Lit I: sample paragraph: one point within an essay

In one of the opening scenes of the “Strays,” Richard presents the narrator, along with his brother, as seemingly forgotten amid the upheaval of the mother’s disappearance and the father’s subsequent departure to find her. The story’s exposition at this point focuses on the chaotic adult world into which the boys are seeming bystanders, a world that contains an “exploded chicken in the grill of Uncle Trash’s car” and a “father [getting] behind the wheel backing over the screens setting out in search of [the] mother.” Only later, after Uncle Trash pulls out “all the shelves” in search of a drink, do we begin to see the boys’ desire for connection coupled with powerlessness. For instance, according to the narrator, he and his brother lie awake listening to the dogs underneath the house, the younger brother “thinking up names to name the one he is setting out to catch.” In addition, that the brother “leans out and touches one slipping away” illustrates a desire on his part to be connected to something which he can’t quite obtain. Given that both the father and mother are gone, this image, quite endearing in another context, takes on symbolic value. The dogs, we learn, no longer suggest a simple childhood wish for a pet; rather, they represent the boys’ desire for their parents’ love, which also seems just as difficult to obtain. Later, after Uncle Trash sets out toward town in search of a drink, the narrator reveals that he and his brother “catch handfuls of lightning bugs and smear bright yellow on [their] shirts,” an action clearly suggestive not only of a desire to brighten their situation but of the inevitable hopelessness of actually being able to cover up the tragic turn their lives have taken. Richard further shows their powerlessness when they must “wait for somebody to come back home.” When no one does, the narrator must take on the role of parent for himself and his brother, washing their feet and putting them to bed. Of course, also in this opening scene, Richard three times mentions the window screens, whose disrepair means that the boys have nothing between them and the outside world to guard “against mosquitoes.” Such emphasis on this narrative detail further deepens a reader’s sympathy for the plight of the boys. It is, indeed, “late,” as the narrator says before bedtime, late in the innocence of childhood, late in the hope that a normal family will emerge; and one wonders what “soothing” can exist for these boys in an adult world whose only advice for survival is “Don’t y’all burn the house down.”