"November 24, 1963" (Close Reading 9/15)

Article found here: http://www.believermag.com/issues/201303/?read=article_straight

Susan Straight’s article, "November 24, 1963", explores the life and death of her brother as well as what he “left behind.” The entire piece works as a reflection on Straight’s relationship with her brother and his relationship with life. Straight uses syntax, detail, and imagery to convey a nostalgic and unsure tone relative to her brother’s death and her feelings.

Straight’s tone throughout "November 24, 1963" holds an uncertainty about her feelings relative to things happening around her. The issue that is most clear is how she feels about her brother, but she uses questions a few times to convey her confusion with her own emotions. At one point, she sits with her mother as her mother cries over President Kennedy’s assassination, but she questions why she is really sitting with her mother: “to comfort her? to calm myself”  (Straight). The questions are set off within the sentence, displaying how unclear it really is to her. As the piece continues, Straight uses questions to display a lack ofguidance without her brother. Later Straight asks, “was he coming here” when speaking of the night her brother died from crashing into a tree (Straight). The question conveys guilt over the death of her brother, but does not show confusion in her love and loss for her brother.

The nostalgic tone in the piece is displayed as she talks about her time with her brother as a child, not only because of the description, but also because of the hurried nature of the sentence: “the harsh wind coming over the hills from the desert, the hawks overhead, coyotes watching us from a distance while we dug” (Straight). The lack of conjunctions between the activities makes the sentence feel quicker and more poetic. The reader feels the things happening all at once. On top of the memories, just the use of the past tense throughout the entire piece makes the reader feel the nostalgia. Straight rarely uses the present tense, so the past tense feels almost normal for the reader and at times conveys the message more clearly: “like who we were—crazy white-trash inland Californians” (Straight). The reader understands there is change because of the use of the past tense here and also is forced to wait for the punch line of the sentence with the pause.

The nostalgia is further conveyed in the specific things that Straight chooses to tell the reader, like when she talks about her mother teaching her to knit she says, “she taught me to knit as she had learned in Switzerland, hand-rolling the yarn around pieces of shiny hard candy.” The reference to her mother being from a different country conveys to the reader that Straight and her brother had to understand culture on their own. Then including how she learned to knit, with candy, reinforces the reoccurring happy thoughts in relation to past events with her brother. This is one of the only times she brings in happy details surrounding her brother’s birth, which reinforces its importance. Immediately after mentioning the knitting, she mentions all the half siblings and step siblings she has, but makes sure to mention Jeff, the brother the article is about, is her only full blooded brother (Straight). These details show how important her brother was to her and how much his death affected her.

Later Straight tells the reader that Jeff also left her “five pieces of orange firewood” that she had not used before he died (Straight). She then goes on to explain that she has not used the firewood in the ten years since her brother’s death and that she “vacuum[s] up the spiderwebs [sic]” from the firewood :at the end of the winter” (Straight). Bringing up spider webs growing on the wood shows how long it has been since her brother dies and how long she has kept the firewood.

When she finally gets into the tree her brother left her, she tells the reader that, “the last flowers fall just before [Jeff’s] birthday” (Straight). The reader is constantly reminded of Jeff, so the subject of the piece is not lost. The article is not meant to just show how Straight feels about her brother’s death, it is trying to convey what her brother is like.

Her lack of control over her brother is referred to several times throughout the piece, but when he dies, she chooses to tell the reader that “we were at basketball practice in the junior-high down the street” (Straight). This is a strong testament to how little control she had over her brother, because she was only a “down the street” from her brother and she was not able to help him. It also touches on the guilt she displays when she thought he was coming to see her.

Straight also uses imagery and sometimes lack of it to display the control issues Straight has as well as the nostalgic tone. The only time Straight physically describes Jeff, she describes him relative to herself by telling the reader they share “eyes the color of year-old jeans” (Straight). “Year-old” jeans bring comfort and the past to mind for the reader and set up a sentimental mood. It makes Jeff seem like a kind and comforting person, while still displaying the tone of Straight. At times, Straight uses very little description or imagery to describe her feelings. For instance, she simply says, “I’m so sad” when she talks about repainting her house after her brother dies (straight). This lack of imagery, which she uses several times to convey her relationship to her brother, shows how self-aware she is of her feelings for her brother in that moment. She is simply sad and that is that; there are no words to hide behind here and she does not need any. This is the start of her certainty of her feelings and really only comes at the end of the article.

Imagery, detail, and syntax all add to the feeling of nostalgia as well as the uncertainty, that eventually leads to more understanding for Straight.