The element of surprise

(Second Of Two Parts)

For sheer shock value, two stories stand out most clearly in my mind: Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery" and Flannery O’Connor’s "Good Country People." I’d rather not spoil the fun (or the horror) for you by telling you what these stories specifically involve; suffice it to say that when "The Lottery" was published in The New Yorker in 1948, the magazine was deluged with letters from readers – most of them outraged by the story’s suggestion that such normal people as the story depicted could be so evil. "Good Country People," on the other hand, has the strangest characters – who yet outdo themselves in even greater strangeness by the story’s end. What’s important to note is that as unexpected as the outcomes of these stories might be, they’re actually prepared for, detail by detail and layer by layer, until they acquire a climactic inevitability.

Some short stories end very quietly, even seemingly inconclusively, with no dramatic reversals or histrionics. That’s because the crucial changes or revelations happen deep beneath the surface, forming great dark gouts of conflicting emotion before their resolution in one direction or other.

In Ernest Hemingway’s "Hills Like White Elephants" – one of those Hemingway-ishly spare stories that make you wonder what, if anything, has happened – a couple on a trip across Spain stop in a small bar, have what sounds like a muted argument, then end up with their fellow passengers "all waiting reasonably for the train," the girl insisting that "I feel fine."

In Bobbie Ann Mason’s "Shiloh" – a fine example of the masterful use of domestic detail, and whose opening sentence ("Leroy Moffitt’s wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals.") has been hailed as one of contemporary American literature’s most startling – also involves a couple in the gradual but inexorable process of drifting apart, the ending goes thus: "Norma Jean has reached the bluff, and she is looking out over the Tennessee River. Now she turns toward Leroy and waves her arms. Is she beckoning to him? She seems to be doing an exercise for her chest muscles. The sky is unusually pale — the color of the dust ruffle Mabel made for their bed." Again, there’s nothing particularly explosive about that scene, but it’s fraught with anxiety: Is she all right? Or will she jump, leaving him forever?

Some surprises come belatedly, only upon closer inspection. In Edgar Allan Poe’s "A Cask of Amontillado," a tantalizing clue at the end of the story yields its supreme irony – the fact that the murderer, Montresor (who lures his friend Fortunato into entrapment behind a brick wall), is still thinking intensely about his crime 50 years after committing it; he is the one who has been entombed by his own guilt. In James Joyce’s "Araby," it will take a sharp reader to realize the obvious – that it’s no longer a 10- or 11-year-old boy who is telling the story but a much older man, who now understands, with undiminished pain but with the resonance of maturity, the folly of puppy love.

The "Araby" paradigm – by which a lover performs some extravagant sacrifice for the beloved, only to be rudely rebuffed or embarrassed in the end – has been an enduring one. NVM Gonzalez’s "The Bread of Salt" is an "Araby" story, employing not just a difference in age but social classes. A former student of mine named Andrea Pasion wrote a story titled "Skin Art," where a young girl, against all reason, has a tattoo imprinted on her leg to impress a boy she’s infatuated with, only to discover that he likes someone else. I’ve done my own take on the form – a playful exercise I called "Ybarra" (no prizes for figuring why), where an old lecher yields his gold college ring to a bargirl, thinking she’ll think the world of him; you can guess the outcome.

Some unexpected turns occur when you least expect them. My favorite story by one of my favorite authors, Gregorio Brillantes, carries the typically Brillantes-esque title of "The Cries of Children on an April Afternoon in the Year 1957," the idle reverie of a young man on his summer break is broken by a stab across time, into the fabric of a sad and terrible future Brillantes suddenly reveals without the cheap shock effect that might have been produced by a lesser hand; the flash-forward had never been used so powerfully as it has in this story, with glimpses such as: "… meeting her again by chance in a friend’s office the year after passing the bar, he will invite her out to dinner and fall in love with her. Ten years of marriage, two miscarriages, and four children will leave their imprint on her ample body: a pensive tiredness filming the eyes, a jut of cheekbone replacing the chubbiness, a plump softening of the once supple arms…." and on, and on, to the story’s bloody conclusion.

In the Palanca prizewinning story "Lavender" by another former student, Socorro Villanueva, a wife tells her husband – with poignant humor, over a breakfast of pancakes – how an overweight garbage bag broke on the street in front of their house, a perfect analog to their sagging marriage: "So the water surged out along with all our past meals and excesses. Bits of ampalaya and okra – Jenny was here over that weekend and cooked pinakbet; orange-colored chicken from left-over mechado; a bottle of A-1, spare rib bones, and, for the life of me, used napkins, God! – they all sailed happily along the gutter!"

At other times the surprise is in the choice the protagonist makes – a surprise, however, not entirely unprepared for (and therein lies the infernal challenge of the thing, to produce astonishment through the slow accumulation of dramatic logic).

There’s a story I keep remembering from a student writing competition that I judged many years ago, a story made all the more difficult by the commonness of its premise. I may have forgotten some of the details (just as I’ve criminally forgotten the story’s title and its author), but the basic plot had a poor young boy – the kind who might "watch" or wash your car as you went shopping – looking longingly into the windows of a department store; he’s especially attracted by the smart but pricey baseball caps (this was well before they turned up at every streetcorner) that well-off kids come out of the store with. The boy’s saved up some money, but there are needs to be met, waiting for him at home.

I call this a tough proposition, because it’s a stock depiction of the rich vs. poor scenario to begin with, and it’s almost begging to slide into easy sentimentality. But no – the author pulled this one off by making that boy gather up his earnings, march into that store, and buy his own cap, the consequences be damned – just to feel, for one quivering moment, the satisfying fullness of his ambition. (And here I can just hear the schoolmarms saying, "But that’s totally irresponsible!" Indeed it is, but it feels truer and more honest than any other conclusion, and is something from which more complex lessons, if you must, can be drawn.)

For surprising twists that are at once breathtakingly clever and yet psychologically inevitable, nothing in my book beats J. D. Salinger’s "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" (from his seminal "Nine Stories" collection, a must-read for any aspiring writer). The story employs just three characters, one bed, and a telephone. An older man and a young woman are in bed; the phone rings and it’s the man’s friend, looking for his wife, whom he suspects of cheating on him with someone he doesn’t know, "some bastard in the kitchen." The story’s first surprise comes from our realization that it’s his wife in that bed with the older friend he’s called – the fellow who keeps telling him not to worry, she’ll be home soon, she might’ve just taken a walk. The caller, of course, has no way of knowing the real score, and allows himself to be persuaded and pacified by the brazen lie.

Newer or lesser writers would have quit at this point to count their winnings – wasn’t that ironic enough? – but Salinger goes on to show why he’s a master not only of the short story form but also of the way people think. After a brief and disquieting break, the phone rings again, and it’s the same man, announcing to his friend that, yes, he was right, there was nothing to worry about, his wife had just come in the door, wasn’t she wonderful, and all was well with the world, so sorry for the bother. So he thinks he’s salvaged his injured pride, but the awful truth is right there on the bed beside his friend – his wife hadn’t budged at all from her spot.

Sometimes the best surprises are the most natural ones, but they’re also the hardest to find.

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Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.