1988. Choose a distinguished novel or play in which some of the most significant events are mental or psychological; for example, awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. In a well-organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action. Do not merely summarize
the plot.
Essay Response
In Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg, the complex plot and underlying out-of-order conspiracies are plagued with significant mental events for each of the many characters within the book, with these psychological awakenings and discoveries being the drive of the plot. Bill Clegg demonstrates these mentally aware events within the intense with sentimental revelations of thought for each character, the suspense of what the discoveries of thought pronounce in the book, as well as having the climax being a realization of mysterious thoughts to the reader as well as a conjuring of painful memories and disastrous realization of thought processes for one of the many main characters. One of the main characters that experienced the most trauma and mental realization was that of June.
June is an older woman who had lost her husband to divorce, his daughter to neglect and her entire family, including her boyfriend, to a house fire on the day of her daughter’s wedding. Suspense builds right from the very beginning of the novel, “wakes to the sound of sires. Many, loud, and very near” (Clegg 1), where the looming fire began, the reader and many of the characters unknowing for the cause of such a disaster. Though this suspense leads to the rising action as we follow up with June as the funeral the next day were the reader feels the value shift from a neutral to a sad and devastated feeling, the polarity of such a scene going from bad to worse for the dear familiness woman. She exclaims the revelation in her thoughts the facts of the night before, “The old stove, gas leaking through the night… a spark most likely from an electric switch or light” (Clegg 9), it turns to her own revelation of dread the feeling and blame that had been turned towards her and her boyfriend. Her emotions reading the pain in her words, “the instant and all-consuming fire” (Clegg 9) mixes with the judgment of the town, “They did not ask her why she was the only one outside the house at 5:45 in the morning. But when the officer asked of her boyfriend Luke” (Clegg 9) she comes to the realization that the distrust held previously in her boyfriend has not been put into her. She turns to shun the town and move away from them, “she stood and walked out of the church hall” (Clegg 9). This mental awakening of her previous assumptions of an untrusting town blooms into the main conflict and mystery of the fire for June to run away from and realize.
She had left and abandoned her town in her pain to find solace in a wayside place, to find peace. She had left herself behind along with her past, “she had no ID” (Clegg 61) while in “this New England motel room, the problems that existed could be fixed by someone else” (Clegg 165). Much of the rising action of the novel follows June as she avoids her past and her memories until a shocking realization of the truth behind the fire as she has a mental awakening and discovers that though she affected the situation it was not her fault, “far enough away and next to someone she does not know, she cries” (Clegg 165) the anguish leaving her as she had pent it up for all of time that she had never fixed the broken stove while her boyfriend fled to the woods after a fight she settled into a chair outside the house to rethink her decisions. She comes to a personal light that she could be happy, the negative of the fight over marriage blooming into a happier patience as “she will wait for him here. Under this wedding tent, she will wait. And she will say yes” (CLegg 262). Where this climax near the end of the story pieces together all the parts of the out of order novel that rings with the truth of pain and sadness, rather than the depression of mystery. June though, is not the only tale of heartbreak and sadness, outcasted Luke, June’s boyfriend, had a mother who’s twisted torment followed and derived the story forward, not through her actions but through her mental awakenings.
Without hope in this small town Lydia, the mother, strived for little except a call for freedom, for love, for acceptance; the town denied. Due to her messy and dark past, “When Luke was born, it was clear to everyone that Lydia’s husband… was not the father” (Clegg 25), she was pushed away from town and sent onto her own, she “was as banished as one can be in a town of fifteen hundred people” (Clegg 25). While the town saw her a dismal and maleficent, from the reading omniscient 3rd person view Lydia’s very thoughts and past could be seen and understood. Her husband was abusive and she was not treated well while a stranger respected her and loved her for her, “So when she recognized something that could drive Earl and most likely the rest of the town away she didn’t hesitate” (Clegg 73) her climaxing thought of her personal tale leading the thoughts to switch from the reminiscence of abuse to the thriving of defiance. She brought her own freedom into the story as well as her life.
The novel may have been out of order and told through many people’s eyes, though this in itself does help in the work of using mental notions as the driving point of the story. As the reader learns of the characters thoughts and feelings to drive the mystery to conclusion as well as the feelings and stories to closure. The book was not based on the characters emotions, but written entirely with them.
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