This post is the second in the Story Course series. If you just subscribed or just discovered this post, please start with the first post.
Okay, let’s dive into the first bit of Until This Is Over. It might be helpful to you to open the first post in a separate window so you can refer to those first four paragraphs as you read these notes.
By the way, I wrote this story, so, of course, I know what’s going to happen. But I’m going to pretend that Tommy Lee Jones has used that Men in Black blinky thing to wipe my memory, so I can discuss the story as though I’m seeing it for the first time along with everyone else.
I suggested that you read that first bit of the story a couple of times, paying attention to what’s going on inside you as you read:
What do you feel?
What do you notice?
What are you wondering about?
What do you think will happen next?
Here’s a quick inventory of my observations
What I felt as I read those first four paragraphs:
Curiosity
Unease
What I noticed, in the order that I noticed them:
The protagonist is unnamed. He’s “he.”
The streets are quiet and empty. It’s a holiday, but not a boisterous one.
The jet contrail is described as “a slash across the pale blue sky.” A slash. That’s vivid.
The clouds are described as “oozing reds and purples like an open wound.” That’s creepy.
There are a lot of open doors: the U-Haul truck, the garage door, the inside garage door, the front door.
The house is (nearly) empty.
Did you notice any of those things, or other things that I didn’t notice? Share your notes in the Comments.
Noticing these things is the express purpose of close reading. If we’re reading a story “at speed,” many of these things will escape our notice (though we might register them in our unconscious mind), but when we slow down and read a bit… at… a… time, we really notice all the words. And in a short story, all the words matter.
Reading closely is like getting down on your hands and knees in the grass at the park and really seeing what’s going on down there — the ants, and what color the ants are, and how big or small the ants are, and what the ants are carrying, and where they’re going, and how they stop to “talk” to each other — just to name a few of the wonders of life under the grass canopy.
The narrowing of our focus allows us to see more detail, to take notice of and closely examine the specifics of the thing, rather than to get a mere impression of the thing.
Here’s what I’m wondering about:
What’s “he” up to? Is he just on a casual walk? Is he a burglar, casing the neighborhood? Is he something more sinister?
Why is it so quiet? There’s no traffic, there’s no sound from the jet overhead, there’s no bird song. Nothing.
Where is everyone? And, especially, where’s the resident of the “open” house?
The writer doesn’t have to answer every one of our questions, nor tell the entire life story of every character that they’ve introduced, nor explain every character’s action or behavior.
Nevertheless, certain things, because of associations we make with those things, carry more dramatic weight when they appear in a story. We know these things when we encounter them in a story (especially if we’re reading closely, as we are here) because they make us feel something — curiosity, unease, excitement, expectation, surprise, apprehension, etc.
And when we encounter these things, they make a sort of implicit promise. If you’ve taken any literature or writing classes, or you’ve been a lifetime reader of fiction, you’ve probably bumped into Chekhov’s gun. Anton Chekhov, who many readers and scholars consider to be among the greatest writers of short fiction ever, used the example of a gun in several of his writings on fiction and drama. In one instance, Chekhov felt that a fellow playwright had included an unnecessary monologue in a play. Chekhov advised,
“One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.”
Not all of the things that we notice in a story are going to be Chekhov’s gun, but all of them have that potential, especially when they trigger some emotion within us. Those emotionally charged words or phrases or actions or items are the promises the writer has made and that we expect them to keep, the checks that the writer has written that we expect we’ll be able to cash before the end of the story.
So, finally, when you arrive at the end of the first bit, what do you think is going to happen next? Do you think a wizard will appear in a puff of smoke from behind the shrubs? That the man will grow octopus arms? That a sinkhole will open up and swallow the man and the house? That an old West gunfight will break out?
Probably not. (Maybe. But probably not.)
The possibilities for what will happen next are planted in our heads by the things the writer has offered for us to notice. In those first four paragraphs of Until This Is Over, we’ve been given enough material so that we can orient ourselves to the reality of the story, and we’ve accrued certain expectations:
The setting is suburban and probably contemporary (there’s a U-Haul truck and a jet overhead)
The genre is realism (we think, but it’s still quite early in the story)
The mood is quiet, and a bit unsettling
Any deviation from this “reality” will either have to be introduced in a way that honors the established reality, or it will feel to us like a broken promise.
Okay, with our head full of things we noticed and things we felt and things we wondered about and our guesses about what comes next, here’s the second bit of Until This Is Over.
He stepped inside. Moving boxes sat in haphazard stacks against the wall. Beyond the living room through a wide archway he could see another room and, at the back of the house, a sliding glass door through which the low winter sun projected an angled slash of light. He stood silently and listened but heard nothing aside from the low-frequency hum of a refrigerator compressor and the thump of his blood pulsing through his ears.
He walked into the kitchen. “Hello,” he called again, though more quietly this time, and his voice sounded thin and hollow in the empty room. On top of the breakfast bar were a set of keys, a red leather wallet, a pair of drugstore sunglasses, and a box cutter. The sun on the dark brown tile floor was raising wisps of heated air, the shimmering mirage carrying flecks of dust and the faint scent of citrus cleaner.
He stepped to the bar and picked up the knife, rolling it from one hand into the other as he looked over the wallet and the glasses and the small, tidy keyring – one house key and one car key. As he flicked the button on the box cutter forward and back with his thumb, extending and retracting the blade, he heard the squeak of the rollers as the patio door slid open, and he turned to see a woman standing in the doorway, her features indistinct, her body a dark silhouette sliced out of the brightness behind her.
Same exercise as before: Read that bit of the story a couple of times, paying attention to what’s going on inside you as you read:
What do you feel? And, in particular, have your feelings changed?
What do you notice?
What are you wondering about?
What do you think will happen next?
Please share your thoughts with the group in the comments below.
One more thing: If you haven’t already, please say hello to the group by dropping a “hello” note in the Get Acquainted post. When you’re ready, here’s the link to the next lesson.
What I felt: More of a certainty that something bad or strange is going to happen. Sense of suspense. The dark silhouette of the woman in the doorway increases this feeling, as if the something bad that might happen is emanating from her, too.
What I noticed: After reading #2 twice and looking back at #1, I noticed that we're mainly seeing the protagonist as if from the outside, as in #1: He was "apparently in no hurry." We're not privy to his thoughts and feelings; we only see what he sees and what he does--except that in #2, we're told that the blood is thumping in his ears--which adds a sort of ominous drumbeat like spooky music starting up in a movie.
For the house, there's not a great deal of description, but I get the impression that it's a normal moving scene. The red leather wallet suggests a woman. The presence of those objects sitting out suggests their owner is nearby.
Wondering about/Happen next: I'm wondering if the woman opens the door without seeing the man inside at first. Is she going to scream next or say, "Hi, what took you so long?" The guy flicking the boxcutter seems up to no good. But what exactly is going on?