Guy Tiphane
Dr. Davaran
EN 202
February 17, 2003
The Linguistics of
Collectivity in Grace Paley’s Friends
The phrase “To put us at our ease, to quiet our hearts as she lay dying, our dear friend Selena said,” starts Grace Paley’s short story Friends, about a group of four lifelong friends at a time of death and separation. “Our ease,” “our hearts,” and “our dear friend” indicate a strong awareness of the narrator to her collectivity, which she will succeed in describing through the short story. We will also look at the structure of discourse in the story, advancing that it reinforces this same sense of collectivity.
The story is a first person narration of three women friends, Ann, Susan, and Faith the narrator, visiting their friend Selena who is on her death bed. The five-hour train trip which takes the three women home after the visit serves as the vehicle to reminisce about the visit and their lives. At the end of the trip, each goes back to her own life, to learn that Selena died.
The use of the inclusive first person plural in the story gives it a feeling of community. The pronoun is present in all its forms as illustrated by the following sentences:
Our dear Selena had gotten out of bed.
Thanks, our Selena said,…
Always something new, said Selena, our dear friend.
Our dear friend laughed.
Ann’s response to Susan’s remark “You people don’t remember” illustrates that it is not only the narrator who uses the pronoun (italics in the text):
What do you
mean, “you people”?
Ann asked. You’re talking to us.
The emphasis on “us” in Ann’s reply tells the reader that the three are more than just casual friends and do not qualify as “you people.” The narrator uses the first person plural in many occasions when referring to their relationship with Selena, narrowing the circle even more. She never says “my friend Selena” but “our friend Selena,” at times adding the adjective “dear” to it or simply referring to her as “our Selena.” She tells us “I always thought Selena had told us a lot” (italics mine) as if Selena had never spoken to any of the three individually. The narrator, in that sense, refuses the possibility that Selena could have spoken more to her than to the others, or vice-versa.
It is not only that the narrator is losing a friend, it is a group of four lifelong friends that is breaking apart. Although we could argue that the loss is felt only by the narrator who extends it to the group by the use of the plural, the other characters also express it through reported speech. For example, at the end of the story, Susan uses the plural form when she explains the situation to a man on the train:
We’re irritable, Susan explained to her new pal. We’re angry with our friend Selena for
dying. The reason is,
we want her to be present when we’re dying.
At the end of the train ride, Faith, Ann, and Susan each go their separate way. We know that their friend Selena is already dead, because the narrator has told us.
The reader will notice the absence of quotation marks denoting reported speech in the story, which is not too important if the speech act is accompanied by words indicating who the speaker is. In such a case it is merely unmarked direct discourse, but in many instances the lack of separation adds narrative ambiguity: what part of the sentence really is direct discourse, and what part is free indirect discourse or thought of the narrator or of another character? Pragmatics usually helps in attributing the text to either a character or the narrator herself, and in deciding whether it is part of the dialogue or not. But the ambiguity may be intentional in supporting the collective thought, the sense that everybody, including the reader, thinks or says something in reaction to the text. Consider, for example, this passage:
Selena’s main problem, Ann said -- you know, she didn’t tell
the truth.
What?
A few hot human truthful words are powerful enough, Ann thinks,…
Ann’s expression of doubt about Selena provokes the one-word response “What?” which is not attributed to anybody. It could be the narrator’s thought, introducing the next sentence which explains Ann’s way of thinking, or Faith’s own word in the dialogue. It could also express the collective surprise at Ann’s words, even unspoken by the other two near her on the train, or that of a larger community including the reader. At the words “she didn’t tell the truth” the “what” of the other characters is one of disbelief, whereas the “what” of the reader is inquisitive: we want to know more about the truth that was not told, perhaps some intrigue. But the reader may never know, due to narrative ambiguity.
After the anonymous “what” the narrator first explains why Ann would say such a thing, and then her own view of what Selena had told them. Apparently this part is intended for the reader, not for Ann who would know this already. But then why would Ann reply at that moment the following sentence?
That’s what I mean, said Ann. Selena should have gone after them with an
axe.
There are at least two possibilities here: “that’s what I mean” refers to something that the narrator has not reported from the actual conversation, or the whole reply constitutes reported speech from another time. In fact, after the narrator reports “more information” including reported speech from Selena, Ann concludes:
Facts, said Ann, just facts.
Not necessarily the truth.
This time the reader can conclude that Ann considers whatever has been said since her first statement about telling the truth as “facts.” The narrator’s comments do not seem to report the most likely animated conversation happening on the train. Once again there could be two possibilities: that while the narrator narrated, an actual conversation was happening; or that the narration was an enriched summary (with more information than Ann herself needed) of the conversation. It is as if the reader had eavesdropped on an animated conversation without the benefit of understanding what they were talking about, and the narrator had intervened to fill in the blanks. So by the ambiguous mixture of reported speech (from the narrative present and the past) and narration, the author has given us just enough information in a few lines to relate the dynamics of the foursome. By talking to the reader (with enriched information) as the narrator at the same time as she is speaking to the other two, Faith has condensed the narration to just enough to keep the reader aware. In this way, the reader had been included in the trio, as if seated in the fourth seat on the train: he cannot escape from the heat of the discussion.
From this
short story it could be assessed that the inclusiveness of deictics
(we, us, our) and closeness of discourse can help the reader feel closer to the
conditions the author wanted to portray.
Works Consulted
Paley, Grace, “Friends” in The Collected Stories.
The Kelly
Writers House Fellows Program - Grace Paley,
Dry, Helen Aristar, “Free indirect discourse in Doris Lessing’s ‘One off the Short List’” in Verdonk,
Peter, and Weber, Jean-Jacques, ed. Twentieth-Century
Fiction: From Text to Context.