Essay

The Story’s Human Dimension

When the unimaginable occurs, facing the future with hope is a difficult task and one that loops back and forth from suffering to recovery. Every grievingsituation is lived out in an individual way, where the road to recovery or stages, do not follow a logical order. Some people spend more time in one phase than another. A grieving person experiencesdifferent levels of emotion as they live out their grief story in the way of pauses, loops and disorganized thought. In Dimension by Alice Munro, this central theme evolves, with its main character, Doree,living out her grief of the traumatic loss of her children. The author tells this story using the techniques of interruptions, turnarounds, and strangeness, to display Doree’s experience in a realistichuman way, allowing the reader to connect with the character’s process and feelings. These techniques also draw attention to specific events and how they affect the character in her development.When the continuity of the story is delayed or paused, the reader is intrigued to imagine what is not literally expressed. Trying to picture what is going to happen, the reader is drawn to create an ideathat is skill fully confirmed as you continue reading. For example, the crime scene description when Doree finds her children at home, murdered by her husband Lloyd is interrupted. It then continueslater on with Maggie returning to Doree’s house, feeling that something was wrong. Doree had just experienced a monstrous event, and naturally must have been in shock at that moment and blocked outwhat happened. The author interrupts this traumatic scene at its climax and allows the reader to experience this same shock felt emotion, with scepticism, incomprehension, and powerlessness, similar towhat Doree might be feeling. It also illustrates the idea that it is difficult to deeply recount this kind of situation. When the story continues to unfold, with Maggie’s bad feeling, the reader...