American Literature

The stories, The Leap and Shiloh show women who are trying to play the roles of being a good mother and a loving wife. Bobbie Ann Masons short story Shiloh tells the story of a marriage with serious problems and also portrays a mother who is concern about the welfare of her child.  On the other hand, Louise Erdrichs The Leap shares the story of a struggling mother who wants to save her child and live a happy life.  Indeed, being a mother is complicated. There are so many things that you need to sacrifice to be able to provide what is best for your family. In Shiloh, Mabel Beasley tries very hard to help her daughter overcome some personal and family problems. On the other hand, in The Leap, Anna Avalon chooses her child over her husband. Ironically, despite of the struggles of Mabel and Anna Avalon, they both end up losing their husbands and their children.

The couple in Shiloh, Leroy and Norma Jean Moffitt, are working-class people living in the modern South, and thus they bring into their marriage all sorts of expectations of who they should be, which often contrasted with who they are and who they are becoming. Fate intervened in their marriage. Leroy who is a truck driver injured his leg in an accident and can no longer drive. For him, his occupation reveals his identity and since he can no longer practice it, he cant figure out anymore anything else to do. To be able to survive and uplift the state of the family, Norma Jean takes over being the breadwinner. She begins lifting the weights and becomes really determined to build up muscles, Id give anything if I could just get these muscles to where theyre real hard, she says (Mason, p. 1). Norma Jean is actually trying to play the role of Leroy which is being the provider and big guy in the family.

Norma Jeans mother Mabel is the antagonist in Shiloh. She named Norma Jean after the movie star Marilyn Monroe whose real name is Norma Jean Baker. Glamor and a flawless appearance are the things she idolizes. When Leroy realizes the predicament of living with his wife again and trying to live with his mother-in-laws visits, he begins to talk about a new life, about building a log cabin- a permanent place for him and Norma Jean to start over. Mabel eventually stops belittling the idea and merely set her coffee cup down on the blueprints in passive disapproval. The rugged terrain of Shiloh was her idea of better days- long before she had Norma Jean, her perpetual disappointment. She relentlessly reminds Norma all of the events that led her to marry Leroy. She firmly believes that the marriage itself is a huge mistake. Mabel thought the couple would benefit from traveling to the Confederate battleground at Shiloh, Tennessee so she suggested them to go there (Mason, p. 4). Eventually, Leroy suggested Mabel to fly with them to Shiloh.

Flying may have been scary to Mabel, but it is second nature to Anna Avalon. As she soared over the past, the real world, and her husband, Anna seems to be the protagonist, the phoenix to Mabel, the crotchety crow rummaging mournfully through the ashes to devour any remnants of life. Anna hold three audiences captive a circus tent of patients, her adoring second husband and daughter, and the reader. She is the protagonist standing brave and solitary at center stage. Her bravery is evident when she saved her daughters life during a house fire and paradoxically smiled as she propelled herself over the flames with her child. The narrator sees heroism in two matters which seem- at first glance- to be simple survival of the body and survival of the soul.

The mothers acted differently in different situations but they both desired the same thing which was to save their children from misery and tried everything to keep themselves from falling apart. Mabel never lived her own life because she wanted to live with her daughter and to fix the grave injustice which resulted in her daughters embarrassing pregnancy. Mabel believed that the person to be blamed and the reason of this injustice was Norma Jeans husband Leroy. The premarital pregnancy was unforgivable for Norma Jean but what was even harder for her to accept was the loss of her child which was the only reason why she married Leroy whom her mother disapproved.

There was a moment when Mabel sat relaxed as she related the account of the dachshund that gnawed away a childs legs and killed it. She expounded, presumably warning Norma about her husband rather than trying to reveal her nature Datsuns are like that. Theyre jealous dogs. Theyll tear a place to pieces if you dont keep your eyes on them

( Mason, p. 7). This statement conveyed the idea that Mabel was actually pointing at her daughter as the cause of the babys death. Although her daughter could not have prevented the childs death, seeing her son lifeless and limp and heavy like a sack of flour was no easier for Norma Jean to shake off than her mothers obvious accusatory reference.

On the other hand, Anna Avalon was selfless, admirable, and spirited. The heroes of young children were often costumed, good-looking, men and women with amazing abilities- people that they have watched every Saturday morning as they saved the world. It must have been surreal for the narrator to fly with Superwoman. It must have been more surprising yet to look up and see that the Superwoman whisking you away from danger was none other than your own half-naked mother wearing pearls.

Anna never complained and never challenged lifes ability to provide her with more and better opportunities. Her daughter wrote that the inability to read remains the greatest difficulty of her blindness there is no one to read to her. Annas sadness focused more on her personal lack of companionship than the loss of her husband. Whether it was a defense technique of avoidance or her acceptance of death, the narrators cursory, quirky, perhaps even unconscious, condemnation of her mother, make the great Anna Avalon the bad guy, the begrudging antagonist. The narrator of The Leap returns to play the hero to her mother for once Annas daughter says this in a way- that her purpose was to return from her failed life to read long into the dark if I must. It would seem that the narrator has been living in the dark of her mothers shadow but cannot bear to cast the Wonder Woman dreams away. The harsh truth is that we can only be human and look even more fallible next to the saints.

If you were not properly introduced to Annas character, then you might assume that the irony of progressing from playing blind to actually becoming blind was fates commentary on her oedipal choices. The ability to let your husband go in a split-second decision and not look back is depicted as heroic, as is the mothers never-look-back approach to courting another man while recovering from the unfortunate accident that killed her husband.

The difference in the reader perception of the two mothers lies in the depiction and the ability to read between the printed lines. Mabel is a nagging high-and-mighty dowager, and Anna is the Virgin Mary figure. Why This was because the daughters told the reader what to think, we see them through that narrow window. Norma Jean and Anna are both survivors of loss. Norma Jean literally pretends it never happened, and Anna moves on without a second thought. The reader can sit idly by and criticize both courses of action, but both short stories clearly illustrate one point in death there are no survivors. Sitting beside the cemetery in Shiloh, frantically trying to reach Norma Jean through the haze of people obscuring her from his reach, Mabel finally succeeds to help Norma Jean bury all of her humanity in Shiloh. So, always be careful in what you wish for.