Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Sarah Ganzenmuller AP Lit Summer Blog Post #4



Charming Billy: Blog 2 
Sarah Ganzenmuller
Wednesday, August 13, 2014


In Charming Billy, Alice McDermott successfully manages to create several well rounded, in depth characters. She uses many different technics to display their character through actions, their own words, and what other people say about them, their personality seems to come to life. Most of the men in the story have glowing, warm personalities that consume you whole. There is Billy, a fun loving, caring man, there is Dennis, loyal and compassionate, and then there is Dennis’ dad, ebullient, loquacious and generous. Yet the women are shed in a rather darker light, Dennis mom being harshly realistic and materialistic, looking to her second marriage as a sound investment, then there is Eva, Billy’s first true love, who kept the money he worked hard for instead of using it to travel back to the states and see him. Whether good or bad, all of these characters are blooming with some sort of spirit or individuality, whether they ooze warmth or something colder they have many moving parts, can be unpredictable, and looked at from many different points of view. And then there is Maeve.

Maeve is constantly described as plain and boring. The lack of personality she encompasses is almost frustrating. Yet she is terribly misunderstood, and not given enough credit by those who surround her. The one testimony to her character is her courage, “but the courage it took to look out onto life from a face as plain as butter: pale, downy skin and bland blue eyes, faded brown hair cut short as a nuns and dimmed with gray. Only a touch of powder and of lipstick, only a wedding band and a small pearl ring for adornment.” (McDermott 5) This simplicity is evidently by choice. If she wore more red lipstick, kept her hair long, wore bolder jewelry her supposed dullness would quickly be adverted. Yet flashy isn’t something Maeve aspired to be. Attention was simply not something she craved. While the author describes her features in a rather monotonous way, pale skin is beautiful, and brown hair and blue eyes as well. Maeve didn’t believe she deserved to be beautiful, and I also believe she didn’t believe she deserved to be truly loved. People say that we accept the love we think we deserve, and this is exactly Maeve’s case. She grew up with a drunken father, one who didn’t treat her as well as he should have. She then married another drunkard, wonderful as he was, Billy was inevitably broken, and Maeve knew it. But she was perfectly happy to love him even if she didn’t necessarily receive the same type of love in return, because this wasn’t something she was used to, it wasn’t something she thought possible. She spent her life taking care and loving others, never expecting anything in return.    

Another thing the other characters failed to marvel at was her sheer determination. After countless nights of dragging both her incoherent father and husband into their beds, she remained balanced, stable. Even her determination to win Billy over was something. She admitted to tossing her fathers shoes down an incinerator more than once just to have an excuse to go to the shoe store and see him. She even took a trip by herself, a true indication of her bravery, so she could see Billy. Yet through all of the tragedy in Maeve’s life with her mother dying, her father and then husband’s alcoholism she remains, on the outside, unaffected. She keeps her emotions bottled up, barely crying at Billy’s funeral. After the funeral at Maeve’s house Dennis takes the dog from a walk, and his return causes quite a stir. Maeve mistakes Dennis for Billy returning home, and finally she lets go of all of the emotions she grasped so tightly, yet she is still described as stark. “Maeve shook her head, her hand now on her heart. ‘I thought it was Billy,’ she said a third time. Even the bit of lipstick shed worn earlier in the day was gone and her simple housecoat was colorless, white and beige. She seemed as plain as a blank page.” (168) Following this Maeve cries, and proceeds to throw up, soon launching into stories about Billy. It seems extremely unfair to label Maeve as this plain dull thing, when she expressed so much emotion. It gets me frustrated and annoyed, and I sympathize for Maeve and how misunderstood she is. This is exactly what McDermott wants. Strategically by overemphasizing Maeve’s plainness she illuminates what makes her so special, and interesting. She makes you feel for her in ways you may not have had she just given you Maeve’s true description herself.  And thankfully, after a rather depressing book, it ends on a nice note. Dennis and Maeve soon realize that it was more than just their deep, unedifying love for Billy that bound them together. It was right under our nose the whole time, Dennis and Maeve’s compatibility shown during the many nights Dennis would help Maeve lift Billy off the floor. Finally Maeve found a love that could lift her up rather than drag her down. 

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