Every so often, a piece of literature (Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, or A Separate Peace) or a film (Dead Poets Society, Scent of a Woman, or The Emperor’s Club) speaks powerfully about the world of adolescence within the context of a private school. These works resonate not so much because they terrify us on multiple levels, but because we identify with the protagonists so deeply and fear that the flaws within them are reflections of our own naiveté and imperfection.
Such is the case in the highly compact but startlingly moving short story, “Fisherman’s Wife” by Medb Mahony, sent to me by an independent school colleague, and reprinted in this magazine with permission of the author (Click here to read story). I’d like to indulge myself in this column by interpreting the story both as literature and as a dramatization of the roles we play as parents and teachers of adolescents and young adults. (Pardon my saying so, but I’m reliving my teacher days with an admonition: Don’t waste your time reading this column if you haven’t read the story.)
So how does “Fisherman’s Wife” work as art? Upon reflection and a second reading, we recognize that the story opens with the symbolism of the narrator, Helen, “doing the dirty laundry” of her son home from college: It is 10:30 on a Friday night and you can’t sleep. Instead, you are sorting your 19-year-old son’s dirty laundry into piles of darks and whites because you want him to bring clean clothes when he goes back to college two days from now.
And, then, she learns of her son’s car accident from her husband, who clomps down the basement stairs to report the son’s call from the hospital. Helen is startled. The laundry basket thumps off the dryer when you knock it with your elbow as you turn to face him. Clothes spill haphazardly across the floor. “Hospital?”
The opening laundry imagery is evocative on several levels. First, we have the codependency of son and mother — the son needing his mother to “clean up after him,” and the mother needing (and wanting) to do so. Second, the pejorative associations of the phrase “dirty laundry” foreshadows some of the details we later learn in the story, again through the agency of the laundry itself — the jeans that smell like marijuana and the stain that conveys a scent of grain alcohol. Third, the author foreshadows the plot through the symbolism of the laundry: The contrast of the neat “piles of darks and whites” with the haphazard disarray of the spilled clothes is the mother’s symbolic re-enactment of her son’s car accident, foreshadowing a messy outcome, belying her husband’s reassurance that follows her initial reaction. Your husband sighs. “Paul’s all right, Helen. They’re both all right. Paul called me on his cell phone a few minutes ago.”
In a symbolic sense, the mother becomes the agency of her own child’s demise, as she is the one who knocks off the laundry, which spills (like her son) “haphazardly across the floor.” The blending of the imagery of the son with the imagery of the laundry — the boy soaking in water and soap suds in the bathtub compared to the personified jeans in the washer at the end of the story, when the “clothes in the washer swirl around, the legs of the jeans doing an awkward side stroke” — make this connection vividly.
So, the first theme of this story — keeping one’s child “clean” — is powerfully conveyed by the laundry imagery. And this symbolic theme of “cleanliness” is tied to a related theme of “safety,” picked up by the car trip to and from the hospital, in the family Volvo: As the Volvo sedan accelerates through the humid August night toward the hospital, the streets steamy from recent rain….
Here, the imagery functions both as foil to plot (the Volvo’s trademark reputation for safety and “protection” in the event of an accident) and as foreshadowing of plot (the humid, steamy, wet setting we experience with considerable discomfort).
Helen’s disapproval of her son’s friend, Mitch, leads her to the assumption that it is Mitch’s influence that has brought her child into harm’s way. Her repeated assertions about Mitch being “spoiled” and her chaperone story in which she was intimidated by Mitch when she confronted him in bed with a girl in his house (i.e., Mitch’s territory) suggests “dirt” in another sense — that of “despoilment” — thus tying the two related themes, dirty and spoiled, together. The second theme of this story — the dangers of the world that can ensnare one’s child — is conveyed by the “spoiling” conceit, as in the sense of the barrel of good fruit being spoiled by one bad apple. Helen tells herself, You’ve never liked your son’s friend, Mitch. He’s rich (and spoiled, you think). At another point in the story, she repeats the sentiment, though this time actually sharing her view with her son: You’ve told Paul you think Mitch is spoiled. Even though he’s a big handsome hunk who used to be your son’s best buddy on the St. Luke’s lacrosse team, he’s thoroughly spoiled. Paul, of course, ignores your insights.
This theme of “despoilment” is archetypal, going back to Greek mythology and the Bible. Consider the myth of Leda — who is raped by Zeus, producing Helen and the ultimate demise of Troy — as well as the story of Eden in which Eve is seduced by the snake, producing the expulsion of humankind from paradise. This deeply embedded theme of seduction by evil, of course, tugs strongly at the heart of all parents and is manifest in the sense of helplessness about the friends children pick during the turbulent years of adolescence, when the adults’ influence pales in comparison to the peers’ influence. One’s choice of neighborhood and private school (the fictional St. Luke’s in the story) is a deliberate strategy to confine the peer group to kids of the same class and same aspirational values — yet, within the selection pool, there are still risks that parents can’t easily engineer the child’s path around. In the story, the fact that Helen’s concern about Paul’s choice of friends has no effect on her son underscores this sense of helplessness and worry.
A third and symbolically related theme emerges in the story — the theme of a modern-day Christian allegory. One could argue that Paul is the “fisherman” (a symbol of Christ) literally willing to assume the sins of mankind (his friend, Mitch) by claiming that the marijuana was his in order to protect his friend’s career path to law. The title of the story is also an allusion to “The Fisherman and His Wife,” a Brothers Grimm story of the “magical fish” who gave whatever was requested. When the fisherman’s wife learns about the magical fish, her demand for wealth and power becomes increasingly greedy, until her wish to be God (the Faustian flaw) results in the magical fish punishing her by taking everything away. And this, of course, is the saddest and most troubling part of this short story: the fear we all have that we will be punished for wanting too much or trying to control too much, to arrogantly try to play God by making claims upon our child’s destiny. In this case, the son is punished for the sins of the father (for not recognizing the danger Mitch represented) and for the sins of the mother (for not being strong enough to confront the beast, Mitch, and protect her son from danger).
So what’s my point in this column? Occasionally, we might want to assign and analyze some fiction with kids, advisors, and parents, in order to help us all sort through some of the very difficult dynamics between adults and adolescents. In the analysis of great fiction, we almost always learn something about ourselves and those we love.
I also think this particular story offers an important reflection on the anxiety of modern times. The story is told from the second-person point of view. Each of us is asked to be the mother — to wrestle with how we might have protected and guided Paul, or how we will protect and guide our own children and the children within our schools. In the end, it’s easy to see the mistakes Helen and her husband have made — the husband’s wishful thinking that things will always be OK, the wife’s reluctance to press her will upon her family with more force. We can see the parents’ caution, especially the fear of pushing back against the culture that has absorbed their son. But they are all very human characters, too — and it’s hard to read about them and not stop to reflect on… well, our own naiveté and imperfection.