Liars' Club Review

The Liars’ Club is described as," A classic of American literature.... Mary Karr conjures the simmering heat and bottled rage of life in a small Texas oil town with an intensity that gains power from the fact that it's fact. " — James Atlas, The New York Times Magazine

The Liars’ Club was written in 1995 based on the life of author Mary Karr. She writes a compelling and riveting memoir with various topics which many authors find hard to write. Mary left nothing untold, even though at times when reading, one can tell Karr became hesitant in telling her story. Time magazine sums it up greatly when said,“Mary Karr’s God-awful childhood has a calamitous appeal. The choice in the book is between howling misery and howling laughter, and the reader veers toward laughter. Karr has survived to write a drop-dead reply to the question, ‘Ma, what was it like when you were a little girl?”.


The Liars’ Club is a memoir written by Mary Karr. The book begins with a partial description of a night in 1961 in Leechfield, Texas. This small oil town in East Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico, is where Mary, her father, mother, and sister live. On the night in question there is quite a commotion taking place. Mary’s mother has been taken away, for what we do not know, and her father is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, a doctor is asking the very young Mary to show him the marks, but Mary has no marks on her body to speak of. The two young girls are then taken out of the house by the sherrif and we the readers, are left wondering… what is going on?
As this memoir progresses we become acquainted with “The Lairs Club”, the nickname title given to Mary’s father and his friends who meet somewhat infrequently at a bar or in the back of a bait shop.

At these meetings, Mary’s father tells the others fantastic and astounding stories about his life that seem to be bordering on the untruthful side. Mary is the only child to ever be present at these meetings.
We learn too, that Mary’s mother, a college educated daughter of cotton farmers, has been married seven times throughout the course of her life, Mary’s father being marriage number four. At one point Mary’s mother and father get into a larger fight than is customary for their home, and Mary’s mother takes Mary and her sister Lecia to their Grandma Moore’s house. It is here that we are introduced to this rather odd character, who never seems to be short on advice or criticism.
Later in the memoir, Grandma Moore is diagnosed with cancer and comes to live with the family. She changes the way the family does everything, and to Mary, her mother becomes a figment of her once vibrant self. During all of this Mary’s father stays away from home so as to not upset the not so delicate balance of sanity in the house (Grandma Moore harbors a deep distain for him). The cancer eventually catches up with Grandma Moore and she first goes into a coma, after apparently attempting suicide during hurricane Carla.

Throughout all of these episodes we can see the steady decline of Mary’s mother’s mental stability. When Grandma Moore finally does die, we see her psychic health chip away that much more. And eventually Mary’s mother plunges off the deep end when she receives news of the inheritance she is set to receive from her mother’s estate. We never really learn the sum of the estate, but it is clear that it is probably a good deal more than $100,000. It is at this point that Mary’s mother snaps, going through the house, scrawling lipstick all over mirrors, and shattering them when she is out of lipstick. She burns all of the mail that came in that day. Then, without warning, she rounds up all of the girls’ things, clothes, toys, etc. and proceeds to toss them into a bonfire in the back yard.


She then grabs a knife and heads for the girls’ bedroom, and seeing them lying under a sheet completely covered, calls the doctor and tells him that she has stabbed and killed her two daughters. However, the girls are alive. This is the episode that the beginning of the memoir neglected to describe in full detail.
After Mary’s mother is released from the mental hospital, the family embarks on a trip to the Seattle World’s Fare, but they never each their destination. Instead, while making a stop in Colorado, Mary’s mother, on an impulse, decides to buy a house in a random mountain town near Pike’s Peak. The parent’s get divorced, and Mary’s mother gets remarried, again, this is number five, to a man she meats in the local bar.
In the last section of this compelling story, it is shown how the relationship between Mary, Lecia and their father has shifted. Since he is now not presently living with them, as the southern gentlemen tend to do after divorce, left his children alone. It is around Father’s Day and the girls attempted to call him and were not able to get through, so they begin to make cards for him to send. Hector, their new step-father, had mentioned he would like if they would make him Father’s Day cards, but the reactions and action of the girls show they still do not consider him any father figure and hope their father will begin making contact soon. They refuse to give up hope. The next morning, their mother takes them to the post office to send the Father’s Day cards and we show how their mother is still not mentally stable. She has now turned to alcohol and pills. Mary said, “She’d brought a Bloody Mary in a tumbler with a lid on it, like a baby would sip out of” then continues and says, “I saw for the first time how drinking had worn away her looks”. This shows how her mother is slowly sipping away. She is definitely a new person from in the past, yet still not “all there”.
The memoir follows with Mary’s mother moving the family to a town named Antelope. There they rent a house and the girls begin a new school with Mary feeling lonely and friendless, she eventually gets into a fight. After the fight, her initial thought was “Daddy would have been proud of that eye”. It is interesting to see that even though her father is not present, she still has that lingering feeling of trying to impress him and it shows how she still wants that relationship with him back.
Towards the end of the memoir, Mary begins to reveal to us what she wouldn’t share in the beginning. We find out that as a child, she was molested by her male babysitter. It goes to describe, as she remembers, details of that night and how he got her to do what she does. It is interesting because when Mary describes heart breaking or bad times or experiences in her life, she uses her humor to divert us from thinking it is as bad as it sounds. She tells of times she remembers in her past and she tends to ramble on before actually hitting the point. For example, during the revealing of her molestation, she begins talking about Christian soldiers and how they should come and “lop his pecker off”. She adds bits of witticism in her writing to somewhat alleviate the seriousness.
After Mary reveals the story of her molestation, it goes to show again, her mother not mentally stable when she threatens to shoot Hector, her husband at the time. After returning home from a drunken night at the bar, Hector, already a little upset from stories told earlier in the night, gets mad and calls Lecia a bitch, which sets something off in their mother. She proceeds to aim a gun at Hector while he is sitting on the couch.


Mary decides to fling herself over him because she knew her mother would not shoot her. As she keeps on telling the events of that night, bits of humor are kicked in and she talks about when she looked around “the whole scene had struck me as goofy”. The night of chaos ends with Mary running to get her principle and the family acts “normal” as soon as he knocks on the door with Mary.
The next day, Lecia and Mary call their father and demand he send for them. After staying with their father for a while, their mother and Hector come back for some dresses when a fight between Hector and their father begins after Hector told their mother to “get her ass in gear”. That night, Mary’s mother took Hector to the hospital, checked out of their hotel room and returned to her family. Mary said, “She stayed with Daddy till his death, stayed well into her own dotage”.
The memoir forwards to 17 years into the future beginning with Mary’s dad having a stroke while sitting at the American Legion. The story ends with Mary’s relationship with her father becoming better, slowly. She took care of him constantly with her mother and in the beginning, it was a bit hard, but her father became happy towards the end of his life. It is interesting that Mary’s relationship with her father came full circle, back to those days with the Liars’ Club. Even some of the guys from the club came and spent time with her father.
The relationship with Mary and her mother improved greatly as well. While in the attic one day, Mary discovered wedding rings and had remembered her Grandma Moore showing her a picture of two young children. She confronted her mother about it and found out they were half siblings. Her mother and her were able to connect and realized how important family was to them. The relationship with Mary and her parents became quite touching and even though it was such a compelling story, Mary was still able to douse some humor in her writing of this memoir, talking about how her dad “cooed like a baby” when she lifted him into his wheelchair. We as readers are able to feel for Mary and connect to her and the relationships with members in our own families, in one form or another.




Group Members: Dana Heileman and Jonathan Fessel

Humor and Politics

Politics and Humor

It seems in our culture today that we focus endlessly on politicians as the butt of jokes. We all know they make it extremely easy through the affairs with prostitutes, bad grammar, and poor political choices. The families of the politicians are sometimes affected. There is great humility involved. One reason why we pick them as the object of our humor may be that behind all of their political fakeness, they really are people. It seems sometimes through all of the campaigning that it is hard to imagine them as human. This makes it easy to forget that they make mistakes just like the rest of us. Many of these jokes can be seen late night on television. SNL, Jay Leno, and The Colbert Report are a few examples that everyone knows will make fun of any political event that comes our way. It is a way for society to point out that the politicians are, more often than not, terrible role models. America loves to point out all of the absurdities that are presented to us through politics.








We have seen politics and humor together in class through the literature and the theorists.


Politics and Humor Theorists Approach

Sigmund Freud’s definition of humor and jokes allows us to form a basic framework for why the political can seem humorous. Jokes on political subjects are generally of a tendentious nature. This means that they serve an aim or purpose for the teller of the joke. Cynical jokes are jokes directed at an institution. We make jokes about the political because the only way we can make fun of the political through humor. Using humor to mock institutions allows us to evade restrictions that society would normally place on us.






In a slightly different twist, Thomas Hobbes defined humor as egotistical mechanism that fit perfectly in line with his theory that man always acts out of self-love. Laughter is a way of expressing power over another. “Laughter is self-applause” where I laugh when “I can see the point and thus appreciate my superiority” (Ewin 30). In this way, we use humor to feel power over political figures that would normally have a large advantage over us. We feel a fleeting superiority over those who we laugh at. “Joy, arising from imagination of mans own power and ability, is that exultation of the mind” which causes one to feel a sense of security (Hobbes 42).



Henri Bergson claimed that humor intends to humiliate. This humiliation, “snubbing,” works as a social corrective. In this way, when a politician steps out of line, we collectively humiliate that person to try to bring them back into the fold of normalcy. Additionally, Bergson claims that laughter is purely cerebral. “Its appeal is to intelligence, pure and simple” (Bergson 2). In order to laugh at a situation, one must be emotionally detached. This is how we can find humor in situations that involve conflict where laughter might, at first, seem inappropriate.


The Effect of Living Backwards

The use of politics and humor can be seen in literary works such as The Effect of Living Backwards, by Heidi Julavits. Even though the story mainly revolves around the relationship between two sisters, there is a part of the book that involves the hijacking of an airplane. The hijacking by two terrorists is mentioned by the author in comparison to “The Big Terrible”. Many readers would relate such an instance to the traumatic political event of 9-11. Julavits started writing The Effect of Living Backwards before September 11th, and for that reason, had to make several changes in her story after the event. Julavits still chose to keep the hijacking scene in her story although she had to be especially sensitive to mentioning a terrorist attack in her book. Therefore, it is not irrational to believe there is significance in Julavits portraying a terrorist attack in her story in order to convey a message to her readers. Julavits used the idea of terrorism as a metaphor for the relationship between two sisters. Not until after their own “Big Terrible” do the sisters find a greater appreciation for each other and also search for a deeper meaning of who they are. These ideas are strongly related to the feelings of U.S. citizens after the terrorist attack of September 11th. During a time of crisis, our country’s people were focusing on what is most important in life, such as family and friends, and searching for answers as to why things happen. Just as the hijacking made the relationship of the sisters stronger, the event of 9-11 made the United States stronger. In some ways, Julavits was using a catastrophic political event in order to convey a deeper message that many of her readers could relate to from their own experiences with 9-11.


Carnivore Diet

Another comical literary piece which vaguely mentions political elements is in Carnivore Diet by Julia Slavin. The father in the story was involved in politics and was sentenced to three years in jail because of illegitimate actions during his time in Congress. There was political controversy in the story, and it appeared the father was set up in a scandal. Other characters involved with politics were portrayed as being deceitful individuals. Also the political controversy in this story affected the families, and caused problems as information was spread throughout the suburban community. The wife and the son of the man who was imprisoned had to deal with negative social pressures in their neighborhood caused from the political mishap. Readers could see the affects of political controversy in the lives of politics and their families.


Willful Creatures: Dog Days

Another example of politics and humor is in the short story, “Dog Days”, by Aimee Bender, in which readers can see the effects of a war on a society. The story is about a real man who acts like a dog, and is ultimately treated like a real pet dog by a middle-class American. However, it is mentioned that a war is going on and the economy is falling apart. People in the neighborhood are disappearing and resources become more and more scarce. The family who has taken in the “dog” actually ends up killing it in the end because of their need for food as a means of survival. The fact that a war was going on and the society was falling apart drove the dad of the family to an outrageous behavior of killing a man and justifying his action by stating he was just an animal. The author’s intentions may have been to use absurdist humor show the potential for how outlandish people in societies can act during extreme difficulties such as political events like war.





In several literary pieces we have read this quarter, authors vaguely mention political elements in their writings. This is not merely an unintentional occurrence but rather a method to convey deeper messages relating to today’s political matters. Politics have a large impact on the way in which our society functions and writers use political elements to relate readers and their societies through the context of humor. Many of the literary works which are known for their use of humor are not created solely for laughs and entertainment but the stories are meant to communicate a hidden and deeper meaning. This allows writers to indirectly get their points across about political affairs and various issues that are left for the reader to unfold.

Overall, the use of satire in politics is a useful and popular method in today's society. We are surrounded with such humor, whether it is seen in different publications, like books and news articles, or through the media. Some television shows make millions of dollars off the humor that many Americans find in political humor. This humor can be used to convey both comical and serious messages. Also this specific humor can be related to philosophers and their theories of why humor is used. In most cases, political humor is simply a way for Americans to express their beliefs freely to others about political matters.


Lauren, Jeremy, and Brittany


Works Cited:

Bender, Aimee. Willful Creatures. New York: Anchor Books, 2005.

Bergson, Henri. Laughter: an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Not copyrighted.

Ewin, R. E. “Hobbes on Laughter.” The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 51, No. 202 (Jan., 2001): 29-40. Jstor. 10 May 2008. .

Hobbes, Thomas. The Leviathan. England: 1651.

Julavits, Heidi. The Effect of Living Backwards. New York: Berkley Books, 2003.

Slavin, Julia. Carnivore Diet. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.

Humor and Heart Break:

Humor and Heartbreak, two words that most people don’t put together. Some say there is nothing funny about life and what it throws at you but these stories prove that wrong. In Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore, Charlene, the mistress, jokes about her lifestyle as “the other woman” and in Willful Creatures; the big man intimidates and tortures the little man to get a powerful feeling of superiority because he feels better about himself when someone else is worse off. And how can you not find humor in a relationship where you don’t even know the other person you’re envisioning your life with? Heartbreak and humor are complex and personal emotions but if you look closely enough you will see how they come together in the most unlikely ways.

The Effect of Living Backwards –Heidi Julavits

Humor and heartbreak are two very different emotions but at the same time they can be intertwined for a truly remarkable story. In The Effect of Living Backwards, Heidi Julivits tells of the very interesting relationships of the passengers of Moroccan flight 919. Bruno, the hijacker and "humane" terrorist's story makes you wonder, is it really worth the repercussions to test the person you love and married? And the interesting pull negotiator Pitcairn has on passenger Alice further makes you question, why does infatuation make you act the way you do?

From the start you can see that there is something missing from Bruno, not just his eyesight. He is cynical and almost bitter in a sense. You hear him tell stories of how he lost his eyesight to the hostages but it isn't until his "Shame Story" that you find out the truth. When he is harassing Justin, one of the hostages, you hear how the devastating events that lead up to the loss of his eyesight still affects him today. “Let me guess. She refuses to get an abortion. She's Catholic, sure, but those girls are only ever Catholic after the fact. It never stops them from taking their panties off in rubberless African countries, does it?" (pg. 102, The Effect of Living Backwards). Bruno's tangent about Catholic girls and “after the fact” makes you wonder, why is he so worked up about someone else's problem? Bruno's "Shame Story" tells of how he met his wife, a former nun, and how a legless neighbor and Bruno's own sick games changes his life forever. "She confessed to me the reason she'd left the Church. She had always found people without limbs, noses, crucial body parts to be loathsome. They made her sick, no matter how many times she went to confession." (pg. 119, The Effect of Living Backwards). After hearing this Bruno decides to play a trick on his wife to test her to see how much she loves him. He is convinced that she will love and be with him forever no matter what. He has a friend glue his eyes shut and fakes an accident and tells his wife he has gone blind. She reacts poorly and leaves the house. After removing the glue he becomes sick, "It's just a reaction to the glue, I told myself, to the stress of my wife's leaving me. It wasn't until too late that I discovered I'd contracted a virus, something I'd picked up in Borneo, at least that's what the doctor deduced...Blindness occurred only in the rarest of cases." (pg. 126, The Effect of Living backwards)

There is something slightly humorous about how Bruno lost his eyesight. Playing mean spirited tricks and games on his own wife caused him the greatest heartbreak, losing his eyesight. Perhaps, had he not glued his eyes shut and tricked his wife, the blindness never would have occurred?

"Everything will be ok just listen to me and follow my exact instuctions."

Another look into humor & heartbreak would be the "relationship" between Alice and Pitcairn. After being chosen by Bruno to talk to the negotiator, Alice becomes enthralled with Pitcairn. She has wild fantasies about meeting him and having a life together. She thrives on the words and stories he speaks to her and instructions he gives. Alice has always been unlucky in love. Never had the great boyfriend, just lame Miles Keebler who isn't technically even her boyfriend. You can tell that Alice craves and loves the attention that she receives from Pitcairn over the radio. "There was a warming area in my chest the size of a plum pit when I talked about Pitcairn. Maybe it was just because he made me feel important. Or maybe it was something else all together." (pg. 161 The Effect of Living Backwards) Alice has always envied Edith in a way because Edith always had boyfriends and lovers and men who fell at her feet and all Alice was the "look out". She was so excited that she had been chosen over Edith by this man, whom she didn't even know. Even when she was alone and Pitcairn was no where to be found she still talked to him in her head. The idea of a grown woman who is seemingly intelligent but has fake conversations with a man she doesn't know is sure to make anyone chuckle, what is she thinking? "I wanted his face as I had imagined it, with mousy hair and a mousy three-day scruff of beard, with eyes and lips that refused to come into focus. He was all sweet nimbus to me." (pg. 189, The Effect of Living Backwards). In Alice's fantasy world she and Pitcairn would be together and they would have the perfect life. And that is exactly what it is, fantasy.
Fantasy realism is how you could describe Alice's thought pattern. Her fantasies involve real people and ideas but not a real relationship. If they did involve a real relationship and life with Pitcairn, it would be heartbreaking for Alice, if he did not live up to the idea she had painted in her head of who he is.

Self Help- Lorrie Moore

Heartbreak and humor come together in a number of ways in the book Self Help. One of the most apparent ways is in the first story, How to Be an Other Woman. Charlene uses humor to avoid the reality of heartbreak that this affair is causing her. Even though the situation itself is not good, we see the story as funny because we see humor in things other than the situation. She develops an almost obsession with his wife, and begins to imagine that random women are her. To counteract this she writes lists of things to do in attempts to mock the situation and the unknown wife/girlfriend. She says the wife has “list-makers disease” (pg7, Self-Help), to make herself feel better, because deep down she is starting to feel less wanted by the man. When confronted by her mother about the situation she mocks her mother “wonder why she always polishes the silver after meals”. Pointing to the fact that she is upset over the situation she is in, but won’t face it. Instead she makes jokes to make it seem trivial. She also uses stereotypes to downplay the situation “Meet in expensive raincoats, on a pea-soupy night.”(pg3, Self Help). Another story in Self Help that uses humor in the face of heartbreak is How to Become a Writer. Heartbreak is not only caused by love of a person, but also from desire or passion in any part of life. In this story the woman decides to start writing in college. She starts going to writing classes and realizes that nobody likes her work. She has a strong interest in it and uses humor to deflect from the fact that she loves to do what nobody thinks she is good at. She tries to joke about her shortcomings “you decide not to go to law school at all, and, instead, you spend a good, big chunk of your adult life telling people how you decided not to go to law school after all.” (pg125, Self-Help). With a sarcastic look at the situation at hand the writer allows you to laugh a little at her shortcomings.











'Joe the Plumber' Calls Himself 'blunt'

Flying Leap –Judy Budnitz

In Judy Budnitz’s book Flying Leap both humor and heartbreak are used throughout the story Average Joe. Joe Morris begins receiving phone calls and visits from famous individuals; all of whom are asking for his advice. The first call informs him that he is the quintessential man and thus makes a good representative for the general masses. Upon learning this he immediately responds by asking, “So you’re saying I’m special?”(pg.95, Flying Leap) The humor here is that he is only special by being the most ordinary. Most people would not be excited to learn that they are average but the constant questioning over the phone and frequent visits gave Joe a sense of recognition that was completely unfamiliar to him but he welcomed it nonetheless. After all it was about time he got noticed for once. Eventually the phone stops ringing and no one visits to ask questions until he gets one final phone call, a simple follow up question. He is informed by the caller that he is no longer the statistical average man, to which he replies, “How can that be?” Joe is shocked, confused and ultimately hurt that no one is interested in his opinion any longer. “[Joe] couldn’t believe no one had any questions for [him].”(pg.108, Flying Leap) He liked all the attention he was getting but now he’s back to the same old Joe, with his TV programs, case of beer, and faithful companion Sheena. With this renewed peace and quiet Joe concludes, “I ought to be perfectly happy.” Budnitz is implying that, despite the incessant pestering, Joe is heartbroken, so to speak, because no one needs him anymore. He ought to be happy but can’t quite figure why he is not. He misses that recognition that he briefly experienced.

Mickey Cartoons — Giantland (Nov. 25, 1933)

Willful Creatures -Aimee Bender

Willful Creatures is a prime example of the relationship between humor and heartbreak. Many of the stories in the book are about lonely “people” or “people” who have been shunned by society and/or loved ones.
The story “End of the Line” perfectly illustrates this in Aimee Bender’s, Willful Creatures. This whole story revolves around a big man and his pet little man. The big man has faced heartbreak on many different levels. He has no wife or children we come to understand that the big man “didn’t like politeness and he didn’t like people.”(pg.20, Willful Creatures). The book further describes how no one noticed his new coat at work, and a woman who he asked out turned him down by embarrassing him to other coworkers. Clearly, the big man was lonely and had no one to turn to except his pet little man.
At first, the big man and the little man got along, but soon the little man expressed his feelings of wanting to leave and return to his family. This hurt the big man feelings. The one and only companion he had, wanted to desert him; hence, the big man’s heart breaks again. This time the big man retaliated. He turned his feelings of abandonment into feelings of aggression.

In order to fully explain how the big man’s actions of hostility toward the little man can be considered humorous, we must look at Hobbes theory of humor. In summary, Hobbes, theory states that humor is “aggressive expression of power and judgment over another.” In other words, “laughter (humor) arises when we take fleeting satisfaction in our superiority over another person.” This is exactly what the big man began to do to the little man. He began to find pleasure in asserting his power over the little man. He humiliated the little man by stuffing him in his pants and forcing the little man to show him his penis. He also physically abused him the more the little man cried out in pain and begged to go home, the more the big man tortured him. By doing this, he was trying to feel better about himself. However, the little man soon expressed that he was no longer afraid of the big man, and he had become numb. ”The little man folded his hands under his cheek in a pillow. Pain was no longer a mystery to him, and a man familiar with pain has entered a new kind of freedom.”(pg. 23, Willful Creatures) Once the big man realized that the little man no longer cared about the situation, the big man set him free. This proves that the big man was only happy when someone else was as miserable as he was. Once he realized that the little man no longer cared, that meant that the little man was no longer going to express any type of misery. When he did this, he removed the big man from his place of superiority over him. Therefore, the big man no longer found humor in the situation.

End Note:

Humor and heartbreak are both personal. Some may find humor in the most unlikely situations and heartbreak can be caused by something other than a lost love. Whether you are searching so desperately for someone to love that you create a fantasy or love the happiness and joy it brings when someone asks for your advice. As humans we find humor to be a stress reliever, conversation starter and finding comedic relief in strange and unlikely places make for wild and interesting ideas on life.

Works Cited :

Bender, Aimee. Willful Creatures. Random House 2005

Budnitz, Judith. Flying Leap. Picador USA 1998

Julavits, Heidi. The Effect of Living Backwards. Penguin Group 2003

Moore, Lorrie. Self-Help. Knopf Inc. 1985

Group Members: Kevin S. Dehn, Charlene Winburn, Lauren Kohne, Brian Clements

Anatomy of Humor: Mary Karr

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear “anatomy” is bones, muscles, and cells but unfortunately, the anatomy of humor is not so simple. We have spent much class time analyzing our readings, arguing over what is funny, and what is not, which is an example of how difficult it is to define humor and find it in the works of authors.

In attempts to define the anatomy of humor, we have discussed multiple theorists and their work on humor. Bergson, for example, sets rules for what is funny such as something can only be funny if you can relate to it. Although Mary Karr’s audience may not be able to associate with all of her life experiences, many of us can relate to parts of her life such as growing up with a sibling, parents who are divorced, and moving to a new city or state. Bergson would say that if we can relate to Mary, then we could laugh at her.

The first chapter starts at an awkward moment. The family doctor is examining Mary, who is nicknamed Pokey by her father; there is a firefighter in the room, her father with bruised knuckles, and her sister Lecia. Without much else information, we as readers are forced to remain unsure of what it is that is going on. Mary and Lecia are sisters, their father works at Gulf Oil and their mother is an artist. Their mother has been married seven times, two of which were to Mary and Lecia’s father. The town of Leechfield, Texas, though very dirty, its citizens pride themselves on its uncleanliness for they have received the label of the dirtiest town in Texas. Dad has a group of friends who also work at Gulf Oil and after work go to the American Legion, while their wives and families thought they were out paying bills and taking care of business. One wife found about this group of men and named them, The Liars’ Club. This group does not just comprise of men; Mary is the only child and woman allowed to come to the Liars’ Club. Mary was simply a daddy’s girl, but with the title of this memoir being The Liars Club, there must be some significance behind this. At the Liars’ Club dad tells the guys ridiculous stories, but sound believable. The attention is usually on dad.

In chapter two we learn about Grandma’s dislike for Dad since her Mom, nicknamed Charlie, left her previous husband who was a rich, for a man who was simply a factory worker. This is an awkward family indeed, though they believe they are normal. At home, they eat meals in bed, with their backs to each other, and facing different ways. Lecia and Mary have that typical sisterly hatred for each other; Playing hateful pranks on each other but in the next minute holding each other’s hand in times of danger. It is also in this chapter that we learn of Grandmas illness. Grandma had cancer and is not doing very well so she is invited to live with them. The family is forced to change some things in order to make Grandma feel a little more welcome. Mary is not welcome to the idea of Grandma coming to stay with them, and would rather her suffer in a nursing home. Grandma from day to day mopes around

Chapter 3 gives bad news of Grandma’s cancer. Her condition is getting worse and they soon find that she has to get her leg amputated. Of course, Mary could care less if this happens. Everyone else prepares to visit her in the hospital after the procedure. At the hospital, Mother is comforting, Lecia walks right up to the bed to talk to her, but Mary stands at the foot of the bed, disgusted. Mary is simply excited that she may be able to play in her wheelchair when they return home. Back at home, the girls return to their normal childhood. We learn of a game that the neighborhood kids called “Torture”. They reenact scenes from history such as the natural disasters and the Holocaust. One time the younger kids are packed together in a tiny old pigeon cage, while the older kids are acting as torturers. The kids are not allowed to leave until told so. In this game, Mary is the last one left. One of the teenage boys gets her out of the cage and leads her to someone’s garage. Unfortunately, Mary is raped. This boy walks her home as if nothing has happened. However, the teenage boy does not tell her not to tell anyone, Mary knew not to tell. It’s sad the things that happen to children that adults at times know nothing about until it is too late.

In Chapter, four Grandma’s cancer spreads to her brain. Instead of slowing her down, it makes her bear down harder on the household. She is definitely in pain but instead of taking her medication, she drinks a six-pack of beer everyday. Grandma develops cataracts and Mary cannot stand to look at her cloudy eyes. Grandma finds joys in finding fault in everything the girls do and orders Charlie to beat them. Emotionally beaten Charlie does as she is told. The girls take the beatings, for they are not injurious.

A tornado was on its way and the Moore’s decide to stay to pass it by. Things worsen and suddenly a National Guardsman comes and gets them out of the house. They decide to drive to Aunt Iris’s house in Kirbyville. On the Orange Bridge, the car gets out of control. Mother seems to have a part in it because while the car is wailing Mother continues to sing to the tunes on the radio. Mother finally gains control of the car and they are once again on their way. At Aunt Iris’s house, Grandma is put to bed. In the night, Mary is up wandering around unable to sleep. She creeps into the room where Grandma is sleeping and notices her hand hanging from the bed. She then notices her glasses on the ground with ants crawling over them and her up her hand. Mary then realizes Grandma had died. Charlie finds her later and starts to scream when she notices her mother had died.The first four chapters the reason why these are seen as humorous is that they come across to the reader as almost cynical. As Freud, describe cynicism as a type of joke.

During the second section of the book, there are multiple instances where Karr uses humor to draw the reader in, as well as to cushion the blow of the difficulties she faces in her day-to-day life. One example of humor in chapters 5-9 is when Mary’s father tells the Liars’ Club the story about his father dying by hanging to death. In no way is death by hanging humorous, but the fact that this story is completely false and fabricated does lend for some humor because Mary clues the reader into the truth, therefore the audience knows more than the people in the story.
Another instance of humor is the part in the book where I laughed aloud while reading for the first time in this book. It comes in the last sentence of chapter 9 after Charlie informs her daughters that she is going to be getting married yet again to a man that they have not even met. Charlie says “Say hello to your new daddy” and Mary narrates, “Lecia whispered what I was already thinking. Oh shit.” This is funny because although as a reader I could not directly relate to Mary and Lecia’s situation, I was thinking exactly the same thing and it became funny once Lecia voiced my thoughts. These situations spread throughout the book and provide some humor in instances that may not necessarily meet the traditional standards of what is funny.

In the last chapters (10-15), Mary Karr continues with her heavy weighted stories combined with the light humor she adds in. After her mother ends drinking she begins taking “diet pills” that have an affect that is unfavorable for Mary and Lecia, they cause their mother to be on edge and highly moody. The girls make up a unique jump rope rhyme:

“Meth-am-pheta-mean, Diet Pill will make you scream. Meth-am-pheta-mean keep you fighting, keep you lean.”

According to Freud’s theory of humor, jokes are hostile such as this to act as a defense mechanism. These girls are saddened by their mother’s abuse of alcohol and drugs, so they use it in play as a way of making it ok for them.

The Divine Secrets of The YaYa Sisterhood is a great example of the type of family dysfunction that the Karr's have. An alcoholic mother, and a daughter who is writing about her childhood.

In the end of the story, we find out that, all of her mother’s nervous behaviors have a reason, and that her father was not as full of it as one may think. The Liars’ Club is a story that is very hostile in its use of humor. As Freud may see it, this book used humor as a means to defend Mary Karr from the atrocities of her childhood.

The Life of Mary Karr

Mary Karr is an American poet and memoirist. She was born on January 16, 1955 in Groves, Texas to JP and Charlie Marie Karr. Growing up in east Texas Mary developed a biting sense of humor that brings her books to life. After a brief stay in Los Angeles, California Mary moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to attend Macalester College before leaving to travel the country for two years. She later enrolled into graduate school at Goddard College in 1979. This is where she met friend and mentor Tobias Wolff. In 1983, Mary married poet Mike Milburn they had one son Dev, before they later divorced. Mary has served as assistant professor at Tufts University, Emerson College, Harvard and Sarah Lawrence College. Karr has received numerous awards and accolades including the Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Bunting Fellowship (Radcliffe College), The Whiting Writer's Award National Endowment for the Arts grant. She is currently Jesse Peck professor at Syracuse University in New York.








The Liar's Club










In 1995 Mary Karr exploded into the writing world with a bang. The Liars’ Club tells of Karrs troubled childhood in fictional Leechfield, Texas. With a father who is not around, a mother she says “Fancied herself a bohemian Scarlett O’Hara” (pg 11 Liars Club) and stead fast older sister Lecia, Mary’s family draws you in with all there eccentricities. The Liars’ Club received critical acclaim and stayed on the New York Times best sellers list for over a year. In 1996 Mary received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for best first non-fiction work.















"At some point the fire fades to orange background, and I stare only at mother's face. It is all streaked up with lipstick and soot, so she looks like a bonifide maniac." (Liar's Club, p 152) You can relate Mary's childhood to that of her mother's favorite song "Mack the Knife". This depicts how Mary's mother at times can be deceiving and give the illusion that she is content in her role as a matriarch keeping her teeth tightly concealed beneath her smile. Through out the book you see the mother's mood go from stable to "nervous". It is in these times of nervousness that Charlie Marie bears her teeth.

"Oh the shark has zippy teeth, dear,

And he shows them pearl whites.

Just a jack knife has his teeth, dear,

And he keeps them out of sight..." (Liar's Club, p 89)

Cherry








In September 2001 Mary Karr leapt back into the New York Times best sellers list, once again, with her insatiable coming of age memoir Cherry. With her no nonsense humor and raging hormones Karr weaves a delicate web that is an adolescents girls sexual awaking. Cherry is at times shocking but hard to put down. It also divulges into the murky waters of Karr's use of illegal drugs and alcohol. Enamored with the Hippie culture and a group of laid back surfers Mary dives head first into the world of LSD, marijuana and pills. Of the experience she says “I also learned about funerals early. The book opens when I'm moving to California with this bunch of surfers who hollowed out a board to transport a brick of pot and various pharmaceuticals. Most of them went to prison. Two were suicides. One vanished into the Witness Protection Program. The only ones thriving today are me and my pal Doonie, and we both stopped drinking and drugging more than a decade ago. That says something about how the countercultural winds blew over me.” (1997-2008 Barnesandnoble.com llc)
(http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Cherry/Mary-Karr/e/9780141002071#EXC )







"Sure you were told that drugs cut a coiled and downward swerving path to degradation if not death. That was part of their allure." (Independent News and Media Limited) Littered with drugs, Jimmy Hendrix, overdoses, and suicide Cherry will pull at your heart and leave tears of laughter in your eyes.


Sinners Welcome





In 1996 Mary Karr shocked her fans by converting to Catholicism. She did so after an ex-heroin addict told her to get on her knees and pray for help to stop drinking. She took the advice and from it birthed a new look on life and her fourth volume of poetry, Sinners Welcome. Of the choice she made to stop drinking she says, "I haven't had a drink for about 16 years. It just took three minutes a day. When I first started praying, it was just, ""Help me stay sober. Thanks."" (www.beliefnet.com)








When asked about the title and how she chose the name Mary states, "At the church I went to in Syracuse, there is a banner outside that says "Sinners Welcome". The church is located in the poorest part of Syracuse, where all half-way houses are. Therefore, about 20-30% of the parish are disabled, either physically or mentally. I always loved walking in under that banner. I used to think you had to be good to go to church. Turns out you can go whether or not you have been to confession. Who needs it more than a sinner?" (www.beliefnet.com) In Sinners Welcome, Mary Karr takes a daring leap by mixing faith, love, and the remnants of a rebellious adolescent all into one book.




How the reader can relate to Karrs works


Mary Karr said it best when she told David Ian Miller, "On a good day for me, I'm in touch with the human heart, the human comedy, and the human drama." (www.sfgate.com, Finding My Religion) A well rounded and provocative writer, Karr draws on the three things we crave as humans. Throughout her books and poems she is able to consistently pull the reader in with a cynical best friend like humor.

Work Cited:


Barnesandnoble.com llc 1997-2008
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Cherry/Mary-Karr/e/9780141002071#EXC

Belief Net
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Catholic/2006/06/Mary-Karr-Guided-By-Prayer.aspx

Google Images
Google.com

Karr, Mary
Liars’ Club
1995 Published by
Penguin Books
375 Hudson St. New York, New York 10014

Lappin, Elena
(Cherry by Mary Karr) Article
Friday, 22 June 2001
Copyright 2008 Independent News and Media Limited
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/cherry-by-mary-karr-675087.html

Miller, David Ian

"Finding my religon"

www.sfgate.com

YouTube.Com

Group members

Kevin S. Dehn , Jeanette DiGiovenale,Jennifer Hasselbach

An Anatomy of Humor: Heidi Julavits

How can a book about one of America’s greatest fears be considered funny? Most people wouldn’t consider being hijacked and taken hostage a totally hilarious situation, but humor is not always obviously laugh out loud funny. Freud says that depending on how the humor is delivered, is how funny it is. According to the philosopher Monro, there are ten situations that can create laughter. In The Effect of Living Backwards there are many things masquerading as something that they are not. There are also many shortages of knowledge and/ or skills.

The book starts out in one of the main character’s views. Her name is Alice, and she is trying to get into the International Institute for Terrorist Studies in Lucerne. As Alice tells the admissions officer of her life, she gets asked the question “How can you be so certain?”. Right away one of the situations that Monro mentioned that creates laughter, something masquerading as something that they are not, comes in to play. The first sentence of the novel is “When I arrived at the Institute, my name was still Alice…” and at the end of the prologue, she ends up making out with one of her professors and thinking to herself “ It was not the sort of thing that ‘Alice’ would ever do, and therein lay its singular appeal.”

At the beginning of chapter one Alice and her sister, Edith, are flying to Morocco for Edith’s wedding. Hobbes said that laughter is mean spirited, and throughout this chapter, Alice makes fun of how “blond” Edith is. She tells Edith that she is losing her “spark”, that ever since she got engaged, she hasn’t been the same sexy promiscuous woman that she knew. Then Alice admits that saying that was a “mean and petty sibling maneuver” which made her feel better about herself because she humiliated Edith.


All of the shame stories are narrated by the person whose shame it is. In “A Mother’s Shame”, Alice and Edith’s mother is on a trip to Machu Picchu with her aunt. This story is funny because it seems like whenever Alice and Edith’s mom isn’t around her aunt, both of them are having sex. According to Monro, indecency is one of the criteria of laughter.

In chapter Two Alice tells of how she is not yet a very observant person. She learned to be very observant when she was taking an exam at International Institute for Terrorist Studies in Lucerne. Alice had been up all night studying for the exam and being interrogated, as had everyone else in her class, and the professor walked in forty-five minutes late and informed everyone that the exam had been moved to another room. The exam had been moved because the professor said that the room was being painted a “brighter shade of ecru”. The last question on the exam was “What color were the original walls in the Curtis Fishbeiner Lecture Hall?” the answers they could choose from were “Shell Pink, British Khaki, Petit Beurre, and Ecru”. The true original shade of the walls were Petit Beurre, and since the majority of the students trusted the professor when he said that they were ecru, everyone failed the exam. This would be an example of any shortage of knowledge or skill, that Monro explains.

In Cyrus’ Shame, Hobbes’ theory is put to work when Cyrus is on the train and sees a fat woman running to catch up to the departing train. Before she saw him staring at her, I think he was amused. When she yelled for help, he decided to help her, but she did not make the train. The only thing he had of hers was her handbag, which he stole her money out of.

The humor in chapter three can be seen through a scene where Bruno is interrogating Justin about his girlfriend. Bruno is telling Justin about his girlfriend and how un-catholic she acts, “but those girls are only ever catholic after the fact” he says. Bruno uses this humiliation to make Justin feel that he is inferior to Bruno. According to Hobbes, humor is a way to show judgment or power over someone else. Bruno does this well by pointing out to Justin that his girlfriend is still with him for herself, not for him.

In the fourth chapter, Smythes uses a Freudian type of humor by pointing out the sameness in two very dissimilar things. During a lecture at the Institute, he points out how the ideal way to hold hostages in a terrorism situation is much the same as holding a dinner party. “If the terrorist assembles his guests with sagacity,” he says, “the party will run itself. He can sit back and let ‘humanity’ dictate the behavior of his hostages; he need barely posses a gun.” Later in the chapter another Freudian type of humor was used by Alice. She defined “fright distance” as a way to measure fear. This is a play on words; the phrase flight distance is used when describing the distance of a specific flight pattern.

During “Winnie’s Shame” we see a type of humor as defined by Henri Bergson. Bergson believed that humor was a way of self policing through humiliation. In this chapter Winnie sets out to find her father, and when she finally does, she lies to him about who she is so that she can interview him. When she does meet him she is disappointed by who she finds. Her father is not a great man, he is merely a bad poet. After this humiliating experience Winnie is not likely to question her reality again the way she did by trying to find a person who was not in her life for a reason.

Situational humor and scenarios – Alice and Edith’s father questions the girls on moral dilemmas.
Choices and reasons- whether Alice would use the wire cutters to end the hijacking. What was her reason to not cut the wire?
Imaginary love- Alice’s unusual attraction to Pitcairn.
Bruno’s wife- afraid to disabled people. Bruno tried to see her reaction to his fake blindness. She actually left him.

“Gesina’s Shame” is the shame story of Gesina, the hotel worker who is in cahoots with the hijackers. In “Gesina’s Shame” we learn that when she was a young girl, her mother took a job in Switzerland as a private teacher for two young boys in a wealthy family. Gesina and her mother move to Switzerland and move into the estate of the wealthy family. As far as we know the family consists of a father and two sons of somewhat similar age. Gesina and her mother are forced to live above the carriage house. Gesina’s toys are confiscated and she is forbidden from interacting with the two boys. The narrator tells us that this is because the father feared that if the boys had any kind of distraction from study then they would become competitive and attempt to kill each other. As the story continues, the young Gesina attempts, several times unsuccessfully, to gain the interest of each of the boys and get them to play with her. Then, Gesina finds a red rubber ball. With this ball Gesina is finally able to manipulate the boys into playing with her. She convinces each of them that the other is sneaking out to the carriage house to play with her and the red rubber ball. They each become intrigued and end up sneaking out to the carriage house to play. On the day that Gesina and her mother are set to leave she invites each of the boys to come out and play with her at separate times. They both end up being there at the same time and the ball is destroyed. The boys begin to fight one another and there is a terrible storm outside. The boys fight near the fence and Gesina sees their father outside with a rifle. She hears a loud boom and then she sees nothing by the fence. As she leaves she thinks she sees a ghost rapped in bandages in an upper window of the house. She later sees the older brother many years down the line. We are led to believe that this older brother is the now blinded Bruno, who tells Gesina that he lost his eyes while playing with his younger brother, who we are led to believe is Pitcairn.

As the rest of the main story continues, Alice is at the hotel, with the rest of the hostages, along with their captors. While eating yet another meager meal, an argument erupts and Bruno, out of what seems to be an overwhelming sense of failure and frustration, proclaims that everyone is free to go. Alice goes upstairs to retrieve Winnie, but discovers she is bleeding. They call an ambulance and everyone is loaded in. They are all driven far from the city to a helicopter and while they are loading into the helicopter Winnie has her baby. Everyone, with the exception of Bruno and Edith, gets in the helicopter, and as Alice attempts to board she falls out and the helicopter takes off. So, Alice returns to the hotel to try and find Edith. When she returns, Edith is there with no sign of Bruno. Edith is tearing up the floor searching for her engagement ring. Alice convinces her that they must leave. Alice evacuates first, and while she is outside “falling stars”(bombs) bombard the hotel and it goes up in a blaze. Alice, while attempting to reenter the burning building, is confronted by Bruno who tells her with extreme jubilation that he has won and Pitcairn has lost. He also informs Alice that Edith sold her out and has been selling her out from the beginning. Alice ignores him and saves Edith anyway, even though she knows Edith had been working against her. The story continues into the future and Alice is the guardian of the now deceased Winnie’s daughter. Edith is married and living overseas. Alice is not sure of the point of the entire hijacking experience. She finds herself dreaming/fantasizing about the nonexistent life between her and Pitcairn. And at the very end of the book, in an imaginary letter for Pitcairn, we learn that perhaps all of the shame stories had been told by alice. “if you could tell him, please, tell him when you see him next, that I am alone again and just my plain old self, not Cyrus, not Sad or Winnie or Bruno or my mother.”[350] These of course are the names of most of the shame stories.

The humor in this story or at least this section of the story is somewhat hard to find. After all, the story is not exactly full of all kinds of laugh out loud humor. However, there is one part in particular that is quite humorous or comical. During “Gesina’s Shame” when she first plays with the younger brother and the ball in the carriage house crawl space. The whole scene plays out like a kind of awkward first-time clumsy sexual experience. “This isn’t fun. I thought this was supposed to be fun. It’s never fun the first time, I said. Nor the second nor the third. But it is intriguing how it makes you feel dirty and that is why you will do it.”[286] Of course she is talking about playing with the boy and the red rubber ball, but it sounds like she is talking about something completely different. This is why it is humorous. According to Freud there are several reasons why something is humorous. First, the naïve, Freud contends that an instance of the naïve is comic. It is because the naïve is a difference between inhibitions. Gesina does not have the same inhibitions as the younger brother. This is comical. Also, this is an instance of a conceptual joke, and Freud contends that these jokes are examples of faulty thinking and diverging from what is actually being said. In this instance we are somewhat forced in to the faulty thinking and diverging from what is actually being said. Gesina is talking about playin with the ball but the way it is said sounds a lot like a first time sexual encounter.




There are a lot of instances in this novel when many of the theories that Freud, Hobbes, Monro, and others that we discussed in class were used. As we said in class, however, it is very hard to dissect humor without taking it apart so far that you lose the humor.



Alisa, Jonathan, Jeanette, Caitlin

Works Cited

Julavits, Heidi. The Effect of Living Backwards. New York: Berkley Trade, 2004.

Freud, Sigmund . "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious"
www.blackboard.uc.edu

Google images
www.google.com

www.nataliedee.com

Effect of Living Backwards Review

"Backwards is a colorful, bright, funny, and intriguing and you genuinely care about Alice. Her smartly off-kilter sarcasm and sharp, cynical sound bites allow her to cope... while Julavits's elliptical narrative makes our own days seem boring and linear by contrast."--- Seattle Weekly

The Effect of Living Backwards, is a story about a woman named Alice who is a dropout social work student who by "chance" gets on a plane bound for Mellila, that is hijacked by a blind man, and his two accomplices. Alice and the other passengers are taken for the most interesting flight of their lives. It is not until Alice speaks with the man named Pitcairn from the International Institute for Terrorist Studies in Lucerne that she begins to wonder about the situation and its meaning. Each of the passengers are armed with their truths and shame.

Mother’s Shame

This story is about an 18 year old girl who goes to Peru with her aunt (Aunt Bea). Aunt Bea is a pretty woman, but mocks any man who is kind to her. In Peru the first man Aunt Bea spurns is a balding English-man. In the end, her niece, who we later find is Alice’s mother, ends up sleeping with the balding man. After thinking on her escapade for a while, she and her aunt visit Machu Picchu. In the tour, she stays with the tour group but Aunt Bea soon disappears but she believes she simply decided to walk the exhibits on her own. A bony man leads Aunt Bea into the picnic area where her niece is and says he rescued her from being neck deep in a mud pit. The boy who rescued her is a bug boy at the exhibit and his name is Harold. Aunt Bea’s niece grows very fond of Harold. Ten months later, Harold tracks down the niece in the States and they agree to marry. It’s like the typical storybook ending. But The Effects of Living Backwards is not the typical storybook, so what significance does Mother’s shame story have?

Bruno’s Shame

This shame story was about how he met his wife and lost her. His wife lied to him and told him she was a part of a group that she really was not. She was a nun who left the covenant. She left because she thought very wicked thoughts about people with missing body limbs. Bruno tried to help her to see that it was nothing wrong with her and that maybe she would show affection towards someone she loved. So to help her, he got together with his fried who was a make up artist. He had the artist make him a blind man and then had him call his wife and tell her about the accident. She does not seem upset or anything and does not show any emotion. When he goes home he continues with the joke and his wife had told him a long time ago, that if anything terrible ever happen to him she would leave him. So he figured since they were married and said their vows “In sickness and in health” she would not leave him. But that part of the vow was taken out. In the end he went blind and when his wife left she never came back. To me the point of this shame story was to inform us of how he lost his sight. Not only that but also the shame of him loosing his wife because of the horrible joke he played on her. He tried to make different types of adjustments to their life to get her to stay with him such as living in the dark and wearing sunglasses so she would not have to look at him. I feel that if he would have just listened to his wife more than maybe he would not be left along. He was not understanding of her ways or feelings.

Winnie’s Shame

Winnie’s mother has a rare form of epilepsy that is triggered by smells. There was a medication she was taking but it made her gain a lot of weight and with that she was very sad. In the birth of her two daughters she never cuddled with them nor had that mother to daughter time with them, for this she decided to get off the medication and result to other methods. In order to have a better relationship with her children she put them on a strict meat only diet for a Tibetan seer said “meat makes you odorless to the enemy” (174). Winnie’s sister claimed that all the meat she was eating triggered her to have a thirst for blood. She would kill stray cats, beavers, rats and even the neighbor’s dog once. When they got to college Winnie moved into a vegetation cooperative and after college, Winnie’s sister bought an organic farm in Iowa. Things were going pretty good for the girls. Winnie decides to locate her father whose sperm was donated to her mother. She pretended to be a journalist doing an article on emerging poets. When she met up with him she asked him many questions, simply trying to get to know what he was about. Winnie went on with her lie, going back and forth from the vegetarian lifestyle to devouring herself with meat. Back at home, Winnie’s mother had a group of girls sleeping outside in tents, starving them, and put the girls through various tests as if they were in the military. Winnie’s sister caught a bunch of squirrels and began cooking them, making the young girls stomachs growl louder and louder. Winnie leaves to go to the police station to tell them what is going on back home. When they arrive back at the house they find Winnie’s mother has been suffocated to death. Winnie’s sister tells the police the hungry girls did this. Soon after the sister flies back to her farm and is not seen ever again. The funeral was attended by lots of people. Winnie goes to the casket and camera crews follow, hoping for an emotional moment from her for the movie they are making. Winnie fails to show any emotion for her mother. Interesting story indeed; Is the significance of the story the lack of a father figure, Winnie’s inability to show emotion for her mother, or is this simply a story to throw readers off?

Through out the entire story, there are many references to these shame stories. Many of the characters mention that life is meaningless, meaning is only ascribed by you. What you may find meaningful, only carries meaning to yourself. This story is a mind bender, it keeps you wondering what is real and what is not. It really shows that hind sight is the only way you can ascribe meaning.

"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam today."
"It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day,'" Alice objected.
"No, it can't," said the Queen."It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know."
"I don't understand you," Alice said. "It's dreadfully confusing!"
"That's the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly: "it always makes one a little giddy at first--" --- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (and What Alice Found There)