Response 4

'The Babysitter' is the creepiest puzzle in 'Pricksongs and Descents' because its characters direct sexual energies towards those who are either uncomfortably above or below their age. In some sections, like when the babysitter tries on the father's boxers, as well as when the friend of the babysitter's boyfriend proposes he help his friend have sex by raping the babysitter, the characters are oblivious to the world's sexual code. Coover's goal is not to create complex characters who think through their decisions morally. Instead, he wants to portray the process of writing and living. To say that this text is only about writing neglects the similarities between the two. Both involve structure, point of view, choices, plots, lessons, characters, rises, and falls. Likewise, this passage might be both a lesson on how the writers lack control and a lesson on how manipulated our morals are in our lives.

Coover uses ambiguity, such as not always defining a speaker, to cause the reader to think they might be reading child porn when they might be reading about adult sex, which is less disconcerting. This clever trick shows that situations become immoral based on age. On page 207, an anonymous voice states that the “she” in question will spank him, and then adds, “Let her.” Depending on the speaker's identity, and whether or not we view spankings as abuse or good child rearing, the text might imply abuse, discipline, or sexual role play. Again, on page 222, when Jack's friend tries to rape the babysitter, he says, “We're going to teach you how to be a nice girl.” These words go from innocent to sexual based on the babysitter's age. At one point, Jack's friend says in reference to the babysitter, “Well, man, I say we just go rape her” (219). However, when Jimmy, the boy being babysat, “holds [the babysitter] down by pressing his head against her soft chest”, it is not clearly articulated as abuse by the author because it is attempted by a child (212). The author wants his readers to decide what to label these actions and to examine our own agism in the process.

From a writer's perspective, this may be a commentary on how writing can become explicit based on the reader's own experience. In this way, the reader, and not the author, holds the control. Of course, the readers' perceptions is also determined by time periods and the agendas in the governing bodies and the media in these time periods. Perhaps, then, no one holds the control after all, with the writer struggling to generate ideas for the reader to feel and the reader either struggling to read with their own uninfluenced mind or simply giving in to bias.