View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by SHAREOK repository UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA JOE C. JACKSON COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES & RESEARCH Edmond, Oklahoma HATCH A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WITH CREATIVE WRITING EMPHASIS By MELONIE HAU Edmond, Oklahoma 2008 1 NAME: Melonie Hau TITLE OF THESIS: Hatch DIRECTOR OF THESIS: Dr. Constance Squires PAGES: 251 ABSTRACT: Hatch is a novel which examines the struggles of urbanization, drug addiction, alienation from community, and shame which threaten a rural Oklahoma family. The Metzers live on a farm in Hatch, a town formed in the 1890s from the enthusiasm and idealism of Land Run pioneers and German immigrants. The story juxtaposes traditional rural life with contemporary issues such as adultery, addiction, and race and illustrates how characters resist their insulated environment. Told alternately from the points of view of three characters, Gloria Metzer, Ben Metzer, and their son, Thomas Metzer, the work follows each character’s decisions as each is tested emotionally and spiritually. Gloria, Ben, and Thomas must learn to honor their own power in making choices for their lives. Issues of spirituality immerge as each character faces moral and ethical dilemmas based on their choices. Set in intense heat of a drought-ridden summer, the novel utilizes a sense of history and place in order to highlight the struggles of each character. 2 3 Introduction I set out to write a novel about Oklahoma that does not drip with homespun cliché and language. I hope I have at least partially accomplished this goal. I wanted to describe characters and places which felt authentic without being awash in the shallow platitudes of Okie life. The characters in Hatch must face hardships which have not only been created by their physical and cultural circumstances but also by individual choices. Each tries to come to terms with the isolation inherent in dysfunctional relationships. Other writers have established similar characters and circumstances. Rilla Askew, Toni Morrison, Edna Ferber, and Larry McMurtry have helped to establish a literary tradition of regional literature which reveals how imperfect, and sometimes tragic, individuals withstand the crucible of familial conflicts in rural settings. Working in that tradition, I present the story contained in Hatch . Gloria Metzer, the main female character in this manuscript, has been married to Ben for twelve years. From the beginning, Gloria expresses her dissatisfaction with her marriage. Many examples of a woman’s feelings of detachment in marriage exist in literature. I am especially drawn to the character of Sharon in Rilla Askew’s Harpsong because Sharon and Gloria share a similar sense of place. Oklahoma’s pioneering history fostered a culture in which women and men have had distinctly different roles in society. Although it is not an absolute, there are still examples in rural areas where women and men continue to lead lives where roles are defined by “women’s work” and “men’s work.” It is this separation in daily life which may create a lack of shared language or communication. As a result the opposite sex becomes “the other” in ways unique to rural 4 life. Sharon and Gloria are from different time periods but each struggles in her relationship with her husband. Set in Depression-era Oklahoma, Harpsong follows the physical and emotional journey of Sharon and self-named Harlan Singer. Sharon agrees to run off with Harlan, but she states her lack of understanding for her husband after she marries him in a humdrum ceremony at the Muskogee justice of the peace. In a conversation which takes place a few hours after they are married, Sharon realizes that Harlan’s intentions are not hers. Sharon’s goal is to return home to her family and farm, but Harlan wants to ride the rails. It is at this point that Sharon begins to grasp the consequences of marriage: “I said to myself, I don’t know this man. […] That’s what I did. I married him. That’s me now, Sharon Singer. Sharon Singer. Of course, I didn’t know then he’d made the name up” (37). Sharon follows Harlan, in part, because of her marital promise to him. As she repeats her new name over again, she reaffirms her decision: She made a commitment and she will stick with it in spite of her longing for home and family. It is the denial of self in a marriage relationship that I wanted to explore through Gloria in Hatch . Her growing resentment toward Ben after twelve years of marriage is clearly stated in Chapter 1 as she watches Ben plow the field in front of their farm house: “When Gloria took time to resent the choices she had made for herself, it was in the morning” (21). Disillusionment with married life is the primary narrative for Gloria, and she has lost sight of her own identity apart from her husband and her family. I tried to symbolize Gloria’s separation from self by creating the image of the skink at the end of Chapter 1. She remembers the lizard after a heated argument with her husband: 5 “Images of the skink she and the kids had found yesterday entered her mind. Thomas, determined to catch it for Cassie and Chad so that they could hold it, had grabbed it by its tail, but its tail separated from its body, snapping off and landing in the dirt. The kids watched as the discarded part wiggled on the ground, looking like it was alive. Eventually, though, the piece turned blue then white and stopped writhing, lying dead, a sacrifice, a decoy, so that the whole could scamper away to safety under a rock or into cracks in the foundation. Standing on the driveway as the sun began to shout its heat to the day, that’s what she felt like. Snap. She would break off this piece (33-34). Gloria is surviving in her marriage by breaking off pieces of herself and by attempting to become numb to the relationships around her. Like Sharon, Gloria has difficulty recognizing the person she has become. Gloria Metzer and Sharon Singer do not progress in the same manner, however. After all the violence and heartbreak she experiences by sticking with Harlan Singer, Sharon grows to love him. Sharon is left alone by the end of the novel and her affection toward him is expressed as she tries to play his harmonica: “I kept the harp in my apron pocket. Sometimes I’d take it out and blow on it while I was trying to do a few chores. I couldn’t play worth anything, of course, but I breathed in and out on it because Harlan breathed in and out on it and I wanted to believe some of his breath was still in there, hiding inside the square holes” (241-242). Although Harlan remains a mystery to Sharon, her commitment to him overshadows all doubts. By the end of Harpsong , Sharon reconciles herself to the 6 promises of marriage. It is not just about the obligation but about mutual love and understanding. By the end of Gloria’s story, she understands that she has choices in her marriage, but she still feels obligated to her commitment to marriage. The tenderness which Sharon feels for Harlan is absent in Gloria’s feelings for Ben. After a brief sexual encounter with a co-worker, she considers returning to Ben as she sits at the edge of a ravine behind her grandmother’s house: “She loved him. The best parts of him. Their life together flickered through her mind. […] It was their history as layered as the soil in the ravine. It was her history and as exhausted as she was, she wasn’t ready to abandon him. After tonight she realized she could walk away, but Gloria could not imagine starting over with someone else” (197). In the beginning neither Sharon nor Gloria identifies with the self as a married woman. Whereas Sharon becomes more than just the wife of Harlan Singer, making a true emotional connection to him, Gloria resigns herself to being only the wife of Ben Metzer. The emotional connection is unclear – at least in the last chapter. In the end, Gloria lies to Ben about her tryst. I want the reader to feel that their marriage is still in a critical state. Hatch is not a love story. Gloria returns to Ben because of their history together, but not because she feels real passion for him. Gloria’s journey is about the choices she continues to make for herself. I wanted to create a story in which the female character could be just as heroic or flawed as the male, and sometimes women stay in marriages absent love. 7 Another influence on my writing has been Toni Morrison and especially her works about female relationships such as Sula . In the novel Morrison not only creates sympathy for deeply flawed characters but she also manages to do this with an omniscient narrator. Hannah Peace and my character Stacy are both women who have been shunned from the community, yet evoke sympathy from the reader. Hannah Peace is Sula’s mother. She lives in the community of Medallion in a female-dominated, multi-generational home. Hannah’s tremendous sex drive alienates her from the other women in the community, yet instead of setting her up as a villain, the narrator allows the reader to see her in a sympathetic light: “Hannah exasperated the women in the town – the ‘good’ women who said, ‘One thing I can’t stand is a nasty woman’; the whores, who were hard put to find trade among black men anyway and who resented Hannah’s generosity; the middling women, who had both husbands and affairs, because Hannah seemed so unlike them, having no passion attached to her relationships and being wholly incapable of jealousy.