Style and Technique
Mason writes “Shiloh” in a realistic style into which she weaves symbolic images and references. By paralleling Norma Jean and Leroy with the North and South in the Civil War—and, further, by linking this conflict with the mutual annihilation of the West and the East imagined in Doctor Strangelove—Mason approaches allegory. The word “civil” can refer to marriage as well as to the war between the states, which is also ironic. Mason’s references to Monroe and Presley, to songs such as “Sunshine Superman,” and to films such as Doctor Strangelove, provide a commentary on the characters and incidents of the story. All of these references communicate Mason’s view of the direction taken by history since the defeat of agrarianism in the Civil War.
Mason also uses patterns of imagery to communicate her theme. Images of death are dominant. Death from industrial pollution is linked to the subdivisions spreading “like an oil slick.” Leroy relates this to the disappearance of the farmers, another kind of death. He compares the new, white-columned brick house of Stevie Hamilton’s father to a funeral parlor. At Shiloh, he thinks the cemetery of the Union dead, with its white markers, looks like a subdivision site. Norma Jean walks through this cemetery following a brick path. The word “brick” echoes its use in the description of Dr. Hamilton’s house. This suggests to the reader where Norma Jean will end up if she leaves Leroy—in the subdivisions.
With another set of images, Mason offers hope. After flying past scenery for fifteen years on the road, Leroy describes his rig as “a gigantic bird that has come home to roost.” To roost is to sleep. Later, watching birds at the feeder close their wings, then fall, he thinks of Norma Jean, who closes her eyes when they are in bed. However, Leroy also thinks he and Norma Jean are waking from a dream together, and the birds he watches spread their wings to catch themselves after they fall. This foreshadows the ending when Norma Jean stands at the edge of the bluff—about to fall?—and waves her arms at Leroy. Consciousness of their predicament in the twentieth century United States may save them. Still, the sky is “the color of the dust ruffle Mabel made for their bed,” under which Leroy said they could hide things.
Mason also alludes to the Christian myth of the Fall. She describes the path Norma Jean follows at the end of the story as serpentine, suggesting the snake in Eden. Norma Jean will fall if she continues to accept the values of a civilization that seeks absolute power over nature. Another Christian reference provides an answer. The log cabin Leroy made with ice cream sticks reminds him of a rustic Nativity scene. Leroy, Norma Jean, and the world need a rebirth of love.
Form and Content
The sixteen short stories that constitute Bobbie Ann Mason’s first published collection, Shiloh, and Other Stories, recount the lives of women in the fictional small town of Hopewell, Kentucky, who have a common desire for personal understanding. With the exception of “Nancy Culpepper” and “Lying Doggo,” Mason’s stories deal with different female protagonists, but each story addresses the same general theme: Every woman must find comfort in understanding herself as an individual; when she becomes the emotional appendage of a male, all of her individuality is lost.
Nancy Culpepper, the protagonist of the stories “Nancy Culpepper” and “Lying Doggo,” is a typical Mason protagonist. In the first story, much of Nancy’s time is spent trying to save her grandmother’s photographs and...
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trying to identify a woman in an old portrait who she believes is a distant relative also named Nancy Culpepper. She is hoping to find some connection with her familial past. Although Nancy is disappointed when she discovers that the woman in question is not Nancy Culpepper, she realizes that she has been actively searching for her own identity.
In the second story in which she appears, Nancy Culpepper is confronted with standing up against her husband’s decision to put their old dog, Grover, to sleep. This stand is more than a mere attempt to save an old dog’s life; Nancy needs to be and will be heard.
Mason’s other female protagonists all go beyond married lives for their identities. In the collection’s title story, Norma Jean Moffitt finds little emotional satisfaction in being the wife of injured and unemployed trucker Larry Moffitt. While Larry sits home making string art and dreaming of building his wife a log cabin, Norma Jean works at body building and takes continuing education classes, seeking a place of her own.
In “The Retreat” and “The Ocean,” Mason’s protagonists accompany their husbands on excursions in search of something that is missing in their lives. Georgeann Pickett accompanies her husband, the Reverend Shelby Pickett, on a religious retreat where she attends workshops on making a successful Christian marriage, hoping to find meaning in hers. Instead, she finds she must confront the fundamentalist view that there is no reason for unhappiness in marriage or with one’s husband. Similarly, in “The Ocean,” Imogene Crittendon takes a trip in a fancy camper with her husband Bill to see the Atlantic Ocean. The story ends with Bill standing looking out into the ocean and remembering his days in the Navy. Imogene finds no satisfaction in looking at the water and hearing stories about her husband’s past. Instead, she finds symbolic relief from her husband’s ramblings in a shady place of her own.
In “The Rookers,” Mary Lou Skaggs finds a respite from running errands for her husband in her periodic games of Rook with women of similar interests and concerns. In “Still Life with Watermelon,” Louise Milsap, whose husband ran away with his mistress, finds herself by making paintings of watermelons, hoping that an eccentric local bachelor will purchase her works. In a more direct manner, the first person narrator of “Residents and Transients” takes a lover while her husband is in Louisville. Her dissatisfaction goes beyond her husband’s being away. She does not want to leave the rural area where she feels at home.
Other stories demonstrate women’s need to belong. In “Drawing Names” and “Old Things,” mothers argue with daughters about the proper thing to do. “Drawing Names” is about a family Christmas gathering to which Carolyn Sission, the story’s divorced protagonist, invites her lover, Kent Ballard. For numerous reasons Kent is unable to make the trip. Kent’s failure to appear speaks of male/female relationships in general: Women cannot depend upon men and must be able to depend upon themselves.
The remaining stories—“Detroit Skyline,” “Offerings,” “The Climber,” “Graveyard Day,” “The New Wave Format,” and “Third Monday”—continue discussing Mason’s theme of women’s search for ways of finding themselves or at least of finding ways of getting their mates to recognize their special needs.
Context
Bobbie Ann Mason’s Shiloh and Other Stories continues the tradition in which women writers tell the stories of women who are looking for individual identities, a tradition perfected by such earlier writers as Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, and Harper Lee. Like her literary precursors, Mason chooses to tell women’s stories through female protagonists and narrators. This technique has proved to be a successful vehicle for telling women’s stories in the works of other disparate contemporary women writers such as Lee Smith, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, and Rita Mae Brown.
Feminist critics have long been concerned with the dearth of women writers who have come to the forefront of American literature and with men writers’ attempts to tell women’s stories. In Shiloh and Other Stories and in her later works, Mason takes important steps toward allaying these concerns. In each story, Mason provides a complete depiction of the momentary fragments that produce the lives that her female protagonists have been forced to live.
In none of her stories does Mason moralize or offer clear-cut answers to complex problems. Her intention is to inform rather than pontificate. Mason is able to draw her reader into her fictional world by creating believable characters who live in believable settings. The reader’s concern turns from the progression of a fictional narrative to commiseration with an individual who is experiencing intense challenges to a once-stable relationship or to her attempts to come to terms with herself.
In the canon of works by women about women, Mason’s short stories stand out in their portrayal of women who decide to make their own decisions about their lives. Often this individualism goes against the social grain, yet Mason’s protagonists are willing to stand up to any stigma that may be cast upon them. They must live their own lives unencumbered by outside interference. Her works join the growing list of high-quality works that speak directly to the need of women to have lives and identities of their own without the fear of being branded as radical. Mason’s works exemplify the new works that are being considered for canonization, works that, in the past, would have been overlooked because they were written by women, not because of any artistic weakness.
Historical Context
Change Comes to Kentucky
Nearly every reviewer of "Shiloh" acknowledges that the story is set in rural western Kentucky, an area experiencing swift cultural transformation. This is the Kentucky where Mason herself was raised. Consequently, she is adept at crafting believable characters who are caught between the traditional, pastoral, rural life of farms and tight-knit communities, and the contemporary, impersonal, suburban world of shopping malls and fast-food outlets. In "Shiloh," for instance, Leroy failed to notice the changes in his hometown while he was on the road as a truck driver. However, now that he has returned home for good, "he notices how much the town has changed. Subdivisions are spreading across western Kentucky like an oil slick."
Some of these changes are evident from demographic data about the region. For example, in 1980, 73 percent of western Kentucky's residents had completed grammar school, but by 1990, this number had increased to 84 percent. This statistic is mirrored in Mason's story: Leroy and Norma Jean had little formal education, but Norma Jean comes to appreciate the importance of schooling and starts taking adult education classes. Similarly, in 1980 only 11 percent of Kentuckians had completed at least one year of college. By 1990, over 19 percent had. Other statistics highlight shifting cultural patterns in formerly rural Kentucky. In 1985, Graves County (where Mason grew up) had a per capita income of $10,900, but by 1995 this figure had risen to $18,900. Out of 14,500 homes in the county, 42 percent were built since the 1970s.
Socially, Leroy and Norma Jean are working-class white individuals caught in an era of declining expectations. When Leroy mentions that he plans to build a log cabin for them, Norma Jean retorts, "Like heck you are.... You'll have to find a job first. Nobody can afford to build now." During the early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency, a severe recession gripped the United States. High interest rates, double-digit inflation, and high unemployment squeezed the working classes, while many wealthy Americans benefited from Reagan's "trickle-down economics." In 1982, unemployment reached 10.8 percent—the highest since the Great Depression—and the number of Americans living below the poverty line was the highest in seventeen years. Despite this, the stock market set record highs and traded record volumes of shares.
These economic trends align with other social trends, such as the rising divorce rate, which peaked in 1981 at 5.3 per 1,000 marriages, as more and more women (like Norma Jean) gained financial independence. In 1966, around the time the Moffitts were married, the divorce rate was 2.5 per 1,000 marriages. Additionally, the average length for all first marriages that end in divorce is 11 years, and the average age at divorce for men is 35, while for women it is 33. These figures closely match the Moffitts' situation. Mason humanizes these statistics through the characters of Leroy and Norma Jean.
Mason has frequently expressed her focus on working-class individuals. In an interview with Lila Havens, she remarked, "I'm constantly preoccupied with the class struggle and I'm exploring various kinds of culture shock—people moving from one class to another, people being threatened by other people's ways and values—and the way those attitudes come into play with each other, especially when people do leave home or when the outside world comes prancing in via the television."
Ideas for Group Discussions
Mason's collection offers ample opportunities for discussions about family and social dynamics. Readers may want to compile a list of themes they encounter, such as parenthood, sibling bonds, marital relationships, forgiveness, and the power of memory. Afterwards, they can revisit individual stories to see how different plots highlight these recurring themes. Many readers will likely identify with one or more of Mason's characters or see elements of themselves reflected. A fun activity is to discuss which character each group member feels most drawn to and why.
1. Discuss how economic hardships impact Mason's various characters.
2. Examine the role of television as a negative influence in Mason's short stories.
3. Select a female character from one of Mason's stories who you believe best embodies Mason's idea of a "heroine." Explain your reasoning.
4. Choose a male character from a Mason story who you think best represents Mason's concept of a "hero." Justify your choice.
5. In "Drawing Names," why is Carolyn attracted to Jim? How can this aspect of Mason's plot be defended as realistic?
6. Identify your favorite story from the collection and explain why it stands out to you.
7. Is there any positive takeaway from the breakup between Leroy and Norma Jean in "Shiloh"?
8. Discuss the theme of communication as portrayed in "Rookers."
9. In "Nancy Culpepper," Nancy's curiosity about her ancestors touches on the theme of personal identity. Does she ever achieve "closure" regarding her own identity and her place within the family?
10. Are any of Mason's characters particularly committed to preserving family traditions? Analyze the motivations behind their dedication.
Literary Style
Point of View
While some critics interpret "Shiloh" as a feminist narrative about a woman asserting her independence, it is fundamentally Leroy's story. The entire narrative unfolds from his perspective. Point of view, also known as narrative perspective, refers to the method the writer uses to present the story's material to the audience. "Shiloh" employs a third-person, limited point of view, meaning readers only witness what Leroy experiences and hear what he hears. Furthermore, because the narrative is from Leroy's viewpoint, readers gain access to his thoughts and memories, but not those of Norma Jean or her mother. This perspective shapes how readers perceive the other characters in the story.
Narrative
The term "narrative" pertains to the sequence of events in a story. A narrative can follow a chronological order, presenting events as they happen, or adhere to any structure the writer chooses. "Shiloh" is narrated in the present tense, giving readers the impression that the events are occurring in real-time. Although the overall progression of the story moves from past to future, it includes flashbacks. Present events or thoughts often trigger memories for Leroy, revealing the Moffitts' history. For instance, when Leroy buys marijuana from Stevie Hamilton, he recalls that his deceased infant son, Randy, would have been around Stevie's age. This reflection brings back the memory of the night Randy died.
Setting
The setting of a story encompasses not only its geographical location but also its time period. Additionally, it includes the characters' occupations and their religious, moral, emotional, and social environments. In "Shiloh," the geographic setting is western Kentucky during the early 1980s, the time when the story was written. Mason also portrays a world of working-class, marginally educated characters. In an interview with Lila Havens, Mason remarked, "My characters are members of the shopping mall generation." These characters live in a world undergoing significant changes. In "Shiloh," the traditional rural culture of Kentucky is giving way to the suburban, consumer-oriented culture of late twentieth-century America. Besides the contemporary setting of western Kentucky, Mason references an earlier era through the story's title and its climactic scene's location. These references to Shiloh evoke the Civil War and the demise of the Old South. By situating the Moffitts' marital breakup at the Shiloh battlefield, Mason draws a parallel to the civil war between Norma Jean and Leroy and highlights the emergence of the New South.
Symbols and Imagery
While the terms symbol and image are closely related, they are not the same. In literature, a symbol is an object that represents something else, often an abstract concept. An image, on the other hand, is a tangible picture that can also serve as a symbol. Writers frequently use recurring, similar images to imbue them with symbolic significance. In a brief article in The Explicator, Stewart Cooke illustrates the use of imagery in "Shiloh." For instance, Leroy's damaged truck, parked in the yard while Leroy remains inside, symbolizes Leroy's own incapacitation. Moreover, Mason describes the truck with this image: "It sits in the backyard, like a gigantic bird that has flown home to roost." Later, she depicts Norma Jean picking at cake crumbs "like a fussy bird." Leroy reflects on the way Norma Jean makes love while watching birds at the feeder. In the final scene, Norma Jean stands waving her arms as if preparing to take flight. As Cooke notes, through the repeated bird imagery, Mason signals that Norma Jean is about to leave Leroy, or as the saying goes, "fly the coop."
Undoubtedly, the most prominent symbol in the story is Shiloh itself, a battlefield where thousands of soldiers perished; it serves as the ultimate battleground for the Moffitts' marriage. As Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr., observes, "In the literature of the Southern renaissance, Civil War battlefields and Confederate graveyards are usually highly significant, often prompting deep reflection and introspection." He argues that Mason's story offers "one of the clearest expressions of the contemporary loss of historical awareness that once held great importance for the Southern psyche." The significance of the Shiloh battlefield is lost on Leroy and Norma; they recognize it merely as the place where Mabel and Jet Beasley honeymooned. Norma Jean and Leroy clash among the graves of fallen soldiers, yet Leroy fails to grasp the irony of their personal civil war unfolding on the site of a devastating Civil War battle. He acknowledges that he is "leaving out the insides of history." As a result, just as he cannot comprehend the importance of the battlefield, he cannot grasp the significance of this moment in his marriage.
Compare and Contrast
1980s: Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has been acknowledged as a medical condition since 1970. In 1988, the United States records 5,476 infant deaths attributed to SIDS.
1990s: Estimates of SIDS-related deaths in the United States fluctuate between 3,000 and 7,000 annually. Experts conclude that placing infants on their backs to sleep can significantly reduce the risk of SIDS. In 1994, only 30 percent of infants are placed on their backs to sleep, but by 1997, this percentage increases to 79 percent.
1980s: Marijuana use among high school students shows a consistent decline. By 1989, 33 percent of high school seniors report having used marijuana, a decrease from 50 percent in 1979. Until the late 1980s, marijuana is discreetly utilized for medical purposes, despite federal Drug Enforcement Administration hearings on reclassifying it as a legal, prescribable substance.
1990s: Many experts continue to believe that the risks associated with marijuana remain uncertain. Nonetheless, marijuana cultivation in the United States grows, comprising nearly 25 percent of the U.S. market by 1990. In 1996, medical marijuana use, particularly for glaucoma and alleviating nausea from cancer treatments, becomes legal in California and Arizona following voter approval of contentious propositions.
1980s: After the 1970s saw the introduction of laws simplifying the divorce process, divorce rates increase. In 1982, the divorce rate in the United States is 5.1 per 1,000 people.
1990s: It is a common belief that half of all marriages end in divorce. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that from 1970 to 1996, the number of divorced individuals has quadrupled. On an average day in the United States, over 3,000 divorces are finalized.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Sources
Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. "The Ambiguous Grail Quest in 'Shiloh'," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 32, No. 2, Spring 1995, pp. 223-26.
Lyons, Gene. Review of Shiloh and Other Stories in Newsweek, November 15, 1982, p. 107.
Mason, Bobbie Ann, and Lila Havens. "Bobbie Ann Mason - A Conversation with Lila Havens," in The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, 2nd ed., edited by Ann Charters, St. Martin's Press, 1987, pp. 1345-49.
Towers, Robert. Review of Shiloh and Other Stories in The New York Review of Books, December 16, 1982, p. 38.
Tyler, Anne. Review of Shiloh and Other Stories in The New Republic, November 1, 1982, p. 36.
Vigderman, Patricia. Review of Shiloh and Other Stories in The Nation, March 19, 1983, p. 345.
Wilhelm, Albert E. "Private Rituals: Coping with Change in the Fiction of Bobbie Ann Mason," in The Midwest Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2, Winter 1987, pp. 271-82.
Further Reading
"Bobbie Ann Mason," in Short Story Criticism, Vol. 4, edited by Thomas Votteler, Gale, 1990, pp. 298-311. This includes reprinted critical essays on Mason's short stories.
Brinkmeyer, Robert H., Jr. "Finding One's History: Bobbie Ann Mason and Contemporary Southern Literature," in The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2, Spring 1987, pp. 20-33. Focuses on historical elements in Mason's work and her place in Southern literary tradition.
Mason, Bobbie Ann, Bonnie Lyons, and Bill Oliver. Interview in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 32, No. 4, Winter 1991, pp. 449-70. Discusses Mason's work up to 1991, emphasizing her thematic insights and writing process.