by Ashley Kim
As one lies in the warm grass of a sunny June day, the surrounding atmosphere is filled with chatter and chirps that cannot help but soothe one’s soul. However, despite such a tranquil setting, the mind still travels, wandering far off, passing by locked doors of fear and distress. The colors of the leaves above fade along with the sun and gentle sounds, leaving only the growing darkness that one tried so desperately to push away.
In some ways, the tranquil scene seems to have caused this.
Nowhere is such juxtaposition between grimness and tranquility more prevalent than in Elizabeth Strout’s “A Little Burst,” one of the thirteen short stories that comprise her novel Olive Kitteridge. The story centers around the eponymous Olive as she becomes overwhelmed with apprehension for her son, Christopher, due to her contempt for his newlywed wife, Suzanne. In the tranquil solitude three hours after the wedding, Olive secludes herself in the newlyweds’ bedroom where she struggles with her inner turmoil. Throughout “A Little Burst,” Strout repeatedly uses the imagery of death to deepen the motivation behind Olive’s contempt for Suzanne.
The recurring imagery of death elucidates Olive’s dark emotional state in response to Christopher getting married, and specifically married to her new daughter-in-law, Suzanne. For instance, as Olive sits alone in Christopher and Suzanne’s bedroom, a “little girl, still swaying, says calmly, ‘You look dead’” (64). Olive’s lifeless appearance reflects her grim mentality before the little girl’s comment. Olive had been visualizing a moment from the wedding in which Suzanne showed kindness to a flower girl, reminding the insolent Olive of how different their personalities are. Strout’s audience begins to understand that any reminders of her son marrying Suzanne exhaust Olive. In fact, Olive reveals that she had “pictured herself having another heart attack on the day of her son’s wedding” (64). Olive expresses relief at surviving an event that is supposed to be a joyful celebration, reinforcing how painful the wedding was for her to endure. By scattering such images of death throughout the story, Strout intensifies the magnitude of Olive’s stress.
The repeated invocations of death may seem unnecessary to demonstrate Olive’s aversion to the wedding, or even histrionic, as Strout already demonstrates Olive’s contempt through the character’s ill-mannered dialogue and childish, judgmental thoughts. For instance, instead of replying maturely, Olive offers this retort to the little girl’s question about where Olive got the hairs on her chin: “From little girls I’ve eaten up. Now go away before I eat you, too” (65). Olive’s exchange exemplifies that she is unfazed by, and not above, behaving rudely in order to escape from the wedding and its participants. Indeed, Olive depends on rudeness to achieve her goal. Moreover, Olive’s personal reflections are just as childish as her words as she thinks, “the dress worked out… much better than the dark, grim clothes the Bernstein family is wearing” (62). Olive’s reflection is both superficial and judgmental. By criticizing Suzanne’s family’s clothing, she expresses her resentment toward anything linked to Suzanne.
While these petty remarks certainly show Olive’s contempt for Suzanne, they do not reveal the deeper underlying motivation for Olive’s hatred. Death still plays a crucial role, therefore, in revealing Olive’s actual issues with her son’s marriage beyond her notably temperamental personality. Olive’s aforementioned behavior can be easily misconstrued as a product of her petulance rather than a product of her love for her son Christopher. For example, Olive ponders her son’s future with Suzanne and reflects, “They think they’re finished with loneliness… she knows loneliness can… make you die” (68). Through Olive’s reflection, readers grasp how deep Olive’s love is for Christopher. In contrast to her previous childish thoughts, this revelation goes beyond the surface and into the depths of how Olive’s contempt for Suzanne is chiefly driven by her motherly love for Christopher. Furthermore, Olive revisits a memory of the previous Christmas, when neither knew Suzanne, and Christopher revealed that he sometimes thought about killing himself (71). Here, Olive’s uneasiness about Christopher is specified—she’s concerned about his suicidal thoughts—and the association of death with her son is revealed as more literal and realistic than previously suggested. Later, Olive unveils her concern regarding Suzanne, who does not know about Christopher’s battle with suicidal thoughts, looking after her beloved son. The potent images of death expose the equally potent underlying love beneath Olive’s often erratic behavior. Her love and concern consumes her soul as she tries to protect her son, desperately shoving away those she views as threats to Christopher’s mental health. Without the death imagery, Olive’s contempt for Suzanne appears superficial; with the death imagery, Olive’s contempt is revealed to be a subconscious byproduct of her deep concern for Christopher.
Strout’s suggestions of death intensify our sense of how colossal Christopher’s marriage is for Olive. Strout depicts Olive as a brusque, fierce woman who prizes her son. Most significantly, continually linking death with the newlywed couple and with Olive’s distress about them straightens out any misinterpretations about the climax of the short story. In the climactic scene, Olive steals two articles of clothing of Suzanne’s and vandalizes one of her sweaters. If Strout excluded the reminders of death before this event, a reader might assume Olive’s explosion was simply the temper tantrum of an immature woman. The inclusion of death is pivotal to the reader’s overall impression of Olive and her incentive to steal and ruin Suzanne’s clothing. Death reveals that this outburst is not simply because of her erratic character, but due to her fear of sharing her son with a woman she believes does not know how to care for him.
Strout, Elizabeth. “A Little Burst.” Olive Kitteridge. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2016, pp. 61–74.