Author Question: The twist at the end of the story may remind you of The Gift of theMagi. Is there here, as there is ... (Read 587 times)

vicky · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

The twist at the end of the story may remind you of The Gift of theMagi. Is there here, as there is in O. Henrys tale, more to the conclusion than just a clever surprise?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

It is interesting that the story contains no descriptions of Chris Wattersspersonal appearance. Why not, do you think? What are the things about him that really matter to Edie?

What will be an ideal response?

triiciiaa · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Edie indeed tells the story of how she met her husband, but he is probably not the character the reader at first assumes she will marry. If the title is a trick, it is a brilliant and insightful one, because by assuming that Chris Watters will eventually marry Edie, the reader shares Edies own romantic illusions. We tend to give Watters the benefit of the doubt when, in retrospect, we see he was only a charming cad. At the end of the story, we see the mature Edie as a happy, contented, and wise woman. Clearly, the man she married has given her a much more fulfilling and satisfying life than she could ever have had with the man she thought she wanted. Munros teasing title, therefore, is a psychological ploy that makes readers identify more closely with the narrators emotions than they themselves initially realize. Munros story is a good example for students of how a works title is an essential part of the text and contributes to its total meaning.

Answer to Question 2

The important thing for students to realize is that we see Chris Watters through Edies eyes. What she sees is not so much his looks (interestingly, when she first sees him at the screen door, she can barely make out what he looks like) but his glamour and sophistication, and most of all his apparent interest in her. When she first meets him, Watters seems poised and charming. He flirts with her so suavely that at first she does not understand he is flirting. Nonetheless, she is affected by his compliments. (I wasnt even old enough then to realize how out of the common it is, for a man to say something like that to a woman . . . for a man to say a word like beautiful.) She begins to fall in love with him without at first admitting it openly in her narrative, and she observes him with the obsessive attentiveness that characterizes sexual attraction. When his unglamorous fiance, Alice Kelling, arrives, Edie does not waver in her affection. Observing Watters and his fiance together, she senses that he has little attraction left for the woman. Her infatuation with Watters leads her (and probably the reader) to excuse the lapses in his character. Edie is utterly sympathetic to his flight (in both senses of the word) from the apparently unsuitable Alice Kelling. It is not until long after Watters has flown away, and Edie realizes that he is not going to write (and by implication, never going to see her again), that the reader begins to appreciate how untrustworthy he was. We actually know very little about Watters (except his exciting profession) beyond what Alice and Edie tell us, and both women have a vested interest in him.