Book #1: Them

        Immediately, within the first chapter of reading Them, I was thrust into a different world. Sixteen-year-old Loretta, the main character, is harshly woken into reality when her older brother blasts a bullet through the skull of the boy, Bernie, sleeping next to her in bed. I suddenly had a hunch why Oates is known for her violent writing. 
        Loretta is saved by a police officer who suddenly "falls in love" with her, and tries to save her from the town finding out what has taken place in her bed, both before the shooting and after. In an act of "mercy," Howard, the police officer, makes an advance towards Loretta:


         They stared at each other for a long moment. Loretta felt nothing at all; her skull was hollow, burned out. Then she heard him unzipping his pants. She half rose, maybe to run out of the place or maybe to make it easier for him, and he grabbed hold of her and the two of them stumbled back against the table. He had begun to moan, clumsily and softly, as if in pain. Loretta saw the dishes still piled in the sink. She saw the clock on the icebox but didn't have time to see what it said.
        "Don't you worry about it, not that little bastard," Howard said, clutching at her, pulling up her dress, "don't you think about him, not about him the hell with him!"
        And then, struggling with Howard, struggling to make it easier for him, she did think of Bernie for the first time: he was dead. She had loved him and he was dead and she would never see him again. Never would he come to her the way Howard was trying to come to her. He was dead, it was over, finished, that was the end of her youth. She tried not to think of it again. (49-50)


        After being woken into a harsh reality, Loretta is forced to continue life married to Howard as a pregnant woman. Through these acts of violence, Oates portrays how reality can catch you off guard and that life isn't all fun and games. I'm interested to see what the point of this novel is going to be, and if there is a happy ending. Knowing Oates, though, one can conclude that it will not only be an unhappy ending, but a violent one as well.

Theme: Violence

        "When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life." Joyce Carol Oates does not believe that her written works are particularly violent, but rather believes that her writing portrays reality in a way that doesn't sugar-coat anything. She finds it offensive that people (like me) jump to the conclusion that something must have happened in her lifetime to influence her to write about such topics. In her own essay, "Why is Your Writing So Violent?" she says, "it is always an insulting question; and it is always sexist;" a male writer would never be asked the same question. 
        Another issue that Oates brings to light is how men and women are "designated" certain topics to write about based on their gender.  Oates states: "It was once put to me directly, and no doubt has often been suggested by indirection, that I should focus my writing on 'domestic' and 'subjective' material, in the manner (for instance) of Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf, that I should leave large social-philosophical issues to men." This view expressed by Oates reminded me of the article we read in class, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," by Adrienne Rich. In this article, an identical view is shared, even in the reference to Virginia Woolf:


        No male writer has written primarily or even largely for women, or with the sense of women's criticism as a consideration when he chooses his materials, his theme, his language. But to a lesser or greater extent, every woman writer has written for men even when, like Virginia Woolf, she was supposed to be addressing women. If we have come to the point when this balance might begin to change, when women can stop being haunted, not only by 'convention and propriety' but by internalized fears of being and saying themselves, then it is an extraordinary moment for the woman writer-and reader (20).


        Interestingly, both of these articles were published within ten years of one another, Rich's in 1972 and Oates's in 1981, which means that these were the ideas being expressed during that time period. Oates's writing must have helped to open the door for other women writers when it came to the harsh topics that she chose to write about that were generally considered "male topics." Does this mean that Oates's writing was revolutionary towards a women's feminist movement? I have yet to explore Oates's role as a feminist; however, I am sure that I will find plenty on this new unearthed topic.

Why Joyce Carol Oates?

        Ugly and weird. My first impression of Joyce Carol Oates. Not very nice, huh? Although my judgement was definitely clouded by a rather awful picture of her, Oates began to capture my attention the minute my eyes scanned the lines of her biography. Several questions came to mind immediately that made me want to learn more about her: What happened in her life that made her switch her religious views from Catholic to atheist? Why is violence a recurring theme throughout her written work? Did something traumatic happen to her? How did Oates have the inner-drive to graduate college as valedictorian when she alone was the first in her family to even finish high school?

        Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938, and ever since, she grew up with a passion for reading and writing. She graduated Syracuse University as valedictorian in 1960, and pursued careers in teaching and in writing. Oates married Raymond J. Smith in 1961 and described their relationship as “a very collaborative and imaginative marriage” because they shared a love for reading and often discussed their books during mealtimes. After I had more of a sense of who Oates was based on reading about her rather than just looking at her picture (which is never a good idea), I gained the sense of a woman who was used to working hard on the family farm as a child, and who then carried that hard working drive over to her academic and written work. She is bold in her writing topics of rural poverty, sexual abuse, class tensions, desire for power, female childhood and adolescence, and occasionally the supernatural. I am interested to see how exactly Oates portrays violence throughout her work because it is a theme for which she is best known for.

        There are a few novels that I would love to try to read of hers this semester, but if I were to choose one, it would be Them. This novel is considered to be Oates’s best work and quite honestly, I would much rather read a story that is considered her best work than her worst. If I did have time for two novels, my second choice would be Blonde. Oates recommends both of these books as her favorites and the best ones to start out with, so I am going to follow her advice. My next planned step is to read Oates’s essay, “Why Is Your Writing So Violent?” to help me understand if there is an underlying cause to the violence in her work, and then I would like to check the novel, Them, out of a library to begin reading next week so that I might have time to read Blonde as well.