What do we normally associate with the night? Discuss what thoughts and feelings you have at night that you don’t have during the day.
Have you ever had an operation / surgery? How did people treat you during and afterwards?
Have you ever had to tell your parents something terrible, something you didn’t want to tell them?
‘NIGHT’ BY ALICE MUNRO�
ABOUT THE AUTHOR�
Alice Munro was born in Canada in 1931 and she attended the University of Western Ontario. Primarily known for her short stories, her first collection of stories was published as Dance of the Happy Shades.
In 2009, Munro won the Man Booker International Prize. That same year, she published the short-story collection Too Much Happiness.
In 2013, at age 82, Munro was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Nobel Prize is awarded for a writer’s entire body of work, not just one book and is a fantastic achievement.
The Nobel judges called her ‘the master of the contemporary short story.’ She is judged to have revolutionised the architecture of the short story, exploring difficult issues in an uncomplicated prose style.
BACKGROUND
Night is an essay which is autobiographical in nature and in it Munro tells of a period of insomnia she experienced as a teenage girl when her appendix was removed.
She also had a ‘growth’ removed which may have been cancerous but Munro is still alive now (born in 1931 and 83 at the time of writing), so she obviously recovered from it.
She says these stories, of which ‘Night’ is one, is “the first and last — and closest — things I have to say about my own life.”
STYLE
In the story she recalls a time when a terrible thought grew in her mind while she was awake most of the night: how easy it would be to strangle her younger sister. Killing your sister – known as sororicide – is something she later confessed to her father who took the confession very calmly.
His reaction to her confession? DISCUSS
The story is narrated in the first person and we have no omniscient narrator to tell us other things that are going on (unreliable narrator - other examples of this type of storytelling, e.g. Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’). When the story is told in this way we often understand why the person thinks in this way and how the speaker justifies certain behaviour. It is perfectly rational to the writer but not to others in the story and often not to us when we think about the actions in depth.
What we never find out is what the other characters are thinking and why they do the things they do. We only have their words and actions to surmise what they are thinking. We have to ponder about what the other characters in the text are really thinking and interpret from the small clues in the text.
SETTING
The story seems to be set not long after the Second World War as the speaker states there ‘the war and gas rationing’ had changed circumstances. (‘Gas’ suggests American).
The speaker has an appendectomy and also discovers there was another ‘growth’ removed as well. The speaker reflects that today there would be a discussion about whether it was cancer or not, benign or malignant and whether it was life threatening.
As usual in short stories like this, there are very few characters: the mother, father and sister. Her relationship with her sister had been quite acrimonious when she was younger and she often used to tease and torment her.
TASK: Find some examples of her teasing and tormenting her younger sister.
‘HOW’ DOES MUNRO BUILD TENSION?
One way she teases her sister is through being a ‘hair-raising storyteller’ (line 48) and Munro creates the same effect in the reader when she decides that ‘the thought that I could strangle my little sister’ is possible.
TASK:
How does the speaker build up to this terrible confession, from line 91 to line 101?
DESCENT INTO MADNESS?
The apparent freedom, from rules and expectations, could be a wonderful experience but is the beginning of her decline. The lack of structure, discipline and strong familial bonds creates an alarming change in the speaker’s psyche – where she wants to kill her sister.
What is more concerning is that there is no reason for desiring to strangle her sister, no reason for wanting to kill her. She feels ‘Something was taking hold of me’ (line 91) and is unable to shake it off. It possesses her, it consumes her mind. Once a thought has embedded itself in your mind it is hard to remove it.
TASK: What effect does the word ‘hanging’ have in the sentence in line 101?
TRANSITION
Her confession, to her father, is a transition, from innocence to experience. It is forbidden knowledge that has been spoken. She cannot go back; she cannot unsay the words once they are out.
TASK: How does her father react to her confession?
FATHER’S REACTION?
Does his reaction surprise you?
It is through this confession that the speaker’s mentality changes and speaking the words creates a therapeutic effect.
She is now able to sleep.
THE ENDING?
Are we left unsatisfied by the ending?
We were building up to murderous thoughts, of sororicide, of the speaker occupying a nocturnal world.
She is isolated, in darkness, separated from her family and routine.
SYMBOLISM
Night is also a symbol, a symbol of remoteness from family, of isolation from life in general. Night becomes a panacea, a way to shield herself from loved ones while she tries to find meaning in life by looking at nature in its nocturnal state.
There is personification in ‘the suggestion that seemed to have been waiting a long time’ on line 106/107, this latent desire that is stirring within. The ‘teasing’ suggestion may mirror the speaker’s teasing of her sister.
There is a hint of the diabolic in line 151 when the speaker says ‘The demons got hold of me again.’ Those darker impulses which seem to possess her take hold of her - again. It’s not the first time. She is aware of this though, especially when she looks back.
LANGUAGE TECHNIQUES�
The essay is written entirely in the first person and seems to be autobiographical in nature. It is confessional in tone, discussing a disturbing time in the author’s life.
The author is of the opinion that snowstorms and dramatic moments in her personal life are connected. Therefore, snowstorms are symbols of traumatic moments, blinding the author, leaving her cold and defenceless against the elements.
The writer uses direct address in line 76 to draw the reader into the story: ‘You might think this was a liberation.’ Is it freedom? By writing this, the reader has to think whether it is liberating or not.
There is use of internal monologue in ‘So who do you think you are then?’ and ‘Think again’ in lines 86 and 89.
The repetition of the word ‘think’ addresses her mental insecurity – her whole world is in doubt at this point. She is aware of this when she says ‘I was not myself’ on line 83. She is aware that she is not behaving in the same way but there is a deeper implication that she is somebody else entirely.
Occasionally the writer uses triplets to convey motives such as ‘jealousy, viciousness or anger’ on line 104 and ‘lazy, teasing, half-sluggish suggestion’ on line 106.
TASK: What is the effect of these triplets? Explore them and write a ‘PEED’ paragraph.