The Short Story Runaway - Essay Example

Runaway “Runaway” is a story of Carla, a woman who lives in the country with her husband and a pet goat, Flora. Carla and her husband’s source of income are from tourists whom they take on trail rides. Carla is unhappy with her life because of her confrontational husband who does not seem to understand her. One day she decides to just run away from her husband with the help of her neighbor, Mrs. Jamieson. However, the escape does not materialize because Carla changed her mind along the way. I like the short story “Runaway”. I enjoyed reading every page and I just did not want to stop. The story kept me in suspense. There was no predictability in the plot, which always kept you guessing as to what will happen to the characters. I was half-way through the story and yet I cannot anticipate how the story will end. The main issues in the story remain unresolved even after the story ended. The story keeps running on my mind because I am trying to process the story. There is no clarity and closure even at the end. All throughout the story, I seem to be waiting for a greater surprise as to what will be the ending. The author’s style is to slowly bring the reader to the awareness of the twist in the story. The theme of running away is repeated all throughout and it is presented as an unacceptable option. The story depicts several forms of complicated relationships. The relationship between romantic partners, that of Clark and Carla, the relationship between a parent and a child, that of Carla and her parents and the relationship between friends, that of Carla and Mrs. Jamieson. “Runaway” also presents the inner struggles of a woman, her weaknesses and her strengths. It shows how sometimes a woman acts differently outside, not letting her inner being reflect her actions. The story is presented in a lucid and vivid manner but I am confused whether I like the characters or not. All the characters in the story starting from Carla, Clark, and Mrs. Jamieson surprise me as to their real persona. They are not predictable. I just cannot anticipate their actions. Munro’s writing style is one wherein she predicts her readers’ thoughts and perceptions and then she disproves the readers’ expectations by writing the opposite of what they expect. This is one quality that I admire in Munro’s literary style. It kept me at the edge of my seat. The characters are described in details which reflect true to life people. It is through this detailed characterization that one can feel an emotional attachment to the characters. I just cannot stop thinking about the characters even after reading the story. I had to analyze each character and explain to myself why they reacted in a certain way when faced with the situations in the story. I also cannot stop wondering what will happen to them in the future. Carla, the main character of “Runaway” suffered from indecision all throughout the story. Carla depicts a character with an impulsive emotion. She feels lost but she has no roots. I think Carla thought she could run away from her husband but she was actually incapable of doing so. As described in Bruner’s ten features of narrative, I can say that running away from Clark is her intentional state but as we can see from the ending of the story, her intentional state did not determine the ending of story. She wanted to runaway but later on changed her mind. She wanted to change her life abruptly but suddenly while in the bus decides to get-off. There seems to be an onset of a different set of sensations which was exactly the opposite of what she felt when she was conversing with Mrs. Jamieson and planning her escape. Just when you think that Carla is a hero, she unexpectedly shows her flaws. At the beginning of the story, I thought that Mrs. Jamieson was the antagonist in the story because of Carla’s reaction when she saw her driving along the road. She even thought in her mind, “Let it not be her.” In the end though, I realize that Mrs. Jamieson is a person with a kind heart. She was someone who cared for Carla, even helping her run away from her husband after she learns of Carla’s travails with him. Still, despite her actions, I am still confused about her personality. Did she really have a crush on Carla, as was described by her friends? Or was it just a simple case of sympathizing with someone whom you know needed help? Until the end of the story, Mrs. Jamieson’s character is a complicated puzzle for me. Clark’s character is also mind-boggling. I do not know whether she really loves Carla or not. At some point in the story, I just felt that he is simply using her for his own motives and desires. He needed her to get some money from Mrs. Jamieson because of the apparent humiliation that Carla suffered from Mr. Jamieson. I am puzzled by his character because I do not understand whether she really cared for Carla. He seemed to enjoy every bit of detail of Carla’s narration about the molestation of Mr. Jamieson. In fact, Carla often used the “molestation story” to excite Clark. But an added twist to this is that even Carla gets excited when narrating the story. After my own analysis of this part of the story, I realized that Carla made up this story just to sexually entice Clark. I think over the years, Clark did not find Carla as sexually attractive anymore; thus, Carla fabricated the story about Mr. Jamieson to rekindle the fire in their sexual life. Bruner’s intentional state entailment was also embodied in the character of Clark. In the scene where Clark goes to Mrs. Jamieson to return her clothes, one would think that he was there to confront Mrs. Jamieson for helping Carla run away. I gather this perception since at the start of the story, Clark is described as someone who is hot headed and easily loses his temper. However, his intentional state is reversed as I see him acting differently in his “confrontation” scene with Mrs. Jamieson. I also thought that he was out there to ask for money from Mrs. Jamieson for the apparent humiliation that Carla suffered with Mr. Jamieson. I got this impression because in the early part of the story we find him and Carla discussing this matter. Narrative diachronicity was employed by Munro in this short story. She made used of flashback in relating the first “runaway” experience of Carla. Munro went back in time and described Carla’s rendezvous with Clark and how they ended up together despite the disapproval of Carla’s parents. Munro made use of hermeneutic composability when she described how the birds behaved a couple of days after Carla returned. “In a day or so they were restored, flying high, circling and dropping to earth, disappearing over the woods, coming back to rest in the familiar bare tree” (Munro, p. 43). The sentence above is an example of what Bruner described as hermeneutic composability because we can say that “there is a difference between what is expressed in the text and what the text might mean” (Bruner, p. 7). The “disappearing over the woods” seems to be describing Carla who ran away and then came back as represented by the “coming back to rest”, that is going back again to her marriage with Clark. The “bare tree” could symbolize the emptiness of the relationship she has with Clark. Another instance in the story where Munro made use of hermeneutic composability is in the character of Flora, the goat. I think it was quite obvious that Flora represents Carla in the story. Just like Carla, Flora ran away too and came back. In the end, Flora is represented by the “little dirty bones in the grass”. This text has a different meaning in that it implies that Flora is dead and most likely, it was Clark who killed her. It also could be a symbolism that Clark had destroyed all hopes of Carla to try to run away again from him. The canonicity and breach aspect of a narrative was also used by Munro in “Runaway”. First, there was a breach in trust committed by Carla. She intentionally made up the “molestation” story between her and Mr. Jamieson. She also violated the trust of her husband when she planned to run away from him. On the other hand, Clark also committed a breach when she did not tell Carla that Flora had come back. Clark knew how important Flora was to Carla yet he never told her about it. Bruner’s context sensitivity was also featured in the short story. The readers are led into drawing their own conclusion regarding what Mrs. Jamieson felt towards Carla. We are led to our own interpretation of the kind of relationship that Mrs. Jamieson wants to have with Carla. Mrs. Jamieson’s friends think it is a “crush” which she feels for Carla. Some of us may have taught that Mrs. Jamieson might have wanted a homosexual relationship with Carla. Still others might think it is merely a mother-daughter relationship that she wanted because that was how she described it with her friends. But even up to the end of the story, I still am confused as to the real feelings of Mrs. Jamieson for Carla because she was always in her thoughts. After reading the story, I felt I wanted it to have a part two, just like in the movies. I felt that it left me hanging. It is as if story ended so abruptly. I cannot help but think that the author wanted me to just end the story the way I wanted it to. So much is left to the readers’ imagination. Work Cited Bruner, Jerome. “The Narrative Construction of Reality”. Critical Inquiry. Autumn 1991. Web. 30 May 2011. http://www.semiootika.ee/sygiskool/tekstid/bruner.pdf Munro, Alice. Runaway. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print. Read More