The Comic Spirit in Alice Munro's Open Secrets: "A Real Life" and "The Jack Randa Hotel" - Critical Essay

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1998 by W. R. Martin, Warren U. Ober

Thus the farcical elements and even the bawdry are juxtaposed to the ineffably beautiful jacaranda trees, and the antics of Gail and Will's mating dance find Biblical and apocalyptic echoes. In the same way, the migration of the butterflies suggests an even profounder awareness. The box she gives Will is made by Australian aborigines, and the pattern of dots on that box reminds her of the "display" of butterflies that she and Will saw together. What brings Gail and Will together again, then, is something as deep, primitive, and profound as the roots of aboriginal art and the spectacular, primordial, and mysterious flight of the butterflies. The banter, flirtation, and game-playing of their courtship are here brought into the service of a human drive as exquisite as it is necessary. The miraculous migration of the butterflies foreshadows a final epiphany. Their comic by-play will end with the classic diapason of comedy--a happy wedding.

WORKS CITED

Meredith, George. "An Essay on Comedy." Sypher 3-57.

Munro, Alice. Dance of the Happy Shades. Toronto: McGraw, 1968.

--. "Hired Girl." New Yorker 11 Apr. 1994: 82-88.

--. "The Jack Randa Hotel." Open Secrets 161-89.

--. Open Secrets. Toronto: McClelland, 1994.

--. "A Real Life." Open Secrets 52-80.

--. "Spaceships Have Landed." Paris Review 131 (1994): 265-94.

--. "Sunday Afternoon." Dance 161-71.

Sypher, Wylie, ed. Comedy. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1956.

W. R. MARTIN and WARREN U. OBER are Distinguished Professors Emeriti of English at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. In addition to having collaborated on artilces on Henry James and Alice Munro, they have written Henry James's Apprenticeship--The Tales: 1864-1882 and have edited Trees: A Browser's Anthology and James's The Finer Grain.