished that our parents could shield us from it. But just like our parents, we also know deep inside that we have to deal with it ourselves. We just have life as a whole which does not only include the good but also the bad. After reading Munro’s collection of short stories in her book Dear Life, I now understand why it won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for Literature and why it is endeared to many people. It is because it talked about life itself, the commonality of experiences we all share as we struggle It was also a candid and unselfish of the author as she bared not only her thoughts and emotions but also the environment where she grew up and in a way that can be understood that endeared her more to us. Her characters were endearing as well as threatening such as Ray who fell in love with Leah as she walks her home every weekend nights, the threatening and far from charming Mrs. Netterfield and the sibling rivalry present in the eye. In sum, Alice Munro’s collection of short stories in her book Dear Life was not only entertaining but also incisive. It is incisive not in a way that science would reveal truth about nature and the universe but on our common humanity as she tried to articulate our common experience and struggle through her characters in her book Dear Life. Read More