By Lila Goehring
“As the shops and their signs were an insult, and the noise of the cars with their stops and starts. Everywhere the proclaiming, this is life. As if we needed it, more of life” (Munro 248).
Anyone who has ever experienced heartbreak, sadness, jealousy, or serious anger can understand the feeling that cheeriness and signs of life as normal are insulting, even a sign of betrayal. The fact that the world may not match our emotions can feel isolating and lonely, and it is clear that our main character is experiencing this during her brief escape from her own life.
In this moment, the narrator has fled her own life (perhaps for good) after some unsettling and upsetting events surrounding a visitor, Gwen, and her husband, Franklin. For a brief time in which she considers never coming back, the narrator’s life is flipped upside down. In the world of her own mind, nothing is okay, and nothing is ordinary. So, it is completely understandable that even after escaping to a different town, the world is not acting as if there’s anything wrong. It reminds me of the chorus of a Louvin Brothers song, “My Baby’s Gone”:
The milkman whistles softly as he comes up to my door
The mailman brings the letters by just like he did before
They seem so busy all day long as though there’s nothing wrong
Don’t they know the world has ended, my baby’s gone
This scene is not the first time that cheeriness/positivity have had a negative effect on our narrator: when Gwen first appears in her life and needs a place to stay, the narrator is worried that Franklin will be quiet as Gwen talks all evening or retreat to another room (which would also be her fault, as she worries). Instead, Franklin is talkative and cheery, which disheartens our narrator. Like in the highlighted passage, this cheer feels like betrayal; it is not the same cheer he shows his wife.
Lastly, the idea of too much “life” is relevant to this story: early on, when thinking about death, the narrator wishes for liveliness in her life, even if that means in the form of an argument (which she calls “too polite” to be exciting). It is true that this strange turn of events involving Gwen has given the narrator’s life excitement, but it is so much that she feels the need to get away. Therefore, the “life” she witnesses in this place surely does not bring her joy.
Coming to Age 