Youthful Initiative Narrative Voice and Characterization...

It is the rare person who cannot remember being dealt a great injustice as a child: one that felt egregious in youth, but was revealed to be perhaps less so with time. This shift in perception is due to the fact that children tend to see things in black and white. Therefore, a sign of nascent maturation is an understanding of the incalculably vast grey scale that lies between the two absolutes. In Maxine Clair’s Rattlebone, the reader is privy to the thoughts of Irene Wilson thro ughout the stories â€Å"Secret Love† and â€Å"October Brown†. This youthful viewpoint is what allows the reader to glean an understanding of not just Irene as an individual, but the nature of growing up into a world that is unnervingly contrary to the simplistic one†¦show more content†¦As a teacher, it is Brown’s duty to first to be loyal to the children in her care. She breaks this unspoken agreement when she endangers the unity of Irene’s family by having an affair with her student’s father and so, in Irene’s mind, must be removed from the role she dishonors. The morally rigid model that Irene clings to in â€Å"Secret Love† and â€Å"October Brown† drives her actions in both. In the first, Irene desperately tries to fill the role vacated by her mother, she makes James’s dinner and â€Å"[ladles] gravy over it just so†, does dishes standing â€Å"up to [her] elbows in dishwater†: performing the traditional roles of a wife (131). Similarly, in â€Å"October Brown†, she takes advantage of being put in a position of power over Brown’s career and lies, saying â€Å"Yes . . . she did† when asked if Brown physically abused a student (19). (Here again is a certain amount of composure in the face of potential emotional trauma: Irene is able to make this fictional claim in a â€Å"level and clear† voice (19).) At the root of Irene’s behavior is the desire to expunge aberrations from a world she needs to believe is just. By using Irene as a first person narrator, Clair gran ts the reader access to a more sophisticated perception of her stories: it is Irene’s strongly contrasting sense of fair and unfair that, when challenged, drives her to try and correct the imbalance. Pearlean unjustly ostracizes James; Irene tries to take up the responsibilities she abandoned. October Brown