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• Title - Disgrace

• City/Country South Africa


• Author - J . M . C o e t z e e
o Geographical - South Africa
o Historical - Began writing in 1969. Taught in the US, South Africa, and
Australia. Went to school in Cape town and Worcester.
o Cultural - Wanted to understand and promote the equality of blacks and
whites.
o Social - Was of mid level status when he was in England, South Africa,
and the US. Has a wife and 2 children

Summary
Professor David Lurie lives in South Africa and teaches communications and poetry at
the Cape technical University. He lives a good life and is comfortable in terms of health
and wealth. He dealt with some issues at his job but still works hard. Lurie gets involved
with one of his students and leads to his own disgraceful reputation

The professor is involved with young Melanie. He is obsessed with her and only cares
about what benefits him. He forced her to have sex. This brought a complaint from
Melanie and her father. Lurie informs the academic committee that he is guilty and is
not sorry for the way he acted. David is forced to resign because of the backlash.
Students talk about him, Melanie;s boyfriend threatens him, and his ex-wife judges him
harshly. He leaves Cape town to stay with Lucy, his daughter in the country. Their
relationship is not the best with the different views of the society's acceptance of whites
and blacks. There was an incident one afternoon, where 3 black strangers came to use
the phone. There was violence and hatred that left the father and daughter more distant
with each other.
Upon returning for a short visit to Cape town, Lurie finds his home vandalized and
decides it best to stay with Lucy as she is pregnant by one of the attackers. While there,
he decided to volunteer his time to an animal clinic and work with diseased and
unwanted dogs. Lurie finds something he did not have before, a sense of compassion.
He becomes attached to a dog that he later decides a more humane fate is to have it
lethally injected.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


the nature of human desire, specifically looking at the relationships between power and
sexual yearnings.

Characters and location

Location - Cape town, South Africa

Characters
David Lurie 52 year old professor in Cape town
Lucy - David’s only child
Melanie Isaacs - college student in David’s class on Romantic poets
Petrus - A man who shares Lucy’s land
Pollux - One of the three men who attack David and rape Lucy.
Mr. Isaacs - Melanie’s father.
Ryan - Melanie’s boyfriend
Bev Shaw - owns the animal clinic with husband Bill
• Title Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
Et and her sister Char are not the best of friends. Et envies her sister for her beauty
throughout their whole lives. The story starts when the pair are much older and gray
haired. There are a few things that play out including the return of Blaikie, a local male.
We flashback to when they were younger Et caught Char with Blaikie. Not sure what
exactly happened, she doesn't say anything. Both sisters are haunted by the death of
their younger brother, Sandy, who drowned. We never find out all the details but it
affects Et more than Char. At the end of that summer, Blaikie leaves town. It is said that
he marries an older woman and later becomes widowed twice. Char married Et’s high
school teacher. Arthur. Et moved in with the couple for a while. She sought out his
attention because of her feelings for him. The story comes back to the older version of
the sister. Char wants to be back with Blaikie but is still married to Arthur. There are
some instances where Et thinks that Char is trying to poison Arthur to be with Blaikie.
As the story comes to an end, Blaikie leaves town again and Et tells Char it was for a
woman. Char is distraught and is later found dead. The rat poison that Et thought Char
was using on Arthur is also found empty. Et moves in with Arthur in order for them to
take care of each other. There is a mystery around what happened to both Char and her
younger brother Sandy.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


Reality and Images are not always what they seem on the surface.

Characters and location


Et- younger sister
Char- Older sister
Sandy- younger brother who died
Arthur- Char’s husband
Blaikie - Char’s old flame
• Title Material
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
The story is about a nameless woman who is having issues with her current husband,
Gabriel, because of her ex- husband. Hugo is a writer and the father of their daughter,
Clea. Hugo has little to do with Clea. The woman also seems to have a disinterest in her
daughter. Gabriel and his wife are at a bookstore where they see Hugo’s newest book.
Gabriel suggests buying it for Clea and is told it is too much for a paperback book. The
story continues with the woman revisiting a moment from his book where she was
present. He was causing issues for the lady that lived downstairs for his own selfish
reasoning. She admits to not giving him any support while they are together and doing
things just to make time pass. The story ends with Gabriel leaving the narrator at the
kitchen table to deal with her unhappiness and wanting to send Hugo a congratulatory
letter.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


There are two sides to every truth.
People are not who or what they seem

Characters and location


Narrator- name unknown, wife, mother
Gabriel- Husband
Clea- Daughter
Hugo- Ex-husband, writer
Dottie- woman that lives downstairs
• Title How I met my Husband
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
a flashback about a teen girl, Edie who is hired to help the Peebles'. One afternoon
while the family is away in town, she meets Chris Watters, a pilot who travels town to
town giving rides in his plane to make money. Edie falls "in love" with him, but later
learns that he is engaged to another woman, Alice Kelling. Alice is crazy and has been
following Chris all over in hopes of romance. One day while Alice, Mrs. Peebles and the
children are away on a picnic, Edie goes to Chris's tent to talk with him. He tells her he
plans to leave soon, but promises to write to her.
They kiss, and he leaves town. When Loretta Bird tells others that Chris has left, Alice is
very ugly to Edie under the impression that she and Chris were intimate. Mrs. Peebles
protects Edie and Alice leaves. Edie waits day after day for Chris's letter, which never
comes. Eventually, Edie realizes Chris will never write and stops waiting for him. In a
twist of events, Edie marries the mailman. He believes that she was waiting for him
everyday, and so Edie never tells him differently because she likes "for people to think
what pleases them and makes them happy."

Message or Moral/ Main idea


• The quest for fulfillment by girls and women
• Social class

Characters and location


In the country after WWII
• Alice Kelling is the fiancee of Chris Watters. She lives in self-deception and tries
to force Chris to marry her. She is against Edie, making her the antagonist.
• Chris Watters is a pilot who intends to sell rides on his airplane while living in a
tent on the fairgrounds. He is constantly on the move. He gets close to Edie and
leaves.
• Edie is the main character, she is a 15 year old hired girl. She works for the
Peebles' family. She is known for her innocence, curiosity, and being extremely
naive.
• Joey and Heather are Dr. and Mrs. Peebles' children,
• Loretta Bird is a very snobby, arrogant lady that no one particularly likes. She is
their neighbor and is full of gossip
• Dr. Peebles is a veterinarian and also Edie's boss
• Mrs. Peebles is Dr. Peebles' wife that doesn't enjoy doing domestic chores
• Carmicheal is a shy mailman that Edie eventually marries after seeing him at the
mailbox everyday while waiting for Chris' letter.
• Title Walking on Water
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
Mr. Lougheed is an elderly retired man who has lost his wife. He lives in a building with
several younger residents. There is a disconnect between them. Mr. Lougheed finds his
neighbors Rex and Calla having sex in the hallway. He is then found to be the subject of
their mockery. Mr. Lougheed simply cannot understand Eugene, this strange 28 year
old young man who studies and meditates. He defends Eugene when everyone else
thinks Eugene’s a bit crazy. One day, Mr. Lougheed hears a few of the other old men
talking about how Eugene said he was going to walk on water. Mr. Lougheed simply
cannot believe Eugene is that crazy. It must be an elaborate joke. This brings us to an
incident from the past. The manhunt for Frank McArter, a young man who had spells of
fits that took him to an institution. When Frank came back home, hopefully cured, he
ended up killing his mother and father with a shovel. Mr. Lougheed was too young to go
on the manhunt, but his father and brother went. Now, Mr. Lougheed has dreams of
searching but never finding. Mr. Lougheed now wishes he could ask his dead father and
brother what happened to Frank McArter. Did they catch him? In the dream, he is
always just on verge of finding out. Until, one night at about the time Eugene is walking
on water, the dream breaks another barrier, and Mr. Lougheed finds out what happened
to Frank: he drowned himself. Mr. Lougheed is not sure whether this dream is some
part of his own memory, finally uncovered, or something his subconscious mind just
made up.
Eugene tries to walk on water and he fails to do so. Knowing he disappointed those
around him, he disappears. When Mr. Lougheed goes to talk to him later, he finds he’s
just gone. All of his possessions are still in his room, but Eugene has gone, the last
anyone saw he was headed east over the golf course. Mr. Lougheed asks his hippie
neighbors if they’ve seen him, and they mock him again for seeking out the man.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


Generational gaps and misunderstandings are an issue
Society looks down on those of minority

Characters and location


Mr. Lougheed- Elderly man
Eugene- young man that gets Mr. Luogheed’s attention
Rex and Calle- neighbors
• Title Forgiveness in Families
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
Val views her brother as a burden rather than a blessing. She believed that he was
unable to obtain independence and constantly relied upon his mother for housing and
finances. In contrast, the mother within the story constantly attempted to justify her
son’s actions, regardless of their outcome. For example, the mother states, “You’re hard
on that boy, Val '' to highlight her positive perspective on her son, Cam. The narrator
replies with, ‘'Boy” I said, “Man”’. This quote represents her perspective that her brother
should maintain a mature attitude for his age, yet he is unable to take responsibility for
his own actions. As the story progresses, Val initially believes that Cam is responsible
for his mother hospitalization and near-death experience but discovers that, “Cam didn’t
kill her after all, with his carelessness and craziness and going out and neglecting her
he didn’t kill her, and I was, yes, I was, sorry in some part of me to find out that was
true.” She became disappointed as to her mother survival as she had almost wanted it
as a way to prove her doubts about Cam. However, this is contrasted with the mother
as it seems that she is undecided on whether to forgive her son or not, leading to an
unresolved ending. She states “Cam here, this idiot, came and danced outside my door
with a bunch of hippie friends.” Her constantly changing perspective represents the idea
of the difficulty of forgiveness in families.
Cam: At the beginning of the story, he relies very heavily on the mother, “he got a job as
a movie usher, mother had got it for him”. He has always been the center of attention
“because nobody else is quite so special, quite so center-of-the-universe as my
brother.” By the end of the story Cam turns away from the religion and starts eating
normally again. This is evident in the following quote: “By this time Cam was saying, he
is saying now, that he’s not sure about that religion, he’s getting tired of the other priests
and all that not eating meat or root vegetables” and “One day I went over he was trying
on an old suit and tie. He says he might take advantage of some of the adult education
courses, and he is thinking of becoming an accountant.”

Message or Moral/ Main idea


the difficulty of accepting and forgiving family members.

Characters and location


Val- the narrator and sister
Cam - the brother
Mom
• Title Tell Me Yes or No
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.
Summary
The narrator is an older woman, probably in her mid-40s, when she tells this story
directly to the man who abandoned her, perhaps by his death or perhaps not. She goes
back to the time when they first met near the college campus. She was young, she
says, though she didn’t know it then. She talks of being a “creature of daily use” when
she’s “inseparable from infants, stoves, and tubs,” doing the things a wife is supposed
to do. It’s while she’s pushing the stroller one day that she runs into the man who will,
sometime later, become her lover. He is an older man, a graduate student who will soon
drop back out of school to return to the work working world. They walk for a while
together, and it goes poorly, but poorly in a way that we might not expect: it goes poorly
because she recognizes she feels awkward. A few nights later, she finds herself
thinking of the man and how it all started.
The man she is writing letters to could be imagined dead and not actually dead. He is
dead only in her imagination and still very much alive somewhere on this earth. And yet,
in the story she tells, in the form of a letter to this potentially dead man, this lover has
died. She says she found out in the newspaper. He died of a heart attack. She stops
getting letters from him. She visits the man’s widow, who confirms the death. She tries
to go back to the life that no one knows has been disturbed.
Message or Moral/ Main idea
Delusions and imagination can be a dangerous thing that distorts one's reality.

Characters and location


Narrator
Man
• Title The Found Boat
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
In a small town where segregation is very seen, there was a flood by the river that
overflowed the banks of Mayo Street. The girls find the boat and tell the boys; the boys
decide to fix the boat at Clayton's house while the girls often watch; the boys pay little to
no attention to the girls at this point; the boat is fixed and brought back to river to use;
they all take turns using it; the group comes across an abandoned building which was
called Peddler Station. The group plays truth or dare and have to strip, then Clayton
spits water at Eva’s bare chest in the river. Eva swims away and the boys take the boat
back down the river while the girls are left there and have to walk back and they talk
about what if the boys tell. Eva says they will lie if they tell and the girls end up laughing
and being lighthearted again, things seeming to go back to normal.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


The role of male and females and innocence of growing up
Feelings and Ideas can change in an instance

Characters and location


Small Town
Eva and Carol - girls, found boat
Clayton, Bud and Frank - boys, fixed boat
• Title Executioners
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
The story begins with Helena revisiting a period from her childhood that she wishes
everyone, including herself, would forget. Schoolgirl Helena is a mark. She tries to be
invisible, and the kids tease her all the more. She is suffused with the shame of her
powerlessness. Her father is a politician whose defeat was marked by jeering
townspeople carrying “brooms on fire.”
But the story moves on quickly from the night of Helen’s father’s humiliation. Her mother
is hardly present in the story, except that she makes a point of withdrawing from the
town. Helena has a kind of a mother in Robina, a tough twenty year old who is the
mother’s general factotum. Robina is damaged — she had lost her lower arm in a
washer wringer, of the kind that used to stand on country porches in the early 1900s.
Not only is Helena’s mother distracted by the shame and anger her husband has
caused her, Helena is poorly served by the damaged country girl her mother hires as a
general factotum. Helena’s father is withdrawn, shamed, and unavailable to her.
Although somewhat well-to-do, Helena lives a hardscrabble life.
It so happens that a bootlegger, Stump Troy, lives on Helena’s rural road, and his son,
Howard, has selected Helena as his special target. Howard went to school only now
and then, and then not at all. He would sometimes appear as Helena was walking home
and would sneer sexual taunts at Helena, taunts she felt were too shameful to tell
anyone, as if his taunts were “a sign.”
Helena, essentially parentless, spends a lot of time with Robina. Helena loves going out
to Robina’s house. There’s rough-housing and fun and above all, acceptance. But it so
happens that Robina explains to Helena that Jimmy and Duval are sworn enemies of
Stump Troy, who had, among other insults, turned the police on Jimmy and Duval.
One night there is a fire, and the whole town turns out to watch, hardly aware that there
is a crippled man trapped inside the burning house, hardly aware that his son is trapped
outside, unable to rescue his father. The fire is out of control. Some people think they
hear someone yelling for help. Eventually the son makes a fatal run into the falling,
flaming house. So the death count mounts to two. It is never said but assumed the
brothers started the fire.
We end the story coming back to the retired widow, drinking alone wanting to be
forgotten by all the town.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


Deadliness of bullies and the silence they enforce.
fears and vulnerabilities that encourage shame

Characters and location


Helena- main character
Helena’s parents
Robina - Helena’s servant
Jimmy and Duval- Robina’s brothers
Stump troy and his son Howard Troy
• Title Marrakesh
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
a seventy-year-old retired teacher, a widow named Dorothy who lives with her similarly
widowed sister Viola. Dorothy had been widowed at a very young age, but she had
been left with a young son, and so she had settled into a steady life of seventh grade
teaching, becoming “a fixed star in many, many, shifting, changing, ongoing lives.”
Dorothy’s grown granddaughter is visiting, as she often has since she was a teenager.
It’s the early seventies, and Jeannette, the professor, appears to also be a hippie, a
world traveler in bare feet and long hair. Dorothy invites Blair for evening cocktails, and
she encourages Jeannette to buy a bottle of gin and some tonic. Viola contributes some
cucumber sandwiches. In the course of the afternoon, we learn that Dorothy wonders
about Jeannette’s sexuality, whether it is a man or a girl who traveled with her to North
Africa, for instance, what the explanation really is for her being unmarried at this point in
her life. Dorothy has always prided herself for understanding the world better than those
around her, particularly her sister Viola who lives with her in their old age. Still, when
Jeannette comes, Dorothy is able to orchestrate a pleasant night for all by inviting Blair,
her neighbor, to dinner. Blair’s wife has been ill for some time, and Dorothy knows this
has taken its toll on Blair. It’s hard to read the story and not see Dorothy as some kind
of puppet master. Sure, there is a lot about Jeannette she doesn’t know — but this just
may be the key to opening her up. And it works. Blair comes over, and he and
Jeannette hit it off. Jeannette talks to him in a way she’s never talked to Dorothy — and
Dorothy is analyzing every bit of it, with a mix of intrigue and jealousy.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


Everyone wants to be understood

Characters and location


Dorothy
Blair
Jeanette
• Title The Spanish Lady
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
“The Spanish Lady” begins with two letters that were never meant to find their way to
the addressees, Hugh and Margaret. In the first, the writer expresses an effort to
understand and forgive Hugh and Margaret. She writes, “Monogamy is not a natural
condition for men and women.” With feigned selflessness she continues, “And if Hugh
loves Margaret, I should be glad, shouldn’t I, that he has this happiness in his life?” In
the second letter, we learn what we suspected after reading the first: Hugh is the
writer’s husband, and Hugh and Margaret are having an affair. The second letter shows
the writer is deeply hurt by the betrayal, not just by Hugh but also by Margaret who was
a good friend. She is shocked and saddened at the deception and writes, “It is terrible
when you find out that your idea of reality is not the real reality.” Both letters are
immediately crumpled up and thrown into the waste receptacle in a train compartment;
the writer, who is also our nameless narrator, is traveling by train back to Vancouver
after a few weeks away visiting family in other parts of Canada.

A man on the train looks at her, and she wonders if he will follow her when she leaves
the car, she’s in. “I used to be ready for almost any man,” she says, but at this point the
thought of another affair is exhausting. But the man does follow her. Rather than initiate
an affair, The man turns out to be a Rosicrucian who claims to have known her in a
previous life when she was a Spanish lady. As the Rosicrucian continues on, the
narrator starts to think about the happiest time she had with Hugh. She also tries but
does not succeed in pinpointing the unhappiest moment

At the Vancouver train station, an old man collapses and dies. The narrator is suitably
shocked, but she sees this as some way out. And if the train journey has come to an
end, a train journey that stands in for the passing of a life, then we wonder just what the
narrator means when she thinks this:

The woman has, in fact, however, had many affairs, and had once been “ready for any
man.” She hints these affairs were justified by Hugh’s coldness and justified, too, by the
fact that the woman feels herself — with her warmth — to be somewhat superior to
Hugh. Her sensitivity is offered as something she seems to think will tip the balance in
her favor, even though it is not just Hugh who has lied. She also has lied.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


Deception can happen in many places and in many ways
Reality is not always what we see

Characters and location


Canada- Vancouver
Narrator- SPanish Lady
Rosicrucian - man on train
Hugh- Husband
Margaret- mistress and best friend
• Title Winter Wind
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
An adolescent girl lives in the country but spends a few days in town with her
grandmother and her great Aunt Madge when a winter storm makes the roads home
impassable. The adolescent’s mother has declined into an incurable sickness that
leaves them all a bit ashamed. The young girl who has one role at her home and
another at her grandmother’s.

The narrator herself is reminded of her mother, how because of the mother’s illness the
girl must “translate” for her.” And she goes on to say how “embarrassed” she was that it
was hard to manage the house with the mother so ill, that it was a topic for relatives to
poke around, or even make mismanaged efforts to help.

The death at the end of Susie Heferman, a woman the grandma and aunt know well,
dies out in the cold. Aunt Madge says, “You never can tell what can happen to a
person.”

Message or Moral/ Main idea


Betrayal

Characters and location


Aunt Madge
Mom
Grandmother
Narrator
Susie Heferman
• Title Memorial
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
Douglas, seventeen, has died in an accident. Eileen, his aunt, arrives in Vancouver to
offer her sister June comfort, but it is an uncomfortable time. Eileen and June had been
close as children, but as adults, June’s wealth, and her predilection for orderliness and
accomplishment and position separate the sisters. June has had a family of seven; two
of them adopted Indian girls, something that Eileen finds a bit of a performance. Now
June’s response to death is also a performance. One night, in the kitchen, Eileen allows
Ewart to embrace her, allows the embrace to become actual sex, something that
matters not very much to Eileen, something that she suspects matters to Ewart only as
sex matters to a “man in pain.” Eileen is finally comfortable, having offered solace in a
way that comes somewhat easily and undramatically to her. Although it is very clear to
me that with the sex Eileen has also balanced the scales with her sister’s wealth and
perfection, the sex is not meanly done or calculated. It is just what Eileen can do, what
her sister cannot do. The next morning, the sisters have a short conversation in the
bedroom, when June is finally honest, finally talks about the death. Eileen listens, says
something comforting, and is nevertheless uncomfortable.
Message or Moral/ Main idea
Perfectionism is empty
Grief can consume anyone

Characters and location


Elieen
June
Ewart- husband
• Title The Ottawa Valley
• City/Country Wingham, Ontario
• Author - Alice Munro
o Geographical - Canada
o Historical - Went to University of Ontario, received at least 10 high
distinguished awards. Published first story as a teenager.
o Cultural - revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its
tendency to move forward and backward in time.
o Social - Parents were a teacher and farmer. Humble beginnings. Married a
fellow classmate, James. They opened a still running bookstore in Victoria
called Munro books.

Summary
There are two journeys into the past. First, the narrator is an older woman looking back
on a trip she and her little sister took with their mother to the Ottawa Valley, where her
mother grew up, one summer during World War II; she’s trying to recapture her mother.
Second, that trip was the mother’s attempt to recapture her own past in a transitional
phase of her life, just about the time she began to suffer from Parkinson’s disease.
And so the narrator allows herself to go into the memories of that summer in the Ottawa
Valley, when she got a sense of her mother’s own past. two journeys, one real across
physical space and one in the mind, though both have the same goal: to sort through
the past, in some way, perhaps in order to better comprehend the terrifying,
burdensome present. We move from the narrator’s memories of meeting one family
member to another; meanwhile, the memories double-up, because during many of
these meetings the family members further reflect on their own pasts.
None of these memories are entirely reliable. Indeed, they clearly contradict one
another. And yet., sometimes the reliability of the memory is not the most important
thing. There’s an essence, a truthfulness, that is separate from the actual fact.

Contradictions suffuse the story: lacking mountains, the Ottawa Valley is not a valley in
a familiar sense; Aunt Dodie is not really an aunt but a second cousin; Aunt Lena is a
real aunt, but she exudes not familial warmth but a kind of terror; the little sister tells
people she won’t be going to school, but she will, she just doesn’t understand she can
still go to school even if her own is being torn down. Aunt Dodie had been jilted, but she
protested that she never cried. The mother contradicts her; she says Dodie cried every
night. Perhaps what Dodie meant was she never cried again after that first jag was
finally over.

An additional contradictory confusion emanates from the alcoholic uncle. The girl’s
mother tolerates Uncle Jim, positively wants to spend time with him, even though back
home the mother would hardly have given the likes of him the time of day. She had,
after all, required her husband to sign a prenuptial pledge of abstinence. The narrator
comments on this. “Here was a new contradiction,” she says of her mother’s allowances
for Uncle Jim.

An even more startling contradiction results from Dodie and the mother remembering
the day they spied on a strapping farmhand who was working in the barn. Dodie had
arranged to provide him with lots of lemonade. She had also arranged to sew the fly of
his overalls shut when ostensibly she was mending them. When the time came for him
to urinate, he picked a convenient place in the barn, but ended up having to drop his
clothes entirely, all while the cousins were there to spy on him from the granary. What
really matters is that he most likely understood they had arranged the whole thing. The
mother remembers that they really saw nothing; Dodie remembers that he turned
sideways so they could see it all.
None of this — the young man’s pride, Dodie’s adventurousness, her mother’s denials
— is lost on the girl who’s overhearing the story.
Another denial has to do with the mother’s health. That there might be something wrong
with the mother is evident in her constantly trembling arm and hand. Dodie tells the
older daughter (the narrator) that her mother has surely had a stroke, and that there
surely will be more to come. Dodie also allows herself the cruelty of scaring the girl.
“Aunt” Dodie, like a wicked witch, tells how she had had to care for an invalid mother,
and she predicts that the same fate lies ahead for the “niece.” She will have to take care
of a mother who gets sicker and sicker and finally dies. When the girl asks her mother
about this, the mother contradicts Dodie’s diagnosis. The doctor says there’s been no
stroke.

The mother has a contradictory need from the daughter’s: she needs to deny the
oncoming illness. One of the ways she does it is to not talk about it. Another is to have
taken this trip, a trip when she will revisit the past, see places and people for what might
be the last time, and perhaps correct how people might remember her. She has her
mind on the past, and her daughter has her mind on the future.
The daughter is wary of the coming sexualized world a. The girl sees how her mother
refuses to face facts — the mother did see the strapping farmhand’s nakedness, but
she denies it; perhaps she did desire him, but she lost him; the mother does know what
is wrong with her arm and hand, but she will pretend she doesn’t for as long as
possible; the mother does know her daughter is distressed, but she refuses to nurse
that pain, perhaps forever.

Message or Moral/ Main idea


the weight of the past is a burden from which there is no relief

Characters and location


Narrator- Oldest Daughter
Younger Daughter
Mother
Farmhand
Aunt Lena
Aunt Dodie- who is a cousin
Uncle Jim

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