Deconstruction Paper "Deconstruction applied to Short Stories"

The Response to Death

The Derridean theory of reading called Deconstruction presents different elements to work with texts. One of these principles states that people, especially western people, understand and see the world in pairs, in twos, in binaries, two opposites that are always united. Because they are different, each one gives meaning to the other and can only have meaning on its own when being distinguished from the other. From the pair of binaries, there is a superiority of the first stem above the second, the binary is therefore ruled be the first element.

Short stories are only short due to the number of the words they are built on, but not because of the lack of richness of themes they can include or deal with. In the cases of “The Fly”, by Katherine Mansfield and “A Dead Woman’s Secret”, by Guy de Maupassant the binary deconstruction-construction after death resulting in multiplicity of responses is the most outstanding one.

Death can be expected and sometimes even considered a blessing. For some yet, it can be appalling, heart-breakening and life changing. In “The Fly”, the boss loses his son in circumstances that are not expected. The boss has a life so neatly constructed, so planned, so specially built for his son. Ever since the boy’s birth, the boss has worked hard on building a life for his son, regardless of his own life. “Life itself had come to have no other meaning”(Mansfield, K.). Suddenly, that dream, that perfectly organized life comes to a halt. Deconstruction takes place. The structure of his whole life is shaken as if the worst and most powerful earthquake has hit the Earth. His son is dead. The debris of his treasured dream of his son following his steps are scattered all over his office, all over his body, all over his heart and soul. “And he had left the office a broken man, with his life in ruins”. Tragedy takes over, together with sadness and sorrow. The boss can not find a way out of his misery. His friend, Mr. Woodifield, moves on, despite his own tragedy of losing his son also. But the boss does not. He wants to cry, he has the intention to, he has prepared himself for it but that does not happen. His friend talks about his son’s death …”The girls were in Belgium last week having a look at poor Reggie’s grave, and they happened to come across your boy´s…” …”but the boss made no reply…” He has not even been to his son’s grave, he can not even talk about it. He can not reconstruct his life after his son’s death. He seems to be stuck in the very same moment his son has died. He is unable to remember anything, as if time does not go by, as he is unable to move on and rebuild his life and live again. “For the life of him he could not remember”. Moreover, the boss is so deeply and terribly sad in his grief that he can not allow some other things to go on, at least not the ones he can control, like the fly that falls into the ink pot. The boss knows the insect fights for its life but he is so angry at not been able to overcome his tragedy that he takes the life of the fly as his son’s death seems to have taken his.

Though circumstances can change the point of view of someone losing a beloved one, whether a relative or a friend, it is always dramatic and grieving. In the case of “A dead woman’s secret”, the death of a beloved mother due to circumstances that may be seen as normal brings about discoveries, secrets, regrets, doubts, surprise and sorrow. The woman dies peacefully after living a life devoted to her offspring, bringing them up without a father, for he is absent, and educating them in moral values and principles. “She had…armed them with a strict moral code, teaching them religion, without weakness, and duty, without compromise”(De Maupassant, G. ). Her daughter, a devoted nun, and her son, a strong judge are there, saying their goodbyes, alone with the dead corpse of their mother, adoring her, missing her, worshipping her. While her children are weeping, remembering the good times by their mother, a terrible secret is revealed. The children realize for the first time that the life their mother has led is a lie, a firm, a wall that hides her deepest feelings and her most embarrassing sins. Both her children, owners of a sense of justice and strict judgement, stay in silence. It is in silence when they destroy the image of their mother as it has been before: perfect, pure, calm and quiet. The letters picture their mother living in a deep romance with an unknown man, someone they do not know, telling each other how much they love each other, how much passion they have for each other. An unknown picture of their mother is depicted in the letters, and her children start incorporating all these new details of their mother into the image they have of her. In silence, each of them, the nun and the judge, pass judgement on their mother and rebuild a life that would be completely different to the one they know, to the one they have lived with her. Silence is their answer, their result, their way to cope with this huge wave, this tsunami that has hit them. “Standing erect, severe…, he looked unmoved at the dead woman. The nun, straight as a statue, … was watching her brother, waiting”. In their minds, hearts and souls, they rearm themselves a new life, constructing one they will live with the rest of their days. Slowly, each of them say their goodbyes to this mother they have come to see as a stranger. Then, they leave, with a different view of love, life, and themselves. “…the son slowly left his armchair, and without looking again at the mother upon he had passed sentence,… he said: “Let us now retire, sister”. They should look at a new life now, but with a completely different past.

In life, there may be nothing more certain than death. Though man has tried to avoid it, to find a way to stop the time so death does not come, it has found its way to have a constant presence in every person’s life. Death is one of the few issues that are equal to all humans, but the reactions to it are what make humans different from one another. Tragedies bring deconstruction along, construction may not always be present afterwards and it may not be similar in every case. When tragedy happens, there might be no single aspect of a person´s life that is not shaken, disturbed, altered by such a terrible shock as the death of a beloved one is. The reactions, the responses, the consequences, what comes after, they are also different, personal, very close to one´s heart, mind and soul. How someone overcomes these tragic moments and the strategies that are used to shed some light on the dark and gloomy atmosphere are unequal to most human beings. The dead person can be blamed for his or her own death, or blamed for all he o she did or did not do in his or her life, or be blamed for the life he or she forces everyone else to live after his or her departure. In the two short stories mentioned above, the deconstruction – construction binary results in different reactions to the same trigger: the death of a beloved one. As seen in “A Dead Woman´s Secret”, the dead woman´s offspring challenge their mother after finding some secret love letters, they rebuild her life and move on with a different image of her, but still they move on, they are able to construct after deconstruction. In “The Fly”, the boss unleashes his anger, fury and sadness caused by his son´s death against an innocent flying insect, but he can not let go, he can not go on, he can not reconstruct his life. Deconstruction has taken it over.
“There are some kinds of damage that take you far beyond normal rules and systems of ethics and morality –beyond this point be monsters, as the ancients used to say (Robinson, P. 2007)”.


References
- Mansfield, K., “The Fly”, ELT Trainee Teachers Reading Group, British Council.
- De Maupassant, G., “A Dead Woman´s Secret”, ELT Trainee Teachers Reading Group, British Council.
- Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2003, Pearson Education Limited, England
- Robinson, P., 2007, “Friend of the Devil”, Harper Collins Publishers, New York