Alice Munro’s “Forgiveness in Families” is a short work of only a few pages, but within those pages the main character, Val, goes through more change than does Topaz, the main character in “The Innocent Traveller,” throughout Ethel Wilson’s entire novel. This makes “Forgiveness” interesting and compelling, and “The Innocent Traveller” rather boring.
Topaz is a static character, hardly changing throughout her life. We are not given much insight into what she thinks; there is not enough depth to her to keep us interested for the duration of the novel.
In “Forgiveness,” Val realizes that it is herself, not her brother, that is the cause of her problems. She reflects on the nature of life and death, realizing that the seemingly insignificant things, which “don’t seem that much like life,” are in fact what we yearn for when faced with death. She makes the startling confession that, in some part of her, she was disappointed when her mother did not die.
This revelation is shocking, it is personal, it makes us feel something... These are the things which “The Innocent Traveller” largely fails to do. Characters die in the novel, family dynamics change, Topaz moves to a new city halfway around the world, but none of this is related in a way which makes us feel much excitement, compassion, or emotion in general. We get mostly only the surface of things, and for a work of more than two hundred pages, this is not enough.
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3 comments:
I like your comparative analysis of the two works. It's incredible how much emotion Munro is able to communicate in only a few pages, whereas Wilson's protagonist is almost incapable of inspiring such a reaction in readers.
-Andrea
I agree and disagree with what you are saying. The two characters, Val and Topaz, are different for a reason. Yes, Topaz is a completely static character but that is exactly what makes her different from almost every other character that we are used to reading. I think it bugs us that she does not change because from what we know of novels, we expect her to change. There is not a climax or even a plot to the novel but that is why is it different. But i totaly agree that "Forgiveness in Families" is an extremely effective story. Out of the stories we have read this semester this one is one of my favourites because in such as short amount of time there is such a strong change that happens. Val is a character that many of us can learn from and many of us relate to. When Val has an epiphany it made me take a step back and look at my life. That is amazing that a couple of pages of a story can do that.
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