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The Exploration of Human Complexities in Alice Munro's Short The Exploration of Human Complexities in Alice Munro’s Short Stories P. Jayakar Rao M.A, UGC-NET, AP-SET, (Ph.D.) Asst. Professor of English, Govt. Degree & PG College, Siddipet, Telangana India Abstract Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer and the recipient of many literary honours, including the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work as "master of the contemporary short story", and the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work. Munro's work has been described as having reformed the architecture of short stories, especially in its propensity to move forward and backward in time. Her stories explore human complexities in straightforward prose style. Alice Munro, writing about ordinary people in ordinary situations, creates a portrait of life in all of its complexities. In her magnificently textured stories, she explores the distinction of relationships, the profundity of emotions, and the influence that one’s past has on the present. With a few details, she is able to invoke someone’s character or an entire geographical region. Munro is a master at creating a short story that is as fully developed as a novel. Key words: recipient, reformed, propensity, explore, complexities, portrait, profundity, invoke Introduction Canadian writer Alice Munro is considered one of the finest short story writers of the present times. Born in 1931, her highly acclaimed stories chronicle small town life, usually around Ontario, where she grew up, and primarily deal with human relationships, deeper truths and www.ijellh.com 212 ambiguities. In her tales, primarily written from an entirely feminine point of view, the incidents of life get redefined in the inner landscape of intellect and emotion of the narrator / protagonist which in turn are a reflection of the author’s own perceptions. The recurring themes in her fiction are conflicts within relationships; between domesticity and independence, creativity and compulsion, commitment and the freedom to follow one’s wishes as well as disparity between social classes and the complex problems faced by a creative woman. Munro was awarded the Man Booker International prize in 2009 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Her collections of stories include Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974), The Beggar Maid (1979), The Moons in Jupiter (1982), The Progress of Love (1986), Friend of My Youth (1990), The Love of a Good Woman (1998), Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), Runaway (2004), Carried Away (2006), and Too Much Happiness (2009). Selected Stories published in 1996 is a collection of stories from her previous eight books. Munro’s Selected Stories In her introduction to Selected Stories, Munro states that rather than creating fictional stories she normally incorporates a real life event or scene and then builds a story around it. All her stories deal with the complexities of the human mind and relationships, between husband and wife, father and daughter, mother and child and of course man and woman. I will refer to specific stories and weave a pattern that has evolved over the vast body of her work where realism is depicted through fiction, insightful and tinged with irony; where human relationships operate on different levels, dictated by social norms on one end and striving to break away from that on the other. In most of her stories the timeline vacillates between the past, present and future. Miles City Montana, is a perfect example of Munro’s craft. The story opens with Steve Gauley’s death by drowning and his funeral. The narrator had witnessed this as a child. The human relationship angle is built into this incident when she talks of the inexplicable resentment and disgust she had felt towards her parents and the hypocrisy she had spied in the somber tone of the hymn they sang with their heads bowed. She believes all children feel the same about adults. Later in the story she states that this feeling was possibly caused by the realization that ultimately adults cannot protect children. Since they create the child it naturally means that deep down they also accept its death whereas the child has no option but to trust the parents; just like her two daughters Cynthia and Meg do after the latter’s near-drowning incident. While on the www.ijellh.com 213 one level the narrator, her husband Andrew and their two daughters represent a normal middle class family driving to Ontario to show off their new car, on another level the dissatisfaction and disparity that exists in the marriage is aptly described. She is justified in calling herself “a watcher, not a keeper…always losing what I wanted to hold on to.” (A Study of Three Authors p 461) Therefore the one step into the future where the author states that she hasn’t seen Andrew in many years, although shocking indicates a resolution to an unhappy relationship. Just as the story swings between the past, present and future, the narrator’s perception of husband Andrew vacillates between “good friend and most essential companion” and that his “masculine authority [came between] me and whatever joy or lightness I could get in life.” (A Study of Three Authors p 462 – 463) The Moons of Jupiter explores familial relationships again but this time the narration is more chronological. Munro does mention the father’s past and in one short, succinct sentence portrays his entire lifetime “The escaped child, the survivor, an old man trapped here by his leaky heart.”(NYT, May 22, 1978 p 33) The irony of a father-daughter relationship is beautifully described when Janet states had her father’s humorous, indulgent criticism “would produce in me a familiar dreariness of spirit.”(NYT. May 22, 1978 p 32). She describes her married life as “cartoon couple, more middle aged in our twenties than we would be in the middle age.” (NYT, May 22, 1978. p 34). She again touches on one of the recurring themes in her stories, one that we also found in Miles City, Montana, that of parents accepting the death of their child. She detaches herself on learning of Nichola’s suspected leukemia, her embrace subtly changed, a self defense mechanism done so discreetly “that the object of such care would not suspect, any more than she would suspect the sentence of death itself.” (NYT, May 22, 1978. p38) Her estranged relationship with Nichola is something she finally accepts after her visit to the planetarium as she does the choice made by her father to go “under the knife.”(p 39) The other stories in the collection Selected Stories are little gems in their own right, each showcasing Munro’s opinion on human frailties, complexities and relationships in different ways. The Turkey Season is about nobility and pity conveyed through the voice and eyes of the fourteen year old protagonist. In Fits the suicide / murder of the couple next door triggers questions on marriage. The husband cannot fathom his wife’s flat reaction to the gruesome occurrence next door. As it often happens in real life, after decades of marriage he feels as if he has been living with a stranger. Sex finds a place in many of Munro’s stories, not blatantly but in www.ijellh.com 214 an underlying subtle fashion. In Wild Swans, narrated from Rose’s point of view, Munro allows the reader to enter the girl’s consciousness and experience vicariously the ambiguity of fantasy and imagination and reality of her experience. The question arises as to the motivations behind Rose’s submission to the minister’s probing hand; the author defines it as “Curiosity. More constant, more imperious, than any lust;” an incredible urge for experience. The plot of The Albanian Virgin, in typical Munro style swings back and forth between different voices; on the one of the narrator who befriends Charlotte, the creator of the story about Lottar, and on the other, Lottar the Canadian girl who is taken prisoner by barbaric tribals to the small town of Matsia e madhe in the Northern Albanian mountains. The two worlds at two ends of the spectrum are juxtaposed beautifully as are male-female relationships in the two different environments, which again are interrelated. Other Short Stories Moving away from Selected Stories I will talk about a few, more recent stories by Munro where we find her portraying different aspects of human characteristics in her typical gripping and intricate fashion. She paints colorful canvases with the picturesque use of phrases; she captures the natures of her characters or the ambiance of the place and time in a few strokes. She begins her story The Red Dress – 1946 with the mother - daughter conflict, a recurrent theme in many of her stories. She beautifully describes the relationship between the two thirteen year old friends; their teenage curiosity about boys and sex, the insecurity and uncertain self esteem most children that age suffer from. Compelled to wear a red velvet dress stitched by her mother, the young narrator very reluctantly goes to the High School Christmas Dance held in town feeling completely inadequate. Mortified by being abandoned on the floor half way through a dance she hides in the rest room. There she meets Mary who declares she is not interested in boys and would rather spend her time doing something different, maybe earn money picking tobacco or working in a cafeteria. Impressed by her self confidence and encouraged by her difference the narrator agrees to leave the dance, but on her way out, a boy asks her for a dance and she goes on to the floor abandoning her new friend Mary.
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