Short Stories Comparison

¶ … Timothy Findley's "Stones" and Alice Munroe's "Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You." The former is a memoir, a most painful recounting of a young boy's life with his father who was indelibly altered during the course of events of World War II. The latter is a work of fiction detailing the relationship between a pair of sisters and their lovers. However, a more thorough analysis of these works reveals that there are commonalities in characterization and the point-of-view of the narration between these tales that is undeniable.

Moreover, each details the maturation of the characters from a period which spans from early life to adulthood. As such, the similarities in the point-of-view of the narrators and the characterization of the principle people in each tale reveal that both of these coming of age stories are ultimately tragedies.

One of the primary similarities between both of these stories revolves about the narrators, each of whom are the youngest characters in the respective stories which has a definite effect on what they -- and subsequently the reader -- are aware of regarding the tragedies. In Findley's tale, Ben is the youngest of three siblings who was little more than a toddler when his strapping father disappeared for the terrains of World War II.

This fact influences the amount of knowledge that Ben has about his father's transition from a loving parent to an alcoholic misanthrope. Whereas his mother and other siblings were largely aware of the events that took place at the battle of Dieppe, Ben had limited knowledge about these circumstances and their effect upon his father. The following quotation proves this point.

"Our mother had known…all along, and I still have strong suspicions Cy had found it out and maybe Rita…I was the only one who received our mother's news in a state of shock" (Findley 419). Not only does this passage allude to the narrator's limited knowledge about the events that shaped his father's life, it also alludes to the tragic tone this tale takes on. Ben's father became an abusive man who tried to kill his wife and broke Ben's bones.

As the youngest character in this tale, Ben's not knowing the circumstances of his dad's transformation makes this tale more tragic. Et is the youngest character in Munro's tale, and this facet directly affects her knowledge of the events that eventually lead to its tragic ending. One of the main differences between Munroe's story and Findley's, however, is that as the younger sister of Char Et has an intimacy of knowledge to which the other characters are not privy.

Whereas Ben was ignorant of certain details because of his age, Et's age and her relationship with Char makes her privy to the fact that Char tried to kill herself once before when her first love, Blaikie, left her when they were teenagers. She alludes to this fact in the subsequent quotation, in which she discusses Baikie's leaving town with another woman once the characters are substantially older. "It wouldn't be the first time he pulled something like this. Char and I remember" (Munro 434).

What Char and Et also remember is that the former tried to kill herself after Blaikie left the first time. She does so again after the second time, and succeeds, which is the underlying tragedy in this tale. A pivotal commonality between these two stories is the degree of deception of the characterization of the primary victims in them. Ben's mother, who was hounded by her misanthropic husband until she dies, is certainly the main victim of Findley's tale.

It is interesting how she repeatedly tries to cover up her husband's insanity for the sake of keeping up appearances in attempts to preserve normalcy. When her husband attacks Ben and thorws him out of bed one night, breaking the child's collarbone, Ben recollects his mother informing the emergency room staff at the hospital that "he fell out of bed" (Findley 47).

This sort of lying and deceptive behavior only causes the problem of the father's insanity to grow worse, until Ben's mother eventually dies from the drama he puts her through. Thus, the deceptive nature of Ben's mother contributes to her tragic death. The parallel between the deceptive nature of Ben's mother, who is the primary victim in Findley's work, and that of Char -- whose death at the conclusion of the tale following Blaikie's departure renders this tale a tragedy -- is fairly apparent.

Char refuses to acknowledge her true feelings for Blaikie, which more than likely contributed to her attempt to kill herself at the end of the story. Blaikie was her first love; the young woman was decimated by his running away with another woman. Yet even after Char survived a suicide attempt, she still attempted to deceive her sister about the extent of her feelings for the then-young man, which the following quotation proves. "I didn't do this on account of Blaikie Noble," she said between spasms.

"Don't you ever think that. I wouldn't be such a fool" (Munroe 429). This quotation is obviously an attempt at denial.