Silence speaks volumes

Helen M Walters uses a short story by Alice Monro to explore the role of silence in fiction

Unusually, this month I’ve chosen a story that is part of a group of three. Silence by Alice Munro is the third in a triptych following Chance and Soon. As always, you’ll get the most out of this masterclass if you read the story:

https://writ.rs/silence. If you have time to read all three stories that would be even better, but Silence does work as a standalone story and that’s what we’re going to focus on.

Silence is quite a complex story, and there are various aspects of it that are worthy of study. We could have examined the structure and the use of timescales. We could have discussed its allusions to classical literature. But the aspect of the story that I found most interesting is the way that Alice Munro explores silence from a number of perspectives. So we’re going to look at the different forms of silence that occur and how they manifest themselves in the story.

One form of silence is the things that characters don’t say but could have done. One notable instance of this is early on in the story where the main character, Juliet, talks to another woman about her daughter Penelope. Note the contrast between what Juliet says to the woman, and what she reflects that she could (or possibly should) have said. What is the truth? Is it one, or the other? Or somewhere between the two? We, as readers, cannot know.

Another form of silence is absence. Although Penelope is a significant character in the story, she is absent for most of it. In fact, she only appears in flashback and as described in dialogue by another character. Notice the significance of Joan’s words to Juliet at the retreat where Juliet was expecting to be reunited with her daughter. ‘Penelope is not here’. They are stark words and state a reality that Juliet spends the rest of the story trying to come to terms with.

Joan also points out to Juliet that things she had chosen not to talk to her daughter about, namely religion and spirituality, may have led to a deficit in her life that Penelope is still affected by now. Juliet retaliates by pointing out that the subject wasn’t banned. They ‘could’ talk about it, but stayed silent instead.

Another type of silence occurs when Penelope sends her mother unsigned birthday cards. She is sending her mother a message – that she is still alive and out there somewhere. But the message is not articulated. The card has nothing written in it and Juliet only knows it is from her daughter as a result of examining the handwriting on the envelope. The communication is also one way. Juliet does not have an address for her daughter, so she cannot respond. After five years of blank birthday cards, they stop coming at all. The silence is extended and made more absolute.

Juliet remains silent about the breakdown of her relationship with her daughter. She tells her friend, Christa, of the trip to the retreat, but reluctantly. Later in life she doesn’t even reveal the existence of her daughter to those she has got to know since her disappearance. Notice also how Juliet puts all her photos of Penelope, and anything else that would remind her of her daughter, into Penelope’s old bedroom and shuts the door. A way of silencing the memories that those things

might otherwise evoke.

Two characters in the story are silenced by death. Both Eric (Juliet’s partner and Penelope’s father) and Christa might have had more to say about Juliet’s situation if they had not been permanently removed from the discourse. Eric, in particular, was silenced when things between him and Juliet were unresolved due to the fact that he had ‘lived a lie’. Eric’s funeral is also interesting, if a little macabre.

Note how his fishing partner declines to participate verbally in the ceremony as he is ‘no speaker’. But the person who steps up to speak instead rambles on, loses sight of the subject, and probably leaves a welcome silence when he finally stops.

In a neat plot development, following Eric’s death, Juliet seeks a job as a librarian. She is seeking out a place where silence is considered an attribute. Her career develops further when she is given the chance to do some television broadcasting. The antithesis of silence. But ultimately when that job comes to an end, her public persona is silenced and she becomes ‘that lady who used to be on the television’.

Juliet returns to her study of literature, finding gaps in the narratives where work was ‘lost or fragmentary’. Compare this with the process Juliet goes through with her imaginary picture of how Penelope’s life might have turned out and how she has to adjust this picture when she bumps into an old friend of Penelope’s who has seen her recently and unknowingly supplies Juliet with details she was totally unaware of. This encounter constitutes a watershed for Juliet. She knows Penelope is still out there, but not the Penelope she had once known, or the Penelope of her imagination. She continues to hope to hear from her, but not strenuously.

What they don’t say

One of the things that differentiates a short story from a novel is that, due to the limited wordcount of a short story, sometimes the strength of the story can be as much about what you leave out as what you include. So, in this part of the masterclass we’re going to look at absent characters, missing dialogue, and other things that are left unsaid in fiction.

But before we do that, I want to spend a moment thinking about short stories that are somehow linked. Collections of short stories that are linked by recurring characters or themes are popular. Good examples of this would be the Clovis stories by Saki, one of which we looked at last month, in which Clovis and other characters recur. Meanwhile, Nine Stories by JD Salinger contains stories that are thematically linked. Linking the stories in a collection, in whatever way, can add a sense of cohesion or completeness that it might not otherwise have.

A very popular form at the moment is the novella (or novel)-in-flash. This is a series of flash fictions linked to form a longer narrative. If you are keen to experiment with your short story writing, and push the boundaries a bit, these forms are worth finding out more about.

Now, let’s think about absent characters. Anyone who has read

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier knows that a character doesn’t need to be present to have a huge impact on the narrative. In Silence Penelope is absent due to her estrangement from her mother. But why else could your characters be temporarily, or permanently, absent?

You could have a character who is temporarily absent from the narrative because they are elsewhere geographically. They could be in prison, in hospital, working away from home or in another country. Or they could be permanently removed by death or a rift so big it can’t be healed.

How might characters still be introduced into your narrative if they are not physically there? Like Penelope, they could send cards or letters. What they write, or don’t write, in these missives could tell you a lot about them. Perhaps the other characters in the story only know where they are because they receive a series of postcards from exotic places.

Even if they are permanently absent, they will be present in your main character’s heart and mind. Your main character may talk to others about them, have memories and flashbacks involving them, or even have imaginary conversations with them. A much-loved deceased character might be recalled every time a descendant who looks, talks or acts like them is around.

Silence features a lot of instances of missed, misinterpreted and withheld dialogue. People don’t always say what they mean and sometimes they just say what they think they should. Try contrasting what your character is saying in dialogue, and what they are thinking in internal dialogue, and see how you can use that to create uncertainty and ambiguity.

Lies, both by commission and omission, can act as tension-creating plot points. Secrets can keep the reader enthralled waiting for the reveal. Characters who say one thing whilst thinking or doing another can cause all sorts of mischief. As can characters who tell one thing to one person and something completely different to another. Or what about a character who says something important and the person they are speaking to mishears, or doesn’t hear at all? How might that impact your plot?

Silence can be used as a weapon. Blanking someone who has upset them, refusing to talk to a partner after a quarrel, or sending someone to Coventry, could all be interesting plot devices for your characters.

Avoiding exposition, and leaving readers to work things out for themselves, is another way of packing more into a short story that you might otherwise be able to. Hinting at things rather than describing them in a verbose manner can save on word count and increase intrigue at the same time.

This is particularly true of endings. An ending to a short story where everything isn’t neatly tied up will leave the reader still thinking about it even after they’ve closed the book or turned off the e-reader. And if the ending is open or ambiguous the reader can imagine the bits of the tale that remained untold.

When you’re writing short stories, always remember there can be a power in leaving things out that is every bit as strong as what you put in.