What's It All About?

A major distinction in literary works is whether a story’s plot is linear or circular. A linear plot expresses cause and effect—A leads to B leads to C, etc.. In effect, A transforms to C through the experience of B. A circular plot begins and ends in the same place, often with the main character returning to their starting point after undergoing significant experiences or changes. Transformed by experience, as it were.

Evening seems pretty circular, best B. The story is about a sixty-five year old woman, Ann, who is dying—it’s clear from the early part of the book that she’s dying; there’s no question of will she or won’t she die, only when. At the story’s beginning, in summer, Ann asks her physician, Dr. Baker, how long she has to live, he replies:

Let’s just say you won’t see the leaves change this year.

And at the end, this same Dr. Baker is called to verify Ann’s “expiration.” The story’s final scene occurs in the context of one of those imaginary dialogues Ann has with Harris Arden:

I won’t say goodbye.

No, she said. Don’t.

He did not come the next day, he did not come the day after. He did not come again.

Now this certainty is largely a result of making it clear that Ann has a terminal illness, but it also unburdens the reader from feeling that the author knows a secret the reader does not. It would be a very different book if Ann’s condition was vague, and if the reader was given some hope she might survive. But no.

So, between the beginning and end of the story, Ann’s inner life is chronicled as she remembers incidents from her past. And this past is shown in some other sections by the narrator, and occasionally through other characters’ perspectives. And there is a present in the story, often shown the perspective of Ann’s adult children.

So what are the significant experiences and changes that Ann undergoes and attains?

The story covers Ann’s childhood and includes scenes from her three marriages, and scenes of her adult children facing her demise. There are scenes from the perspective of the private nurse who cares for Ann. There is even one written from Harris’ perspective in which he rationalizes his decision to stay with his fiancé, Maria, instead of being with Ann.

A significant element is the death of Paul, one of Ann’s sons, and this loss seems not to be fully grieved in that it is presented briefly and in such a way that indicates unresolved shock.

Paul was barely twelve and that this had happened did not fit. It did not fit at all.

This passage occurs at the end of the two paragraphs describing how Ann learned of Paul’s death so it’s not clear whether the above passage represents her thoughts at the time she learned of his death, or her thoughts about the death looking back from the book’s present. Either way, there’s a quality of denial and numbness.

But the bulk of Evening has to do with two threads that intersect: the first is Ann’s brief love affair during a family wedding forty years before with Harris Arden, a man whom Ann later regrets losing to another woman. And there is the death of Ann’s cousin, Buddy Wittenborn, that occurs during this same wedding on the evening that Harris made mad love with Ann and then left her for good. (cad). This juxtaposition of sex and death creates an intensity for Ann as she lays dying. (Faulkner reference—no accident). The book tells us in an isolated line:

This was the last story she’d ever tell.

As we’ve mentioned, she imagines conversations with Arden whom she hasn’t seen for years (although, there is a mysterious passage early on that seems to show the real Harris showing up at the house where Ann is dying, but she’s asleep).

My sense is that, although Ann was shocked by Buddy’s death, she is, after forty years, more emotionally caught up by the affair with Harris. Despite her three marriages, Harris was the man she always yearned for; the one who, at the end of her life, she thinks about the most.

When Ann’s adult daughters ask her about who Harris was, as she’s been mentioning his name in her half-asleep state, she says, enigmatically:

Harris was me.

The sequence is important. Ann has passionate sex with Harris (and it is consensual, unlike another episode with another chap), Harris definitely leaves her for his fiancé. Then Ann is shown in despair over this loss. Then, she gradually learns that at the time she was lying on the beach in Harris’ arms, Buddy was accidently run over by a truck driven by Ralph Eastman (as I mentioned, this is foreshadowed early on). The young folks with Ralph desperately try to find Harris, as he is a doctor, but he is busy with Ann. So there is an element of guilt that Ann feels for taking pleasure and passion at a time of tragedy—although she really didn’t know till later about Buddy’s death.

What is the transformation that Ann experiences as she shuffles through these memories of her life?

Hope had changed direction, toward the past.

This is an important, though temporary, turning point, in which Ann realizes that all her hopes are focused now on what might have been. There is no future.

In a significant dialogue with the imaginary Harris, she reaches a key insight about her life:

…What else could I do?

Nothing. You did the best you could. We both did.

There wasn’t much of a choice, she said.

We did our best.

Maybe I should have done something, she said. Maybe I could have…

What?…

I don’t know. But something. Just not let it happen the way it did.

Some things you can’t help.

Think of how different it would have been, she said.

You think so?

Of course. I mean… She thought for a moment. I mean…

What?

You’re right, she said. It couldn’t have been different.

In this dialogue, she concludes that things could only happen in one way, the way that resulted in Harris marrying Maria and Ann marrying her three husbands. (not all at once). After years of thinking of what might have been, and the intermediary step of wishing she could change the past, she decides that what happened was the only possible outcome, that it’s pointless to want to change the past. She accepts death and dies.

‘Kay, till next time.

#SusanMinot #Evening #AlanBray