"Big Me" by Dan Chaon; "Rock Springs" by Richard Ford

 chaon_big-me.pdf

 ford_rock-springs.pdf

1. Debate team! In your UNCG email, you have been assigned to argue one of the two positions below. Start your response with the relevant sentence below (whether you agree or not), then set about proving it as an attorney would: using the facts presented in the story. Your job is to make it as airtight as possible. Feel free to express your actual opinion, especially if it differs from the one assigned you, in responses to other students’ responses to this question. But for your response, you need to argue the side you’re assigned as strenuously as you can.

Group B: Andy (in "Big Me") is a disturbed man who has been violent since childhood, and there are signs this behavior persists into adulthood.

6. There are a lot of cats in this story. Identify some places they appear, and discuss why Chaon put them there.

10. Ford doesn’t spell out what happened that night in the Ramada parking lot or the next day, but since just stopping wouldn’t be a true ending, but a cheap cliffhanger, he foreshadows the heck out of whether Earl and Cheryl make it to Florida to start a new life. Using no less than four specific, revealing statements or details, explain what the story implies about his and Cheryl’s fate. Now discuss why the author didn’t spell it out for us in the first place (and don’t say that it leaves it up to the reader, because your argument just laid out what the ending was).

Question 1/Group B Response

There is abundant evidence in “Big Me” that Andy is a person with serious mental problems that began in childhood and that are still a danger to himself and others. It began with his early environment. His parents' marriage was dysfunctional, with financial, substance-abuse, and anger management problems. Andy chose to create a fantasy world as an escape; understandable under the circumstances, but it gradually took precedence over reality. As a result, he has become the epitome of an unreliable narrator. Although he delineates his real world in Beck from his “detective” role in the the imagined Beck metropolis, how can we know where one ends and the other begins? For the sake of argument, I am assuming that his memories (or the lack of them) before the age of twelve are the most legitimate ones.

 

Adults that commit violent acts such as assault or murder often have a history of abusing pets and other animals in their childhood. Andy confesses “I trapped people's cats and bound their arms and legs, harshly forcing confessions from them” (Chaon 51). A boy that would torture animals is not going to be a stable grown man, unless there's some professional intervention, and there's no indication that Andy received any. Andy has no respect for other people's property or space. “Since no one locked their doors, I went into people's houses and stole things...” (51). Again, a disturbing lack of conscience that portends future criminal behavior. Equally troubling, Andy imagines his sister Debbie, in his fantasy world, as his secretary, and someone he would marry if he weren't such a “lone wolf”. Cruelty to animals, theft, and incestual tendencies-- not a very promising background. Thinking of himself as a lone wolf indicates his self perception as being both isolated from others and also as a predator.

 

There are symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in his thoughts and actions. His perception of Mickelson as a future version of himself (the “big me”?) shows a serious disconnect from reality. (Time travel and other science-fiction elements often play a part in this mental illness). Inside Mickelson's house, Andy imagines himself to be invisible and unable to be caught. Delusions of grandeur, in other words, and yet another classic indicator.

 

In his twelfth year, although Andy recalls hardly anything, his brother Mark cites drunken fighting between their parents; his own suicide attempt (Andy only vaguely remembers him being in the hospital); and their father threatening the whole family with a gun. Andy has repressed all of these painful memories, and this process is the equivalent of planting land-mines in one's consciousness; a random future stressor might trigger some seriously irrational behavior.. And then finally and perhaps most damning of all, Andy has blackouts. Periods of lost time where one has no idea what they have done in the interim are not a sign of mental health. I don't think any sane person would want this man in their locale if they knew his background. He has somehow ended up happily married, has daughters he loves, and all seems okay now in his life. But that's his story. People like Andy make headlines and/or the evening news frequently, with neighbors telling us in interviews how normal and inconspicuous the person seemed, up until their breaking point.

 

Question 6 "Cats"

 

A quick personal note first: I've learned to love cats. My wife and I have five in our home. (And Professor, I think I noticed a cat in your introductory video, plus the fact that they've featured prominently in some of your BLS 327 stories too... I'm assuming you also have an affinity with them).

 

There were four distinct mentions of cats in “Big Me”. The first and most pertinent to the story is Andy's account of tying cats up and interrogating them (51), where they basically served as surrogate "suspects" in his make-believe role as detective. Next is an encounter with one in the vicinity of Mickelson's house: “An obese calico cat was hurrying down the alley in front of me...”(57). In his home, the clock on the kitchen wall was a “grinning black cat with a clock face for a belly and a pendulum tail and eyes that shifted from left to right with each tick” (58). Finally, Andy is at his dad's bar on the day he first has a conversation with Mr. Mickelson, and mentions “stroking Suds, the bar's tomcat” (67).

 

Cats are mysterious creatures, and sometimes also symbols of evil. They have been used in stories and movies for that purpose to the point of becoming cliché. Cats are also ruthless predators, and in “Big Me” they add an undertone of menace that enhances that same quality in Andy. The most telling use of cats in the story is the obvious one, where Andy treats them harshly. Chaon's intention there is to help establish Andy's instability. While the other cats in “Big Me” are more incidental, they help add an air of decadence (the obese Calico) or maybe even mental problems. The “clock-cat” referenced in the story (and in my link below) sure looks deranged to me).

http://pics2.ds-static.com/prodimg/228855/300.JPG

 

These animals have shown up in many literary works, ranging from Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat; Dinah and the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, to The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. Societies throughout history have either worshipped or reviled them. Their original domestication arose from a need to control rodents that would plunder food stores, but our association with them over the millenia has given them many other designations in the arts and mythology, as well as their common function of being pets. Chaon joins a long tradition; they are simply an excellent and timeless literary symbol.

 

Question 10 "Foreshadowing"

 

I don't believe that Earl and Cheryl are going to fare very well in their attempt to get to Florida. For me the most obvious bit of foreshadowing is Earl's trip down to the parking lot near the story's end. He is casing it for the next vehicle to steal, having abandoned the Mercedes before arriving in Rock Springs. He had already imagined how things are going to have to proceed the next morning, with “the first thing I had to do was get hold of some automobile and get the plates switched...” (Ford 25-6).

 

The other examples of foreshadowing are more subtle, and more open to individual interpretation. Edna gives Earl advance notice of their breakup (which he doesn't pick up on) in an earlier conversation. Earl says “I was just trying to make things look right, so we don't get put in jail.” And she answers, “So you don't , you mean” (18). She has already decided that she'll take him up on the bus ticket offer, leaving this accident-waiting-to-happen kind of guy before things get any worse.

 

I was struck by a couple of sentences in this story, including the first one: “Edna and I had started down from Kalispell, heading for Tampa-St. Pete where I still had some friends from the old glory days who wouldn't turn me into the police” (1). Earl, for all his apparent faults, at least tells it like it is. He's humble, and I get the feeling his trouble with bad checks and stealing cars came from necessity, because he was poor and had no other choice. In other words, not an evil person- just very desperate, especially with a young daughter to consider. A narrative that starts with such an opening is already giving a hint at the punchline. Very impressive how much is conveyed; I sense immediately that Edna and Earl are going to be an interesting couple and that they face some challenges!

 

Another sentence that wowed me was at the point in the story that Earl approaches the trailer of the Negro woman and her grandson. He observes “the trailer had that feeling that no one else was inside, which was a feeling I knew something about.” There are fairly sinister implications here, in my opinion. Earl may well have robbed people like this before, as the lady jokingly suggests later, saying “You're not going to rob me, are you, Mr. Middleton?” His answer: “Not tonight... maybe another time” (12). He may not have been joking.

 

Richard Ford is paying his readers a compliment, if they are astute enough to catch it. He's given enough clues, and one must deduce that it cannot end well for Earl and daughter Cheryl. Many of us have probably encountered transients like Earl and Edna, if not been near that situation ourselves. You only get a glimpse of such nomads, because of necessity they are on the move. But you know that their chances aren't good. “Rock Springs” ends with that same dynamic, that vague but empathetic kind of sadness we feel when we observe strangers down on their luck and headed for worse.