Building Relationships

This practice is based on excerpts from Melissa Bank's The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing:

Before dinner, my grandmother read the newspaper, tsking and complaining to no one in particular that the world was going to hell. Everything was wrong; nothing was the way it used to be.

"what do you think was so good about the good old days?" I asked, in exasperation. But I heard how harsh my voice was and didn't like it. I said, "What do you miss, I mean?"

While she thought, I waited to make my point: that everything was much better now than it used to be; I'd cite the civil rights and women's movements.

"The boy who lit the street lamps in the evening," she said, finally. "He carried a stool with him."

I understood then ---it was like missing Nantucket---and I put my hand on top of hers. It occurred to me that everything was more complicated than I thought.

at pp. (29-30)

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1. Question: What stereotype starts this excerpt off?

   jeanne's response:

   That of the older person complaining about the good old days.

2. Question: How does the phrase "Everything was wrong; nothing was the way it used to be" indicate the narrator's annoyance?

   jeanne's response:

   I see annoyance in the stark repetition of the phrases used. There is no attempt to soften them, no sympathy or empathy included. It sounds to me a little like: "Which part of "no" did you not understand? "N" or "O"?

3. Question: Can you see a difference in the way the narrator rephrases the question from "What do you think was so good about the good old days?" to What do you miss, I mean?"

   jeanne's response:

   The difference I see is that the first question presents a challenge: what was so good? which you expect to be followed by the negation. When the narrator rephrases the question, she actually asks a question to which she might want to hear the answer.

4. Question: Why is the grandmother's answer so striking?

   jeanne's response:

   I find it striking in its poignancy of detail. The grandmother is not remembering a world-shaking event. She is remembering a moment from the past which held an image she wanted to hold onto. This is a local narrative. The narrator had been prepared to answer with metanarratives on the improved conditions of the modern world.

5. Question: How did this brief exchange bring the narrator closer to her grandmother?

   jeanne's response:

   For me the closeness lies precisely in the local nature of the narrative. The narrator feels the same loss over her family's having given up their Nantucket place. She has cherished images of Nantucket, like her grandmother's cherished image of the lamplighter. The grandmother is no longer fungible; no longer just a grandmother, no longer just an older person complaining.

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