Essay Self-Discovery in Oates Naked - 3597 Words

Self-Discovery in Oates Naked While other, less accomplished writers use violence to shock or provoke, Joyce Carol Oates is usually more subtle and inventive. Such is the case in Naked, the story of a forty-six year old woman whose placid outer identity is ripped away by a brutal assault while out hiking not far from her fashionable, University Heights neighborhood. Like many of Oates stories—and in this regard she probably owes something to Flannery OConnor—Naked focuses on a woman so entrenched in her rigid self-image that nothing short of violence could make her vulnerable to a humbling, though redemptive, self knowledge. The protagonist, a stolid, college administrator, prides herself on her liberal views and†¦show more content†¦the children, led by a strangely intense, even angry black boy, surged up like unexpected images in [a] dream... The boy laughed as if in delight and derision. Had he not been so young she might have thought him drunk or high on a drug. He came barely to her shoulder, easing toward her like a wiry little animal out for blood. He addressed her in a stream of soprano sounds underlaid by contempt, but she could make out none of the words except perhaps Lady or Where you goin, lady? and his aggressive intentions bewildered her rather than frightened her since the children were so young, the youngest no more than eight or nine, and very small, and there were two or three girls among them... Theyre only children, she told herself even as, instinctively, she took a step backward. And in the next instant they were upon her. (123-124) Even once the attack begins, the woman finds herself struggling with her own denial as she helplessly tries to fend off her attackers: ... as the children swarmed over her, pummeling her with their fists, pounding, kicking, tearing ... even as she struggled with them, flailing her arms, trying too to strike, punch, kick ... she was thinking, This cant be happening! and Theyre