Allison Hartsell
SSRJ #1: Straight
Straight's short story
Mines made me feel both sympathetic for the protagonist
Clarette, and overall upset. She is in a difficult situation, with
two young kids and a decent-paying but emotionally taxing job, and
she can't quite find a way out. The element that stood out to me
most was the tone. It is grim but determined; the sentences are
short, and often not even technical sentences at all: “Big
roundhead fool magnets”; “Nothing in his skull”; “twins.
Girls. EGYPT and MOROCCO.” She tells her story with the tone of an
curt person talking. Nothing occurred in the story that is similar to
my life, however, I completely understand the feeling of being deeply
unhappy with life but carrying on anyway.
Susan Straight uses the setting of
Mines to parallel Clarette's life. She is a correctional
officer in a youth jail, and most of the story takes place there.
Although Clarette simply works in a correctional facility, rather
than being incarcerated in one, she is imprisoned. Clarette has two
young chidren she must take care of—she is the dutiful, responsible
sort—and her husband isn't much help. Finally she has found this
job, that offers “bennies” and a salary, that allows her to be
home when her children are done with school, but she is trapped. The
very fact that her job is stable makes it nearly impossible for her
to justify trying to find a different job that wouldn't make her so
miserable. She is stuck there just as the prisoners are. Clarette is
also trapped in her unhappiness; she rises early to work, gets off of
work in time to greet her kids after exiting the bus, and spends the
rest of her time drudging through household duties, exhausted and
headache-plagued. The story doesn't even mention how a weekend might
be for her, as though each moment she is working on behalf of
somebody else.
One part of the story mentions
Clarette going to college with her friend Tika, and how Tika is now
teaching, whereas Clarette “married Ray.” Does the character seem
bitter about this decision? Like the mere mention of it suggests that
Ray is also a job, and not one she enjoys?
