Short Story #2: Will You Always Love Me?

     In the short story, "Will You Always Love Me?", one of the main characters, Harry, falls in love with a woman, Andrea, who works in the same building as him. She is different from most women. He can't seem to capture her attention because she is always focused on something else. Eventually, he strikes up a connection between the two of them, but she is still very guarded with her past and doesn't ask him any questions pertaining to his past either. Once they have a relationship for a while, Harry finally finds out about the reasons behind Andrea being so guarded through a telephone call she receives. Andrea then delves into her past with Harry where she entrusts the story of her nineteen-year-old sister's death. Being fifteen at the time of her sister's death, now thirty-four, Andrea is still haunted with the violent, gory details of the murder. The following passage will enlighten you:


This much, Harry learned: In the early evening of April, 13, 1973, Andrea's nineteen-year-old sister Frannie, visiting their widowed grandmother in Wakulla Beach, Florida, was assaulted while walking in a deserted area of the beach-beaten, raped, strangled with her shorts. Her body was dragged into a culvert where it was discovered by a couple walking their dog within an hour, before the grandmother would have had reason to report her missing. Naked from the waist down, her face so badly battered with a rock that her left eye dangled from its socket, the cartilage of her nose was smashed, and teeth broken-Frannie McClure was hardly recognizable. It would be discovered that her vagina and anus had been viciously lacerated and much of her pubic hair torn out. Rape may have occurred after her death. (Oates 614)


     From this disturbing passage, we see yet again the violence in Oates's writing, this being the most violent that I have come across yet. I was extremely taken aback by the violence in this passage, and this makes me even more surprised yet that Oates is offended when people ask her if anything has happened in her past to influence her violent writing. What else would inspire somebody to write such detailed, nauseating, gory descriptions?
     The phone call that Andrea received had to do with the man who was convicted of murdering her sister, and  Andrea was being informed that he was trying to get on parole after being sentenced to prison for life. The thing that I found most interesting about this short story was whether or not the convicted murderer was actually guilty or not. The police seemed to have just found the first drug-addict off the street, and got him to confess to it by confusing him and getting him to do what they wanted. Andrea believes him to be the murderer though, and goes in to speak on behalf of her dead sister to make sure that he stays in jail for the rest of his life.