"Them": how does the first chapter introduce us to the characters of the novel and how does it reflect Oates's style?

Thèmes abordés

Them, Joyce Carol Oates, chapter 1, Loretta Botsford, Maureen, Jules, Brock, American dream, historical context, 1930

Résumé du document

The following is an extract from J.C Oates's novel "Them". It was published in 1969 and won the "National Book award fiction" in 1970.
Even though Oates states in the foreword to the book that the story is based on a real family the novel is fictional. Most of it takes place in Detroit and covers a period which goes from the 1930's to the 1960's and it deals with the struggle of three characters : Loretta and her children Maureen and Jules who are trying to live the American dream.

Extraits

[...] On the second page Oates also introduces a third figure, that of the father, even though he is briefly evoked firstly from line 22 to 25 and then on page during the dialogue, the reader get's the impression that the father is an absent and unreliable figure. J.C. Oates's style of writing : Long descriptions in prose, few dialogues in colloquial language : As we can see in this extract, there are more descriptions than dialogues. We have said before that the descriptions are about the characters, their thoughts and their appearance. [...]

[...] Indeed in the second part of this extract Loretta seems to loose her youthful and innocent charm when coming into contact with her brother Brock, who is at this point introduced into the novel. Through the dialogue and Loretta's actions as we can quote on line 22 " she resented cooking for her bother", but she still does. The reader therefore notices a transformation : Loretta seems to be like a housewife who is submissive to her husband. We must mention that throughout the entire novel Oates depicts a society in which men still dominate. [...]

[...] 'Them': how does the first chapter introduce us to the characters of the novel and how does it reflect Oates's style? Introduction : The following is an exact from J.C Oates's novel Them It was published in 1969 and won the National Book award fiction in 1970. Even though Oates states in the foreword to the book that the story is based on a real family the novel is fictional. Most of it takes place in Detroit and covers a period which goes from the 1930's to the 1960's and it deals with the struggle of three characters : Loretta and her children Maureen and Jules who are trying to live the American dream. [...]

[...] They are written in prose and are very precise, depicting everything in great detail. We can also note that the author uses the past tense and that there is a third person narrator who is omniscient because he already knows everything about each character. The vocabulary isn't very formal but always brings precision to the descriptions regarding the colours, the shapes and etc On the other hand the dialogues are written in a very colloquial language : First of all we can notice that the author uses contracted forms which are never present in the descriptions. [...]

[...] Last of all, naturalistic writers were supposed to document themselves a lot regarding their subject and this is exactly what Oates did : indeed Them was written thanks to Maureen Wendall's account of her life during this period and was therefore based on real people. Conclusion : So in conclusion we can say that this first chapter introduces one of the main characters of the novel, giving us a description which is both physical and psychological and situates the story in its historical context. [...]