CORRIE

Characters:

• Corrie – The protagonist
• Howard Ritchie – An architect
• Sadie Wolfe – nurse to corrie’s father

Plot Summary :

                        The story opens with the introduction of the protagonist, Corrie by her father, to an architect, who gets an opportunity to work on the church.  He was named Howard Ritchie.  Howard was a married man with children and was none too impressed with either Carlton’s home nor their demeanor .  after dinner, Corrie takes him to look over the grounds of their grand home and Howard notices she is “lame in one leg.”  Corrie explains that she had a polio and the same disease that had killed her mother.  Howard is attracted by her frankness and humor.  She seems to be mysterious.  She remarks about an upcoming trip. She’s taking to Egypt.

                        Corrie sends numerous postcards to Howard’s Office.  She did not, after all, have his personal address.  A short time later.  Howard makes an unnecessary trip to Corrie.s town and he visits Corrie.  He discovers that Corrie’s father has had a stroke and the family brought in a young nurse named Sadie Wolfe to help Corrie.  Corrie becomes more reserve after the death of her father.  Howard took over her when he came.  The story makes a great twist from the description of the nurse duty to Howard and Corrie in bed together.  Corrie says about a piano teacher who takes advantage of in her youth.  She states she is not a Virgin.  Howard produces a condom for their escapade and made her realize that he is not a “regular seducer”.  Their begins an affair between both.  Their affair is discovered by a maid and she blackmailed them.  Corrie was twenty-six years old and her father expects her to frow into a Spinster.  But she dislikes this idea.  After a year, Corrie and h=Howard are able to continue their affair.  Corrie father has died and the maid has gone off to pursue other jobs.

                        Accidently, Howard met Sadie one evening while at a dinner party with his wife at the home of his close friend.  Sadie recognizes him as the man she had seen with Corrie.  The story set up with the blackmail.  Sadie decides to write a letter to Howard threatening him to tell his wife about his affair.  To keep her mouth shut she demands an offered payment.  Howard burns the letter as soon as he read it.  Howard shares the threatening of Sadie to Corrie.  She agrees to pay in cash in an envelope that Howard delivers to Sadie.  Corrie got bored she was hired at the Carnegie Library in town.  Howard engages Corrie out of his busy schedule with his wife and children.  While talking to the groundskeeper, she comes to know that their blackmailer for the year is dead.  Corrie plans to inform Howard though he is traveling.  She starts and restarts the letter a few times before she reached bed something becomes crystal clear to Corrie, that blackmailer is Howard himself: 

            “No news about Sadie, because Sadie doesn’t matter and she never did.  no post office box, because the money goes straight into an account or maybe just into wallet”.  The story ends openly with the dilemma, whether Corrie decides to leave him or to hide the death of Sadie. ‘she could say something that would destroy them, but she does not have

DOLLY

Characters :
                 

            Franklin – Famed poet, Husband of the narrator

            The narrator – Wife of Franklin

            Gwen – Cosmetics Seller

Plot Summary :

                     

   “Dolly” opens with the narrator and her husband Franklin planning their deaths: “That fall has been some discussion of death”.  It is as if planning to suicide.  Both are driving around and see little used, but mostly used the country road.  They thought that rarely used road might give them privacy to do what they should do.  They were stopped by a debate stating “whether or not to leave a note”.  Franklin says No. the narrator says Yes. “And that very fact – our disagreement – seemed to put the possibility out of his head .”

                        The story then goes in a different direction.  An elderly woman, called Gwen arrives at the house by selling cosmetics.  She is a married woman.  Her husband was dead, who was also a writer.  The narrator was working upon the neglected writers, one among was Maratha Ostenso, who wrote a book called Wild Geese.  Later, we learn the background of Gwen’s daughters and two grandchildren.  Gwen is the caretaker of the to children because her daughter is in hail for trafficking.  She had another successful daughter, a  nurse in Vancouver.  Her daughter invites Gwen to Vancouver but she dislikes Vancouver.  The narrator purchased youth making lotion.  Gwen promised to drove it off next time she comes around.  The narrator shared her experience with Gwen to Franklin,  By soon Gwen returned with the lotion.  Both talked easily and the narrator offers the copy of Wild Geese out to start her car, and she couldn’t get it goingt engine made a willing noise and stopped.  Franklin tried to start but failed.  He went inside the village to call the garage but it was closed.  Gwen tended to stay overnight with them.  She hung up to her home and adviced her grandchildren to be good.  Franklin comes back into the kitchen and both Franklin and Gwen were struck at the same time.  They repeat each other name in tones of mockery and dismay. “Frank”, “Dolly”.

                        There was a quick twin, Gwen says the narrator, that she had been a nursemaid when she knew Franklin in Toronto.  She was looking after two children whose parents had sent them out to Canada to miss the war.  She met Franklin when he was on his last leave and they had a crazy time.  After the war ended, she got on a boat as soon as possible to transport the English children home and she met a man in a boat and married him.  The narrator seems more possessed seeing the relationship between Franklin and Dolly.  Franklin and Dolly left to prepare a car to be towed out of grievous excitement.  She left the home by leaving a terse note to Franklin.  She reached Cobourg, a town they never had been together.  She stayed in a motel and she was thinking about Franklin and she was listening over the friendly talk of a woman in a motel.  To her, Gwen was a person who had got in the way and created absurd problems.

                        Suddenly, the narrator backs to her home and finds the car of Franklin and she also found Gwen’s car.  Franklin took her in the car out of the cold at home and he said: “Life is totally predictable.”  He doesn’t talk to her by seeing her eyes.  He made fun with her by testing her possessiveness by keeping talking about Gwen.  Later we learn that he purchased Gwen’s car. And Gwen went North Bay to her relatives house.  The narrator thought she must die before the terse note come.  She asks Franklin to tear the letter before, he read.  There was a mix of rage and admiration among them.  It went back throughout.

LEAVING MAVERLEY

Characters:

            Morgan Holly – Theatre Owner 

            Leah – A young girl

            Ray Eliot – A policeman

            Isabella – wife of Ray

  

Plot Summary:

                        The story begins with a description of an old movie theatre named the Capital.  Munro introduced Morgan Holly, paradoxically, owner of the Capital movie theatre in Maverley, who occupies the opening scene of the story.  He does not leave the town, but all other character leaves.  He was upset when his single employees were resigning out of her pregnancy.  Morgan doesn’t like to deal with the public.  “He preferred to sit in his upstairs cubbyhole managing the story”.  He dislikes the idea that people had private lives.  He feels his employee’s herself through the character of Morgan Holly.  By noting him as “managing the story”, she refers to herself as the writer as the manager or projection of the tale they weave.

                        Leah, a quiet girl from an orthodox family had a recommendation of replacement by the pregnant employee.  Morgan liked the nature of the girl because he didn’t want someone gabbing with the customers.  Morgan was a principled man.  He was happier out of Leah’s strict father’s comment, she wasn’t allowed to watch or hear the movies.  So there is no way for her to get distracted.  The one problem to walk home alone so late on a Saturday night.  Morgan gave a solution through the local police officer, Ray Eliot, “who often broke his rounds to watch a little of the movie”, would walk along with her those weekend nights.

                        After a description of Ray character,  Munro proceeds to give us Ray Eliot’s back-story, A Veteran, “he came home with a vague idea that he had to do something meaningful with the life that had so inexplicably been left to him”.  Munro economically develops the relationship between Ray and Isabel who was his teacher at school, thirty years old and married.  She got divorced out of the reason was that both were in love.  After the back story of Ray, the story shifts back to Leah.  Leah is actually involved- running away with the minister’s son, this was only known through Ray.  He is surprised that Leah had not mentioned it – “Even though, compared with the theatre is hardly an encounter with the world but rather an encounter with a pretend world and even that at a distance”.  After a few years later, when after Isabel’s illness has necessitated hiring a nurse, Ray finds Leah on the street two-year-old baby boy and a little girl.  There was a tacit connection between Leah and Ray, it is not something can be articulated.  When Isabel gets worse.  Ray takes her to the hospital in the city.  After the disability of his wife, Ray goes back to Maverley and sells his house and leaves.

                        The story again flashbacks to Leah which leads her to leave Maverley.  The United Church Minister wants his wife to divorce him out of adultery with Leah.  The Minister says his congregation that he did not believe all his own mouthing’s of the Gospels, that all his preaching’s about love and sex had been a timid and conventional and he was now a free man, thanks to Leah.  Ray gets an apartment and works in the city and for four years visits Isabel even though she had lapsed into a coma.  Again, he met Leah in the hospital accidentally, where she does recreation for the cancer patients.  Again there was a tacit connection in-between the two.  Leah offers to cook for Ray.  Although he demurs, saying his place is too small, Leah does not seem discouraged.  Later Ray geta a word his wife “gone”.  Ray thinks that his wife had left the hospital.  Ray feels the “emptiness in place of her was astounding”.  She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever.  Ray feels now a lack, something like a lack of air, or proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever.

            The story ends with Ray thinking of the girl he had been talking to, about how she had to be used to the loss of her children after her divorce.  “An expert at losing she might be called – himself a novice by comparison.  And now to could not remember her name.  had lost her name, though he’d known it well.  Losing, lost.  A joke on him, if you wanted one”.  Then as he goes up against his steps, he remembers her name, Leah.  “A relief out of all proportion, to remember her”

AMUNDSEN

 Characters 

Vivien Hyde – Protagonist, teacher

            Alister Fox – Doctor, rude in nature

            Mary – Talk active girl, boisterous in nature

Anabel – Friend of Mary

Matron

Mary’s mother – She works in Sanitorium

  

Plot Summary :

            

Like the story “To Reach Japan”, the story “Amundsen” also begins in the railway station.  Viven Hyde is the protagonist a college graduate from Toronto who moves to Amundsen.  Ontario at the end of the Second World War.  Amundsen was a remote wooded area ninety miles Northeast of the city.  Hyde begins her career in Sanitorium as an elementary-school-age children’s teacher.  They were affected by Tuberculosis.  People in Amundsen were dealing with life and death closer to home.  If someone doesn’t show up for work, you assume the worst.

            Alister Fox, a lung surgeon and Hyde’s boss who appointed Hyde to “The San”.  Dr. Fox is blunt, practical, to the point of crudeness and arrogant.  He indifferently informs Hyde that “Some of these children will reenter the world and some not”.Though Vivien Hyde gets close with the students, taking attendance is a somber task.  When a student is absent, it is out of complication of TB or a failed operation.  Vivien is firstly introduced to? Mary, when and boisterous daughter of the Sanitorium Kitchen Manager.  She doesn’t have TB and she is attending her first year school in town.  She calls Dr. Fox as “Reddy” or  “Reddy Fox”.

            Despite the gloomy state among Sanitorium staff, she gets along with everyone.  Mary shows a path to the lodging of Hyde and sells her a ticket to the high school’s play, Pinafore in which she is cast Hyde tries to befriend with her.  Later Vivien Hyde is invited over for dinner on the night performance by Alister Fox.  She feels guilty about missing the play.  Alister dismisses it as dreadful.  Hyde falls in love with him.  Alister gives the address to her.  Next time, they have dinner together.  Mary performs for Vivien. She also brings her valentine cookies.  Vivien shocks to see Alister ignoring Mary and rudely forces her to leave.  After he drives Mary home, Vivien goes to bed with him and Dr.Fox promises to marry Viven.  He also insists on a minimalist wedding within two days.

            Later, they travel to Huntsville to get married at the town hall.  Alister mind suddenly gets changed and he doesn’t explain her a reason.  He drives her to the Huntsville train station and pays her way to Toronto abruptly.  Vivien restrains herself to run behind him.  Meanwhile, Mary is her basketball team from a lost match.  Although Mary is oblivious and draws strength from Vivien because she doesn’t seem to be upset after being treated badly by Alister herself.  After a year later, Vivien is married to someone and lived in Toronto.  Accidently, she sees Alister.  He is eager to know the present state of her.  She says “Fine. Happy”.  All he says is “Good for you”.  Munro ends story with Vivien observing that “nothing changes really about love”.

TO REACH JAPAN

                                                        

                                                          TO REACH JAPAN

Plot summary:

                       

                   The story opens on a Vancouver train platform.  Greta and Katy saying good-bye to each other.  The story begins abruptly why they are on the train.  The story moves with the present and past life of Peter and Greta.  We trace Peter is an innocent and ordinary man he seems to be more satisfied with his life and had no peculiar thoughts.  There is a flashback about Peter’s life and about his mother.  Peter is an engineer.  He only knew English.  His mother was a Business Practitioner, and both were escaped from Soviet Czechoslovakia.  Meanwhile, Katy still keeps waving on Peter.  Mother describes the appearance of Peter “he wore a brush cut, light-colored skin which was flushed like hers never blotchy from the sun, but evenly tanned whatever the reason”.  Peter is going to spend the summer in Lund, Up North n regard of his official work.  There is no accommodation.  So, Greta plans to spend her summer in Toronto by housesitting in her friend's house who will be spending her summer in Europe.  This was the reason they were leaving Vancouver for a long journey to Toronto.  Greta wishes to move to Toronto is based on the change of scenery.

            Greta, the protagonist, of the story “To Reach Japan”, herself a poet.  She wrote whether good or bad.  Two of her poems have appeared in a magazine called “The Echo Answers”, which was published irregularly in Toronto.  Munro fiercely inhabits the present life of the protagonist.  Munro lights upon how a young woman conflicts between domestic duties and her ambition to write during the emergence of feminism era.

            Peter and Greta had a significant difference:  He studied business but she studied Paradise Lost.  She avoids using useful while he does the opposite.  She had strong opinions, his opinion is even-tempered.  Greta seems to be more analytical and critical.  Munro through her relatively linear plot, states the vexing life of the woman at the time when feminism doesn’t exist.  Any sum and substance by a woman were seen “as some sort of crime against nature”.  This was travel when Gretta is invited to a party by the editor of the magazine where her poems were published.  When she arrived, she feels alienated and ignored and she becomes slightly drunk and flounders.  She is rescued by a journalist named Harris Bennett.  He was the son-in-law of the party organizer.  He has adolescent children, his wife is in hospital for “emotional problems”.  He offers to take her home. After reaching home, Greta cannot get Bennett out of mind longs for him.  She herself rebuke as an idiot for romanticism.

                        When she received an offer to housesit in Toronto, where Harris lives, she finds a way to meet him.  She writes a note to his work address “Writing this letter is like putting a note in a bottle – and hoping it will reach Japan”.

            On the train trip to Toronto, Greta and Katy meet a couple of young actors named Greg and Laurie, who works with preschoolers.  They both were beautiful and charming.  They were playing with Katy and other children on the train.  Greta says Greg is remarkable, Laurie says “He doesn’t save himself up”. Greg is always giving himself out. Imagine such a character coiling with the insular.  Greta when Laurie gets off the train.  Greta is distracted from thoughts of Peter and Harris.  Greta and Greg have a drink and fornicated in his berth.  When she returns to her compartment.  She finds Katy missing and went stupid.  However, after some panic, she finds her between the cars.  After Greg leaves the train at the next stop.  She holds herself for the ‘idiotic preoccupation’ with the man in Toronto, her fantasies of writing all seemed ‘traitorous’ to Katy and her husband.  She considered it as “Sin”.  “A sin.  The inattention coldhearted foraging attention to something else than the child.  A sin”

                        In the end, when she reached the Toronto station, a man walks up and takes hold of Greta and kisses her.  It is Harris Bennett.

            “First stock, then tumbling in Greta’s inside, an immense settling.  She was trying to hand on to Katy but at that moment the child pulled away she got her hand free.  She didn’t try to escape.  Downcast, waiting for whatever to come”.

DEAR LIFE BY ALICE MUNRO

                       

 Dear life is a collection of 14 short stories, the final four stories are known as Finale, an autobiography of Alice Munro.  Alice Munro had made an art form of short story writing. This collection consists of truly beautiful short stories, perfectly crafted in a way that leaves no wanting feeling, as is often an issue with short stories.

·         To reach japan

·         Amundsen

·         Leaving maverley

·         Gravel

·         Haven

·         Pride

·         Corrie

·         Train

·         In the sight of lake

·         Dolly

·         The eye

·         Night

·         Voices

·         Dear life  

Summary as follows https://malamuthaiyapillai.blogspot.com/2019/09/to-reach-japan.html