Review Comma Splices
Tobias Wolff's stories are depressing, in other words, we can not find redemption in them, instead, we find only nihilism.
"The Rich Brother" is about self-delusion, moreover, we witness two brothers in a symbiotic relationship, some would call their relationship mutually interdependent in a sick way, it needs to change.
"Say Yes" exposes a husband for who he is, an ignorant racist who thinks he controls his wife however his disconnection from her may result in their divorce, time will tell.
My argument is that there is little or no redemption in a typical Wolff story it is too full of despair and helplessness to evidence redemption, also the characters appear unable to mature beyond the adolescent stage, the period in which we tend to be reckless and hedonistic.
How to fix and how not to fix a comma splice
FANBOYS and conjunctive adverbs
Study Questions for “The Deposition”
One. Explain the title’s double meaning.
There is the deposition of the witness and there is the metaphorical deposition of Burke who is questioned for the crime of lust and stalking.
He becomes a witness to his own life with a stream of memories as he walks the streets of his youth and is “flooded with desire” and nostalgia.
Does he experience metacognition?
Two. Burke is a great judge of the world’s failings but not his own. Explain.
He is a self-righteous and angry man who has let his body go to pot, so to speak, even as he derides the dilapidated structures around him.
Three. Explain Burke’s pride and its relationship with the story’s theme.
Here we read a key passage:
Burke believed that he had a gift for sensing not only a person’s truthfulness in response to a given question but, more important, his natural inclination toward the truth. It was like a homing instinct in those who had it. No matter what the risk, no matter how carefully they might have defended themselves with equivocation and convenient lapses of memory, it was still there, fidgeting to be recognized. Over the years, Burke had brought considerable skill to the work of helping people overcome their earlier shufflings and suppressions, even their self-interest, to say what they really wanted to say. The nurse needed to tell his story; Burke was sure of it, and sure of his own ability to coax the story forth. He would master this coy witness.
Four. An honest assessment of Burke might be that he is so susceptible to lust and lasciviousness that he can be put into a trance and go into “stalker mode.” Is this true?
Read this key passage:
Burke held back—though barely aware of holding back, or of the catch in his throat. She was tall, magnificently tall to his eyes. He caught just a glance of lips painted black before her long dark hair swung forward and veiled her face as she looked down to find her footing on the curb. She stopped on the sidewalk and watched the bus pull away in a belch of black smoke. Then she slipped her bag off her shoulder and stretched luxuriously, going up on her toes, hands raised high above her head. Still on tiptoe, she joined her fingers and pushed her hips from side to side. She was no more than twenty feet away, but it was clear to Burke that she hadn’t noticed him, that she thought she was alone out here. He felt himself smile. He waited. She dropped her arms, did a few neck rolls, then hiked her bag back onto her shoulder and started up the street. He followed, matching his pace to hers.
She walked slowly, with the deliberate, almost flat-footed tread of a dancer, toes turned slightly out. She was humming a song. Her knee-length plaid skirt swayed a little as she walked, but she held her back straight and still. The white blouse she wore had two sweat spots below her shoulder blades; Burke could picture her leaning back against the plastic seat on the bus, drowsing in the swampy air as men stole looks at her over their folded papers.
The tone of her humming changed; grew more rhythmic, less tuneful. Her hips rolled under the skirt, her shoulders shifting in subtle counterpoint. Her legs were very white and on the back of her right calf there was a dark spot the size of a penny—maybe a mole, or a daub of mud.
Burke has been following the woman for some time as we continue to read:
Burke stared at the curve of her neck, so white, so bare. It looked damp and tender. She went on in her slow glide and he followed. He had been walking in time with her, but such was his absorption that he lost the beat, and at the sound of his footsteps she wheeled about and looked into his face. Burke was right behind her—he had somehow closed the distance without realizing it. Her eyes went wide. He was held by them, fixed. They were a deep bruised blue, almost violet, and darkly rimmed with liner. He heard her suck in a long ragged breath.
Five. What kind of witness is Burke when put on the “witness stand”?
Read this key passage:
“The young lady there?” Burke asked.
“Don’t play cute with me,” the woman said. “I’ve never seen anyone so terrified. The poor thing could hardly speak when she came to my door.”
“Something sure scared her,” the cop said.
“And what was my part in this?” Burke asked. He looked directly at the girl. She was hugging herself, sucking on her lower lip. She was younger than he’d thought; she was just a kid. He said, gently, “Did I do something to you?”
She glanced at him, then averted her face.
In the same voice, he said, “Did I say anything to you?”
She stared at the ground by her feet.
“Well?” the cop said, sharply. “What’d he do?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“Aren’t you the smooth one,” the woman said.
“I do remember passing her a while back,” Burke said, addressing himself to the cop. “Maybe I surprised her—I guess I did. I was in kind of a hurry.” Then, speaking with absolute calm, Burke explained his business in New Delft, and the forty-five-minute break, and the route he had taken and the necessity of moving right along to get back on time, even if that meant overtaking other people on the sidewalk. All this could be confirmed at the law office—where they’d certainly be waiting for him. Burke invited the cop to come along and settle the matter forthwith. “I’m sorry if I surprised you,” he said in the girl’s direction. “I certainly didn’t mean to.”
The cop looked at him, then at the girl. “Well?” he repeated.
She turned her back to them, rested her elbows on the roof of the cruiser, and buried her face in her hands.
The cop watched her for a moment. “Ah, geez,” he said. He gave the driver’s license another good look, handed it back with the card, and walked over to the girl. He murmured something, then took her by the elbow and began to help her into the back seat.
The woman didn’t move. Burke felt her eyes on him as he replaced the license and the card in his wallet. Finally, he looked up and met her stare, so green and cold. He held it and did not blink. Then came a flash of bursting pain and his head snapped sideways so hard he felt a crack at the base of his neck. The shock scorched his eyes with hot tears, blinding him. His face burned. His tongue felt jammed back in his throat.
“Liar,” she said.
Until Burke heard her voice he didn’t understand that she’d struck him—he was that stunned. It gave him a kind of relief, as if without knowing it he’d been gripped by the fear of something worse.
He heard the doors of the cruiser slam shut, one-two! He bent down with his hands on his knees, steadying himself, then straightened up and rubbed at his eyes. The cruiser was gone. The left side of his face still burned, hot even to the touch. A bearded man in a black suit walked past him down the hill, shooting Burke a glance and then locking his gaze straight ahead. Burke checked his watch. He was seven minutes late.
He took a step, and another, and went on, amazed at how surely he walked, and how lightly. Down the street a squirrel jabbered right into his ear, or so it seemed, but when he glanced up he found it chattering on a limb high above him. Still, its voice was startling—raw, close. The light in the crowns of the trees had the quality of mist.
Burke stopped outside the law office and gave his shoes a quick buff on the back of his pant legs. He mounted the steps and paused at the door. The blow was still warm on his cheek. Did it show? Would they ask about it? No matter—he would think of something. But he couldn’t help touching it again, tenderly, as if to cherish it, as he went inside to nail this witness down. ♦
Burke proves to be evasive, obfuscating, and cagey, the very kind of witness he despises.
Prewriting and Thesis Practice for "The Deposition"
I used clustering but have to show you in a brainstorm laundry list format:
Burke and his personal quest for truth vs. his dishonesty and self-deception
Burke is pompous and self-righteous about his station in life, a lawyer who questions dishonest witnesses on the witness stand.
Burke feels morally superior to most. He sees himself as an embattled champion of the truth against the forces of evil and deception.
Burke probably feels that he is smarter than most as he evidences a certain degree of intellectual pride.
Burke feels pride for fighting for the right cause: He tries to bring justice to victims of bullies and corporate greed.
But for all of Burke’s inflated self-image, he is a victim of his own self-deception.
He is blind to his own dishonesty. Worse, he is as dishonest as the very witnesses he excoriates in his imagination.
He will undergo his own “deposition” when a cop, a witness, and a victim of his stalking confront him with his crime and he goes into denial mode.
Burke cannot tolerate the disparity of being a truth seeker (in his own mind) with being a liar, someone who uses his lawyer skills to dodge the truth.
Burke’s ego won’t allow an honest self-evaluation.
Even when slapped in the face with truth, we tend to feel the momentary slap but go back to our self-deceptive lives.
Burke’s self-deception makes him live, to a certain degree, inside his head, which of course is solipsism.
Burke wills ignorance: He makes himself blind to his stalking and scaring a woman. He doesn’t even know he was following her so closely.
He is pulled by his own desires; he is overcome by own desire to be young again, to feel connected to his youthful self.
Burke is probably not a bad person. He probably means well, but he is still prone to self-deception and lies. He is probably like most of us.
Thesis Attempts
Thesis One
Burke’s self-deception points to the motivations we all have for living under an umbrella of lies, which include our ego’s inability to accept the disparity between our anger at dishonesty in others with our own compulsive lying (hypocrisy), our inability to bear witness to our own inappropriate actions even as we do them, and our need to have an inflated vision of ourselves in order to remain motivated with our life work (championing the rights of the poor).
The above is a thesis of cause and effect.
Thesis Two.
What’s frightening about Burke’s dishonesty and self-deception is that Burke is not a “bad” person by any means. And this is the genius of Tobias Wolff: Many of his most dishonest characters are hard-working, decent people who tell lies because, as Wolff’s fiction shows, lying is a necessary coping or survival mechanism. Normal, decent people have to lie in order to_________________, _________________, _________________, and ____________________.
The thesis answers a question: Why do normal, decent people live lives of dishonesty and self-deception?
We all suffer the conflict between our private desires and our public duty. This tension causes us to create a false self that helps feel better about the suppression or repression of our private desires that are constantly compromised by our public duties.
Our flaws contradict our self-image with such force that to honestly confront our flaws would sink and demoralize us, making us unable to perform our functions, which rely on our elevated self-image (confidence).
We get trapped into a situation and we have no choice but to force ourselves to believe our hellish situation is better than it really is.
No matter how successful we are, we find it is in our nature as humans to acclimate to our success and this acclimation results in boredom, which in turn makes us discontent with our life of privilege and success. This in turn compels us to create a fantasy world that relieves us of the boredom and banality of our existence.
Can you use McMahon's material for your essay?
Only if you use signal phrase and cite your source. For example:
As we read in McMahon's blog . . .
McMahon's remarks can be expounded upon by . . .
We can further complicate McMahon's analysis by . . .
If you write a debatable claim, you want to use an appropriate introduction:
Study Questions for "The Liar" (excellent commentary on this blog)
One. What purpose are lies, such as his mother coughing up blood, serving the boy who just lost his father?
Perhaps by telling stories of tragedy and woe, he gains an illusion of control. He becomes the story teller rather than the victim.
It appears the boy lies so his mother will discover them for a variety of reasons.
He tells Dr. Murphy he doesn’t want to upset his mother but perhaps he blames her for his father’s death or resents her for living while his father had to die.
He writes, “Things were never easy between my mother and me,” and that she underestimated him accusing him of being a sissy or “delicacy” as he calls it.
He further says he got on her nerves. Father liked the son more than Mother.
Nor did Mother like the way her son behaved at his father’s funeral.
The lying separates Mother and son. He feels protected from that separation.
Also his morbid lies disturb his mother and perhaps this gives him a feeling of power over her. He can make her feel “like a failure.”
He appears to feel no emotions except when he tells lies. And he appears to want to stir emotions in others by lying. People are too numb for his tastes.
Two. What story or “lie” does the mother tell herself?
That people get “cured,” that there is “closure.” This is a fiction, a lie we believe to comfort ourselves.
Three. Dr. Murphy says of the boy’s father, “He was afraid of finding his limits.” Explain.
He could believe that he had no limits by not challenging himself.
Four. The story addresses the problem of solipsism as Dr. Murphy says about his son Terry: “How can you prove to a solipsist that he’s not creating the rest of us?” Explain.
People live too much in their heads and believe the delusional stories they tell themselves so much that outside forces, that is, other people can no longer reach them because other people eventually become the creation of the solipsist.
Five. Does the boy seem very close to his parents?
He says he and his mother are constantly at odds and he was “coldhearted” at his father’s funeral; also he no longer misses his father.
Perhaps he feeds off the melodrama of his morbid lies to substitute for the emptiness he feels toward his parents.
Six. Comment on his singing the Tibetan language in “an ancient and holy tongue.”
He believes in his own lie, or story-telling, and so does his audience. He has become a solipsist. But ironically he finds connection with his lies at the end. However, it's a false connection.
Prewriting Thesis Exercise
James wants to be the storyteller, the person who controls the narrative.
James resents his mother and lies give him power over her.
James feels little in his home life. Perhaps he shut down in the presence of his unloving mother. For whatever reason, he can feel more when he creates a false world of lies.
James’ mother has a lie: the belief in “closure.” Closure is a myth.
Lying gives James an illusion of power and control.
Combining Burke and James for a thesis:
What’s frightening about James’ and Burke’s dishonesty and self-deception is that they are not bad people by any means. And this is the genius of Tobias Wolff: Many of his most dishonest characters are decent, good-hearted people who tell lies because, as Wolff’s fiction shows, lying is a necessary coping or survival mechanism. Normal, decent people have to lie in order to_________________, _________________, _________________, ____________________, and _____________________.
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