UNTIL GWEN--Dennis Lehane
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lXthgpRBoM
Click on this link and read (saving paper):
adlibris.com/se/images/UntilGwen.pdf
An interview with Dennis Lehane
theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/hookers-guns-and-money/3125/
Until Gwen Response
What about "Until Gwen" sticks out the most to you? You could focus on a scene, an image, a character, the style, the point of view, a theme--anything really. Write a perfect paragraph of 5-7 sentences in response.
Also:
"Until Gwen"
Use the title "Until Gwen" in a sentence about the main character of this story: "Until Gwen, he ______. During Gwen, he ______. After Gwen, he ______." Do the same with the main character's father: "Until Gwen, his father ______. During Gwen, his father ______. After Gwen, his father ______." Describe the lasting impact Gwen had on these two men. Are there similarities?
At the story's end, the main character has all the means to completely re-invent himself. Financially he is secure. On paper he has no past. He is able to completely start somewhere new where no one knows him. If you could write an epilogue to this story, one year later, where would he be?
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The most significant scene in the story "Until Gwen" is the final scene. In the last scene Bobby makes his father dig up the grave he built for Gwen and then kills his father and buries them there together. This series of events is highly symbolic of the concept of the main character's lost identity. He says that it was Gwen who was the only person who was able to tell him who he was. He doesn't know where he was born, who his mother was, or even his real name. It is his father, not Gwen who was the only person who could have given him this information. Even as Bobby sits watching his father dig up Gwen, preparing to kill him, he makes one last attempt to coax information about his past life out of his father. By killing his father, Bobby also kills the only chance he has left of gathering snippets of the past the make up who he is. He buries Gwen, the one who defined him, and his father, the one who could have defined him, together. At the end, Bobby is faced with the task of choosing his own identity, something he has left all of his life in the hands of other people.
ReplyDeleteThis lost sense of identity is enhanced by the use of second person. It suggests further that Bobby has no identity because he is everyone of us. Any of our pasts could be his and any part of us could be him. Without the use of second person narrative, Bobby would have had a more finite sense of self.
DeleteWhat sticks out most to me in the story is how unloving the father seems. He doesn't appear to have any connection to his son. Instead, he uses him over and over again. During Bobby's childhood, he's taught the criminal trade, instead of having a normal childhood. At one point, Bobby even says that he didn't feel he had "the permission to live" until Gwen came into his life, a glaring sign that his dad didn't really care for him. No, his father doesn't do anything for him until he knows that Bobby has a diamond, and even then he tries to kill him. That a father can be so cold and uncaring is ridiculous, but it makes for a good character. The second person viewpoint is also pretty neat. Equating the character with the reader definitely helps to drag the reader further into the character's emotions, since it becomes almost like a dream. Realistic in that you are the person taking part, but dreamlike in that afterwards you always know that it didn't really happen. This helps with establishing the relationship between the father and Bobby. You get pulled into his thought process, into his emotions on a deep level because you are supposedly feeling them. When you are the one being put down and treated like you're not worth much of anything, it's easy to understand. Everybody's been like that before, but they don't always accept that others face it as well. So if "you" are the one being treated awfully, it's easier to believe than if "he/she" is being put down. The use of second person is essentially creating a higher level of connection between the reader and the character because when reading something that says "you," it's easy to associate oneself with the character because the emotions become more real, more of a solid object in the lucid dreamworld of the story.
ReplyDeleteSam'antae said "This short story to me is honestly the best thing i believe we'll read this year so far as interest. It's suspenseful & it keeps me wanting to read it for the action. Most importantly i can imagine it being a movie which is what really kept me engaged because of the literary element of imagery. If I'm reading something & seeing it in my head as i go but it's BORING ugh! Makes it that much worse. I cannot lie though the structure of the writing also helped me get through the story, often times i get tired of staring at paragraph after paragraph. I love the twist in the story as well as the relationship portrayed between father & son. It's raw & up to date. The main character is likeable. As i read i kept thinking to myself "What is he going to do, what is he going to do?" I enjoyed it a lot.
ReplyDeleteUntil Gwen, the main character was lost, feeling meaningless. Nothing he did meant anything. Until Gwen, the character's father was probably in control of him, but Gwen caused the character to be more independent, and so his father lost control over him. Collectively, Gwen seems to have put a small tear between them, and over time that tear grew to completely separate them.
ReplyDeleteOne year after the events of the story, the character might be living on his own doing something he's always wanted to, whatever that may be. Perhaps he's using some of his talents for a good cause, or for his personal benefit without harming other people. At the very least, he would almost definitely move away from the places where his memories are grounded.
I think the biggest scene in "Until Gwen" was the ending. It felt like most of the story was contained within those last few pages, and everything else was just setting up for that end. Bobby was nobody until he met Gwen, and then when he was with her he was somebody, then he went to prison, Gwen died (which he didn't know), and he was nobody again. That's why the title is what it is. Early on in the story, it's mentioned that Bobby went to a hardware store to buy a knife and some Krazy glue. It was a sentence written right on the story, plain as day, but it was small and the story kept moving and you forget. This is a good way to foreshadow something, so the surprise is still a surprise. Foreshadowing makes things too obvious too often in stories, but it was beautifully done here. And things come to an end in a stretch of wilderness, with nobody around. Bobby filled his dad's gun with glue and, with a knife, is now in power. He forces his father to dig up Gwen, mostly with his bare hands. He gets one last look at Gwen, and then he kills his father in Gwen's grave. Her body is decomposed, and Bobby wishes he had just taken a picture of her. He foreshadowed that wish earlier when he talked about his mom, how he can barely remember her, and how he wishes he had a picture of here. Bobby might not have wanted to burry that scumbag on top of Gwen, but he wasn't going to dig another grave, and he probably didn't care about symbols like that. Until Gwen he was nobody, during Gwen he was somebody, and after Gwen he was nobody again.
ReplyDeleteThe second person perspective of the story goes hand in hand with the story's non-linear progress. There are a million things running through "your" head and naturally memories pop up at random times in bits and pieces instead of coming out neatly. I felt that the message of the story is that your identity is molded by your company, and you can understand this by becoming the character and knowing how he thinks until Gwen, and after Gwen. Before Gwen you are a good con like your father, during Gwen he becomes soft and loving, and after Gwen he kills his father and essentially starts a blank slate, a new identity. The last thing he wishes for is a picture of Gwen, like he wished for a picture of his mother earlier. His father is right in that the pictures will not bring them back, but being able to see their face and having them in your company carries their influence long after they're dead.
ReplyDeleteThis short story has a lot of vivid imagery in many of its scenes which leads to an extremely fun read for this style of writing. The empty fairground stuck out the most to me of any of the scenes due to the mixture of the second person writing as well as the well developed images. Because your set as the main character it lets you see out across the expansive view, and lets you look at the broken down tarnished area around him. The idea that his father is going to kill him also helps imprint the image into your mind because thats such a shocking concept because a father is always supposed to care for his son, so for this man to completely disregard his life is a real shocker. Yet the saddest part is the fact that the son already knew that his father was going to attempt to kill him the first moment he had free time, when he went to pick up the glue and the knife near the beginning of the story. The sense of lack of identity also works well with the 2nd person point of view because it almost makes you feel like its you attempting to find yourself.
ReplyDeleteBefore Gwen, Bobby had no idea who he was. His father told him different things each time he asked and he could barely remember what his mother looked like. Gwen didn't define him. She didn't care about his past. All that mattered to her was who he was now. She loved and adored him enough to save the diamond in her body for him. After Gwen is gone, he goes back to the way he was before her. When he kills his father, he buries his past in the grave. He's like a blank canvas. He can start over and do whatever he wants now. He can also make up his own past and be whoever he wanted.
ReplyDeleteThe way the main character used second person was oddly unique. The ending was a twisted surprise. The main character Bobby was just coming out of prison, his fathers awaits with a stolen car and whore sniffing cocaine in the back seat. Bobby through the story has flash backs about his memories with Gwen and his father, and later finds out that the father kills Gwen, leading him to kill his father.
ReplyDelete"Until Gwen"
"Until Gwen, he was lost. During Gwen, he nothing mattered because he felt defined by her. After Gwen, he back to wondering about himself."
"Until Gwen, his father was a killer. During Gwen, his father still remained a con artist and killer. After Gwen, his father still remained a con artist and killer."
Gwen had the greatest impact on Bobby he felt whole with her instead of feeling lost he had a person that understood him and accepted Bobby for the person he is.
Until Gwen, Bobby had never really known love, never known anything remotely close. While they are together it's the happiest time of his life and he can picture a brighter future with both of them in it. But after he goes to jail and Gwen is gone, Bobby seems to have lost the ability to love or be happy. All he can do after he gets out is think about his past life with Gwen and his dreams for them that will never come true now that his father has take her away from him.
ReplyDeleteUntil Gwen, his father was probably the most important person in Bobby's life. He had always been the center of his son's life, the most influential person. But during Gwen, Bobby starts to be less attached to his father, realizing that there is much more to life that airport security and credit card scams. After he kills Gwen he must know that he doesn't have much time left, he must know what she meant to his son and what he;ll to to him once he finds out. But outwardly it doesn't seem to affect him very much, he's just that callous and hard.
Until Gwen the Bobby didn't know himself, he was lost, searching. His father seems overbearing and just by seeing what he did for his son on his first day out of prison I thought he was terrible. He got him a hooker -.- Also he seems to have a large negative influence on him. I feel like Bobby is trying to start fresh, he has lost his sense of identity, his sense of self and not having Gwen he's still trying to piece himself together. And his father joins in to ruin it even more at the end with what he did to her, which probably made Bobby feel even more lost. It was really significant though in showing how he felt.
ReplyDeleteUntil Gwen, Bobby was restless and was perpetually looking for his identity. He didn't know who he was in the world. He was perpetually on the move; he never had a home. Bobby was even unsure of where he was born. He never could truly trust his father because he told Bobby so many different things, that he was born in New Jersey, New Mexico, Idaho and finally he said that he was really born in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has no birth certificate, no pictures, no hard proof of his existence or imprint on the world. For Bobby, Gwen is his validation that he exists to the world. She is the one person who needs him. For Bobby’s father, Gwen is kind of his doom. Because he killed her, Bobby eventually kills him. I think Bobby would be in Las Vegas in a year. I think he would have tried to get himself a normal job. Usually the crime-raised children of fiction that are let out of that back-alley world are find that “normal” life is boring and revert back to their old ways, but I don’t this is true of Bobby. He was truly disgusted by his father’s actions: the prostitute, the airport scams, killing Gwen, his constant lying. I think he would want to change from that and become someone different, someone his father wouldn’t have raised.
ReplyDeleteBobby was lost, confused. He honestly had no idea of who he was as a person and that was what Gwen did. Gwen helped Bobby understand his real purpose here. She helped him find his inner self. When no one else mattered, Gwen was there for Bobby and when he found out his father had killed her I believe that truly crushed him just because she was the only one who actually cared and loved him. Honestly, his father was not a very good father figure. When Bobby got out of prison he bought him a hooker. Which seemed a bit odd. Although Bobby had no clue and or evidence as to who he truly was, referring to the didn't birth places his father kept changing up and no records of a birth certificate, the only thing that really mattered to Bobby the most, was Gwen, and that was all ripped right from under him.
ReplyDelete