This post is the ninth in the Story Course series. If you just subscribed or just discovered this post, please start with the first post.
In the previous post, we read the last bit of Until This Is Over. So, before we do anything else — and I still have plenty I want to talk about, so I hope you’ll stay with me — let’s take stock of what we noticed in the last bit. Here’s my list:
As the sirens and helicopters intensify, Teresa says to Scotty, “Do you need to get home?… Maybe you need to get home?” To me, she’s feeling anxious, vulnerable, and she’s trying to get him to leave.
However… When Scotty doesn’t answer, Teresa continues: “Because if you don’t, I wouldn’t mind you sticking around for a while. Until this is over, you know?”
Wait, what?
She’s not trying to get him to leave, she’s asking him to stay. I didn’t see that coming. Except, yeah, I guess I did. It’s consistent with her actions so far, right? She didn’t kick him — a complete stranger — out of her house when he wandered in uninvited. She invited him to help her unload the truck and unpack her boxes. She bandaged his wound. She shrugged off the missing box cutter, a red flag that had the hair standing up on our collective necks. She’s trusting, she’s open, she’s vulnerable. Of course she asked him to stay.
On the other hand, Scotty is twitchy and terse. I can read his behavior in multiple ways — and because the narrator provides only a third-person objective point of view, we don’t know what Scotty’s thinking — but, to me, he seems afraid of what’s outside, too.
But why, exactly? What is he afraid of? Is he the object of the commotion outside? Is it him that they’re after? Are they responding to the scene of a crime he’s committed? Or is he as freaked out by what’s happening in his neighborhood as Teresa is?
And then there’s the ending: “Sure,” he said. “I’ve got no place I should be.”
This is an echo of his earlier comment, “No, I’m not expected anywhere.” Repeated here, with the extra thematic weight it receives as the last line of the story, it feels like something more than a statement of fact. And it gives me another of those uncomfortable tingles in my spine.
This is the last bit of insight about Scotty that we’re going to get (from this stingy narrator): Scotty lives alone, so there’s no one waiting for him back home. We’re left to decide for ourselves whether this has long been the case or is a recent development.
So, assuming you took notice of similar things in this final bit, let’s check in on how we’re feeling about what we’ve read.
I’ve lost count of how many times my emotional gauge has swung from suspicion and anxiety on one end of the comfort meter to trust and relief on the other end and back again. But when Teresa asks Scotty if he needs to leave, and then immediately invites him to stay — implores him, really — the needle on my meter is whipping like a weathervane in a storm. I don’t know what she’s thinking, except that she must be more afraid of what’s outside than what’s inside.
I also read the end of the story like this: Scotty is on his own, isolated, alienated. From the first paragraph of the story, he is alone in a strangely silent world, one devoid of other people, until he finds Teresa, who is similarly alone.
And, as I mentioned earlier, Scotty seems to be as unsettled as Teresa is, though perhaps for different reasons. I am left feeling this storm of emotions, many of them conflicting: anxiety, empathy, worry, confusion.
And one more: Excitement. I’m excited because I love this kind of story, one that constructs a conflict on the page and invites you to play it out in your mind.
I acknowledge that this is patently unfair because I wrote this story, and despite my attempts to remain objective throughout this close reading, I can’t be completely objective. The truth is, I chose to end the story this way because I love stories that end this way.
You, however, might be feeling something very different. Maybe you’re frustrated, or you feel cheated, you want to know the answers to all of the questions that have accrued. Trust me that I’m okay with any of those reactions to the story. Let me know in the comments.
As I try to round up all of the ideas that have been floated throughout this course and herd them toward resolution, I’d like to take another look at the emotionally charged words or phrases or actions or items we’ve encountered.
We generated a fairly ghastly list of words and images in the exposition alone:
a slash across the pale blue sky
clouds…oozing reds and purples like an open wound
an angled slash of light
the thump of his blood pulsing through his ears
a box cutter
a dark silhouette sliced out of the brightness
This unsettling imagery continues in the complication, and with the addition of dialogue and the plot’s rising action we also get these:
The box cutter goes missing
Something bad (probably) has happened to a family in the neighborhood
Scotty is bleeding
They shut themselves inside the house
Scotty teases — or vaguely threatens — Teresa and even gets physically aggressive, if only for a moment
Sirens shatter the quiet outside the house, followed by the thrum of a helicopter circling
That’s a pretty ominous list, particularly standing in contrast to the quiet and seemingly unpopulated setting of the story’s exposition.
Let’s also revisit the idea of Chekhov’s gun. What is the “loaded rifle” in this story? I think it’s the box cutter, don’t you? And if we subscribe to Chekhov’s thesis, that the writer can’t show a gun in the exposition without having it fired before the end, has the implicit promise been kept? I submit that it has, though in an unexpected way. The box cutter doesn’t end up slicing someone’s jugular — though there is an insufficiently explained bloody cut that evokes the knife — but the knife disappears. That, to me, is an intensely satisfying resolution to “Chekhov’s box cutter,” because it addresses the issue of the knife by, disturbingly, lodging it in our brains, where it can do its slashing forever.
Let me ask a question, and please try to answer quickly, with as little thought as possible: What kind of story is this?
Do you have your answer?
There are many ways to answer this question. Often, with stories and novels, the first way we try to answer that question is by identifying the genre — romance, Western, mystery, science fiction, war drama, thriller, the list is long and it is ever-expanding as writers invent and recombine genres. If I were to try to pin a genre on Until This Is Over, I might go with some combination of thriller and mystery and even horror. It’s just that, for any of those genres, the story is missing at least one key element of the genre. Instead, I usually fall back to the safe and expansive term literary fiction, which has the advantage of sidestepping any genre labels. If you have a strong opinion about the story’s genre, please share it in the comments.
Another way to think about the story is through the lens of story archetype. There is no canonical list of archetypes (or none to which I’ve been indoctrinated, anyway), but here’s a useful list I found in this intriguing article on the BBC site (which spotlights Kurt Vonnegut, one of my literary heroes, so you should definitely jump over and read the full article):
Rags to riches – a steady rise from bad to good fortune
Riches to rags – a fall from good to bad, a tragedy
Icarus – a rise then a fall in fortune
Oedipus – a fall, a rise, then a fall again
Cinderella – rise, fall, rise
Man in a hole – fall, rise
By the way, if you do jump over and read that BBC article, you’ll see a sketch of a plot curve for each of these archetypes, which is to say that “story archetype” is yet another term for plot curve, which we discussed a few lessons back.
In that earlier lesson, I suggested that we stay alert for the climax, falling action, and resolution of the story. Did you spot them? Identifying those key turning points is essential to identifying the story archetype (though, to be clear, you can enjoy this story and any story without identifying the story archetype).
Here are my thoughts about the plot curve / archetype; I’d love for you to drop yours in the comments:
Climax - The sirens get louder then stop nearby, a helicopter circles overhead, Teresa looks out the window, and when she turns back Scotty is gone.
Falling Action - Scotty seems scared, trapped, and strains to see what’s happening outside. Teresa asks him to stay, and he agrees.
Resolution - Is there a resolution? If there is, it happens in our heads, because it doesn’t happen on the page. In fact, even my interpretations of the story’s climax and falling action are suspect, because the climax doesn’t release the tension, it only increases the tension, and the falling action feels like more rising action, doesn’t it?
In that earlier lesson where I talked about the limitless variations on the standard Freytag plot curve, I mentioned, without explaining, the concept of in medias res. This concept (which you know is important because it’s in Latin) means “in or into the middle of a narrative or plot,” and it is typically used to describe a story that begins by launching directly into the action without much or any exposition. In medias res is used frequently in contemporary film and television, where it’s well-suited for grabbing and holding the attention of a distracted and impatient viewership. For my taste, in medias res is also an engaging technique in contemporary fiction, and I submit that Until This Is Over turns the idea on its head by exiting the story in the middle of the narrative, right at the climax, eliminating the falling action and resolution rather than skipping the exposition.
Does it work for you? I’d love to know.
Theme is one more way to think about what kind of story this is. (There are more, such as conflict types, but let’s wrap this up). For the theme of Until This Is Over, I like something along the lines of “Every person’s true nature is unknowable to others.”
Depending on your personality or your mood when you read the story, you might extend this theme to “…so you may as well trust other people.” Or you might decide that a more appropriate conclusion is “…so don’t let your guard down even for a second.”
In a way, the theme depends on which story archetype you think this is, and which story archetype fits depends on whether you think Teresa or Scotty is the protagonist. If Teresa is the protagonist, then the arc might be fall - rise - fall - ?, and the theme is “you may as well trust.” If Scotty is the protagonist, then the arc is ? - rise - fall - ? — where the question marks represent what happened before the story began and what happens after it ends — and the theme is…what?
Help me out by sharing your thoughts in the comments.
When you’re ready, head over to the final installment in this Story Course, where I share the entire story, uninterrupted. There’s even a surprise for those of you who have been gracious — and patient — enough to make it this far.
The end of the course! I wonder what the next one will be like.
What kind of story is it? I agree that "Until This Is Over" doesn't fit into any particular genre. Had there been a resolution, it might have been a suspense/drama kind of story.
I find it a teaser--with all those clues building up and then the ending left up to us to decide. I didn't feel any attachment or empathy for the characters because we simply didn't know enough about them, and I don't like unresolved endings. And I can't commit to stories where I can't like any of the characters even a little. It won't hold my interest.
To me, the climax was when the box cutter went missing. But the story didn't follow a typical arc, either, because you can't say there's a dénouement (or call the sirens and helicopters a slowing down of the action) when there's no resolution. But that might be just fine by some readers. So, for me, the story didn't work. But I enjoyed the close reading and examination!