Boys and Girls - Alice Munro

Our lives cannot be summed up in a simple word. We cannot simply be reduced to our names or our place of birth or the color of our skin or even how we died. While important, these things measure us on the grounds of what we are, which almost never changes. Instead we are measured by who we are, which is always changing. We are the total summation of the events of our lives from the moment we take our first breath to last one, and each event alters us in some way as me move ever forward. Some events shape us more than others. These traumatic events make for fertile, lively short stories, and just such events are the premise behind “Stones,” by Timothy Findley, and “Boys and Girls,” by Alice Munro. Through these authors, we see how these events change the characters and ourselves. We are given a window into how events of great significance can affect who we are now, who we will become in the future, and even how we come to view the past.

Sometimes the most important events in our lives are very minute ones when viewed by others, but given special significance by the narrator or teller of the story. Such is the case in “Boys and Girls,” where on the surface Munro is telling the tale of horse slaughter at a typical family farm but underneath is telling us the story of the young narrator’s unsteady rise into womanhood. In the story, the narrator explores how (like many young children) she was allowed to engage in activities that would have typically been thought of as being more masculine such as helping her father tend to the farm or skin the foxes. At first only others in the neighborhood seem to regard her specifically as a girl, but slowly as the story goes on the sphere of acceptance tightens around her as more and more people closer and closer to her begin to adopt this view of her and reject her from the outside, putting her back into “her place” inside the farmhouse. First her mother voices her desire for her daughter to be more feminine, then her brother, her father, and finally, at the end, she herself seems resigned to her own femininity. This tightening of the noose is contrasted with her increasing desire for more feminine things, her desire to be attractive and even the changes in her fantasy life. While these changes happen in all young children (with the reverse of this typically happening for young boys), in this case Munro provides us a major event as a catalyst for her transition into the next stage of her life. The shooting of the mare, Flora, provides this catalyst. After watching the male horse Mack killed and resigned to his fate, the way she views the world begins to change in ways too subtle for her to understand at the time. Prior to Mack’s death she dreamed of many things unisexual to children but deemed masculine by those around her, such as swashbuckling adventures and, most importantly, working with her father. After witnessing Mack’s death she no longer has the same drive to accompany her father about his work, and her mind changes to more ‘girlish’ things, such as focusing on fashion and beauty. It is then that she witnesses Flora fight for her right to life against the men of the farm. These are the same men who unintentionally force her into roles she is not comfortable with including her father, her brother and the farmhand, Henry Bailey. As such the narrator identifies strongly with the mare and attempts to free her, though even as she does it she realizes it is pointless. Still, it is her one last act of desperately trying to hold onto her innocent and non-secularized version of youth, and when the mare dies it does too. When her father says that she is “only a girl” at the supper table that night (both defending and berating her) she does not fight the statement, even on the inside, as the narrator states in the closing line of the story: “I didn’t protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true.”  She has given in and is changed. More than that, she is aware of the change, showing that these events do not necessarily have to be viewed through the veil of time for their significance to be understood.

Sometimes, rather than being a slow progression showing who we are, events can have a different, much more drastic effect. They can change us from who we were into something radically different as though we were only made of clay, such is their power. This is the sad case of David Max in Timothy Findley’s “Stones.” In this story we are presented with an event so cataclysmically horrific that finding out its nature becomes the point of the story itself with the revelation of the trauma only coming at the story’s climax. David had been a captain during the battle of Dieppe during World War II, an event that had been catastrophic for everyone that had survived it but even more so for him.  After looking out onto the horror of the first line being obliterated on the beach, David Max had fled the field of battle, leaving most of his men to die in the onslaught. He made it home with a dishonorable discharge, but the real man had died on the beach. Before he had left, David had been a kind man who had been sweet and loving with his children, expressing fondness for them and leaving them to wonder what they will do without him while he is gone. The man that returned is described within the story by his youngest son as a nightmare. Either from the shock of the realities of war or the shame of his own cowardice or both, David returned home a much harder man. He was a violent alcoholic who often beat and mistreated his children, yelled constantly, and tried to murder his own wife with a hammer. This final act landed him in a state care facility, where upon release he spent the remainder of his days drinking himself into unconsciousness so that he could sleep. Sometimes, the events that shape our lives are so great that they cannot be incorporated into the fabric of our beings, and we live in that horrible time forever until death finally takes us. David Max died longing for the man he had been before the battle of Dieppe shaped his future irrevocably.

Also in Findley’s “Stones” we have an example of traumatic events shaping a person in another way, by colouring their view of the past. The narrator, Ben Max, also has his life changed when his father David goes off to war, though the crucial moment is different. While I am sure years living with the hardened man that returned from Dieppe took their toll on how Ben turned out, there is no evidence of this change presented in his telling of the story. Though troubled, he seems the same sweet boy at the end of the story that he had been at the beginning, counting the stars on the knee of his mother. Instead the change in Ben comes in how he perceives his life and specifically his childhood, dividing it into two halves: before his father went to war, and after his father went to war. Though he couldn’t have known it at the time, his father focused the majority of his assaults on his youngest son Ben because he saw in the youth everything he hated about himself: someone weak, who refused to fight back. In fact, Ben reveals that many times during these physical and verbal assaults, his father would goad him into fighting back. In his son David Max sees a coward much like himself, and much like himself Ben refuses to act. However this act does not condemn Ben as it did his father, it saves him. He proves himself stronger for withstanding the nightmare of life with his father, and is a stronger person because of it. At the end of the story, he proves this by doing the one thing his father never could by stepping bravely onto the beach of Dieppe. Looking back near the end of the story, after just having described all the torture his father had visited upon them, Ben chooses to focus on the good memories of his childhood prior to the summer of 1939. The event has in effect divided his life, but he chooses not to be undone by the trauma as his father was, instead focusing on memories like walking down the street with his family. He has proven himself to be incredibly strong in the face of the all the trauma visited upon him.

While all the events of our lives are important, some are more important than others. Sometimes they serve as a simple yardstick to mark the passage of time like in “Boys and Girls.” Other times they are far more influential and traumatic. In the end it is how we deal with these events and how we choose to remember them that defines who we are, and how we will be remembered.