Self-Discovery in Oates Naked Essay -- Oates Naked Essays

Self-Discovery in Oates Naked spell other, less accomplished writers use forcefulness to shock or provoke, Joyce chirrup Oates is usually more subtle and inventive. Such is the case in Naked, the spirit level of a forty-six year old woman whose placid satellite identity is ripped away by a brutal assault plot of land out hiking not far from her fashionable, University Heights neighborhood. Like many of Oates storiesand in this regard she probably owes something to Flannery OConnorNaked focuses on a woman so entrenched in her rigid self-image that nothing short of violence could take shape her vulnerable to a humbling, though redemptive, self k forthwithledge. The protagonist, a stolid, college administrator, prides herself on her large views and anti-racist, fair mindedness. Curiously, she re main(prenominal)s unnamed throughout the story, though not without reason. Her namelessness brings us closer to her inner world while at the kindred time obliquely suggesting that, gi ven these same violent circumstances, she could be anyone, stock-still you or me. Names represent a kind of social identity, and Oates main interest here is in exploring what might happen when her characters social framework and the comfortably predictable life that goes with it are suddenly, and irrevocably, taken away. This, of course, is precisely what happens. What then, Oates seems to be asking, would be left? The answer, which is feverishly detailed in the remaining thirteen pages of this sixteen page story, is something this woman would never puddle asked for nor anticipated. Like most(prenominal) people in her social sphere, the woman takes for granted the civility and restraints that have kept her, prior to her attack, comfortably exempt from the personal chaos that violence unleashes. All of... ...the story concludes with the woman crouched, still naked, in the underbrush down the stairs her house and marveling how strange it is to be seeing her husband at conclus ion after having wanted so desperately to get home, and yet now feeling no emotion at what she saw. (138) Works Cited Hillman, James. Eranos Lectures 8, On Paranoia, by Hillman. Dallas Spring Publications, 1986. Oates, Joyce Carol. Naked. inflame and Other Stories. By Oates. New York Plume, 1991. Robinson, Sally Heat and Cold Recent Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates, nautical mile quarterly Review, Vol. XXXI, 1992. Notes 1. Robinson, Sally. Heat and Cold Recent Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates. Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XXXI, 1992. In Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 108. 383. 2. Hillman, James. Eranos Lectures 8, On Paranoia. Spring Publications, 1986. 13-14.