Response 4 Pricksongs and Descants Part 2

Chelsa Lauderdale

Intro to Writing and Literature

10/13/10

“Pricksongs and Descants” Part 2

In the tradition of Coover’s writing style, the last few stories of Coover’s book seem to be as confusing as the beginning, if not more so. Though they do seem more interesting as well. Many of the same literary devices he uses earlier on in the book regularly reappear later on in the story.

As in “The Gingerbread House”, Coover’s story “The Elevator” is also dissected into chapter-like paragraphs that are headed by numbers. In “The Elevator” though, Coover correlates the number of chapters to the number of floors of the building that the elevator belongs to. It engages us as readers because it makes us think that the end of the elevator is also the end of the story. Once again, Coover inserts himself into the story, blurring the lines between himself, the narrator and the main character. Essentially, “The Elevator” seems to be just a story about a man named Martin who hates his job and thus, envisions fantastical things happening to him inside of and because of this elevator. Being thought of as weak and incapable to the people that he works with, Martin often imagines himself as hero, either in the form of an actual savior (page 130) or just as someone that everyone respects and envies (135). Due to the fact that Martin hates his job and most of the people that work there, he considers the elevator as a sort of safe-haven for him. He is also very similar to the elevator because like it, he is enclosed within himself and though he can imagine anything that he’d like, there’s no guarantee that any of those things will happen.

The main thing in “Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady” that is confusing, is that it seems as though the characters of the story can hear all or most of what the narrator is saying. The dialogue of the story seems to be responding to the narration of the story. When the narrator says, “Now, were the Ringmaster a philosopher, he might have avoided the catastrophe...” (140) the ringmaster responds in the next paragraph saying, “Philosophy! You want philosophy? I’ll give you philosophy!” (140) In this story, Coover shows us the opposite of traditional beauty. He uses the Fat Lady, the Thin Man, the Ringmaster and the whole circus as a metaphor. The Fat Lady and the Thin Man are metaphors for nonconformists, as they try to be the opposite of what they are just to make each other happy even at the expense of the well-fare of the circus. They give up the things that they love, in the case of the Lady, her weight and in the case of the Man, his thinness. The ringmaster is obviously their leader and he is a symbol for conformity as he wants the Thin Man and Fat Lady to fit in to the circus and stay the way that they are for his own benefit. However, it seems as though Coover is trying to say that we all have to conform in certain ways because at the end of the story the Thin Man and the Fat Lady end up in the same position as they had started in. As in the story “The Magic Poker” Coover allegedly loses control of the story and his metaphor becomes unhinged.

“The Babysitter” is also akin to “The Magic Poker” as both of the stories jump around quite a bit and are very confusing. Coover uses this story to confuse the reader in their morals of what is right and what is wrong as well as what is real and what isn’t. The story seems to center around a bathroom and a television set, both of which have extremely sexual connotations to the story. Most of the sexual acts and thoughts that happen occur either in front of the television or while the babysitter is in the bathroom. The television set though has another purpose, the constantly changing channels set the tone of the scene that’s about to occur. In the beginning of the story there is a musical on the TV and the scene that’s going on is moderately pleasant, and towards the end of the story when the babysitter is flipping through channels incessantly the scenes get more and more frantic. “The Babysitter” seems to be another one of the stories where Coover gives the reader a plethora of possibilities in a sort of choose-your-own-adventures type of story as the story is constantly changing and disregarding what happened before.

In Pricksongs and Descants, Coover tries to get the reader to challenge their ideas of literature as well as ideas of morality. His conceptuality seems far-fetched but it all comes together (sometimes) at the end of the story.