Kate Carsella

ENG 715: Narrative Craft & Theory

Professor Liam Callanan

10.9.14

Frame Narrative: Retelling & Foretelling

Frame narrative serves as the multidirectional, temporospatial travel vehicle within a

novel. Its capabilities include: spying through the skylight of a character’s being, allowing

conversations between characters which, in linear time and space, could not occur; supplying

cause for reactions and decisions—moving the characters across the board, so to speak. In a twist

on frame narrative, Justin Cronin deploys the elements retelling and foretelling in his novel in

stories, Mary and O’Neil. These methods interact with and elucidate the narrative in a variety of

ways. Independent of each other’s absence, characters can forge mutual bonds in their

perspectives and feelings when foretelling and retelling intersect. Alternatively, erroneous

retellings and foretelling highlight discrepancies: between character and character, character and

reality, character and self. Otherwise undiscovered channels of communication and

understanding for the characters is allowed, as there is now access to the hidden texts of one’s

life. This drives the narrative by advancement of communion with others, through reconciliation,

wistfulness, justification, and catharsis. This is the result within the plot, forging interlocking

unity between stories and novel.

Cronin is also providing himself opportunity for play with the reader, and subversion of

expectation. What happens when premonitions are uncannily true? What results when a

recounting of past events is flatly wrong? The reader is inspired to reflect on their own, personal

record of life events: what lies has one told about where they came from, and do they have

suspicion of where they are headed? How does one respond? In posing these questions via

narrative device, Cronin thus creates a psychical bond with the reader. What is the nature of our

experience with the known and the unknown, and where does it lead?

The novel’s structure is itself a frame, inscribed with variations of presage and echo. The

opening bracket is Arthur’s dream, steeped in foretelling, and through language, elevates the

stakes to a higher, epically mystical realm. The closing bracket is O’Neil’s reading an excerpt of

The Odyssey, the final narrative Trojan Horse, injecting the novel with a literary retelling of

O’Neil’s grief, and a depiction on the transparency of the veils between the real and numinous,

particularly for O’Neil. Though he finds resonance in the character of Odysseus, as a facilitator

of action in the book, O’Neil functions more as Tiresias. In his ulterior, yet doubtless bond with

Mary, his treatment of Kay and sons in crisis, and his highly attuned sensitivity (at times

unbeknownst to himself), O’Neil is an oracular conduit for emotional exchange and consequent

action.

The patriarch of the Burke Family unit, Arthur, opens the novel with recollection of a

dream, unlike any other he’s had before. (Cronin 6) His experience is wholly liminal: the time is

daybreak, the season is shifting, he awaits “the dream to fade”, and his reaction to the events of

said dream is of surprising comfort. (Cronin 1) As Arthur attempts to piece back together the

series of thoughts and images – the “running water was never real”, flight over a cliff, “Miriam’s

hand in his… everything loosed from the earth; a feeling like accomplishment, shapes fitting

together with mathematical precision, all the equations of the heavens ringing”, Cronin has him

reflecting on his future. (Cronin 1) Arthur is trying to recall his own fate. He further questions

the impressions leftover – “How is it possible he knows he is going to die? And that the thought

does not grieve him?” (Cronin 1) The language of the author here cements the validity of

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Arthur’s dream. He does not merely believe in his glimpse of death based on the evoked feelings,

he, in fact, divines with astonishing accuracy. The “mathematical precision” of the dream’s

meaning asserts that all roads lead to this future. (Cronin 1) Arthur is now imbued with a sense

of time that others are not, and may move through the novel-space on that basis.

His mind, at first, is “on nothing” (Cronin 2), but is quickly shifted to a personal

conference with God over the percolations of the coffee-maker. Arthur is thankful, slightly

humorous, the supplicant to God in the changing of seasons in an attempt to mitigate his

oncoming future. “I like the winter fine, but it would be nice if it wasn’t a bad one.” (Cronin 3)

Despite his “happiness” (Cronin 1) immediately following his dream, Arthur puts in a near

obligatory request to the creator to stay his execution. This ties winter to his dream, cluing the

reader in as to a timeline for the omen to crystallize.

What of Arthur’s relationships? As he takes a seat, coffee in hand, Arthur jumps forward

in time to later in the day. He reminisces over the words of his son, O’Neil; he speculates as to

the pleasurable feel of his own body after the drive, the other parents, the collegiate atmosphere;

philosophizing on the question “Why not be in love?” (Cronin 3). Much of what Arthur

contemplates here are things he does not actually know, nor has he witnessed. He intersects

retelling (O’Neil’s account of the “[cemented] erotic bargain” he has with a girl whose name

Arthur cannot recall), with a short-term foretelling. The reader is primed as to how Arthur’s

mind is working, ultimately, looking back on the bloom of youth. “Pale light [gathers] outside,

deepening his view…” bringing Arthur Burke’s being into highlight, from the liminal into

action. (Cronin 3)

The first actual exchange he has is the clipped one with Miriam: the coffee quarrel

(Cronin 4). It is made clear one of the ingredients between them is Arthur’s “full… great, sad

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love for her.” (Cronin 5) His psychic view into her mind is instant. He foresaw his own pleasure

in the day, and the hardship she will endure—“Arthur understands it is the girl she dreads. She

tries to like the girls he likes.” (Cronin 5) Perhaps this is an example of a longstanding couple

knowing each other like the back of their hands. But, it is also an opportunity to infuse some

conflict into the mix. The couple’s opening tones are discrepant, and there may be familial

discord where there should be happy reunion. Miriam and Arthur are shown opposed in their

engagement with the concept of love, by way of their son, and in the way they deal with it. The

short exchange on page 5 of Mary and O’Neil demonstrates this perfectly:

“We have to be nice, you know.”

Miriam stops rinsing the pot. “Quit reading my mind.”

Arthur sets the precedent of intuition within the Burke family, to be exponentially

personified by O’Neil later. Within the marriage, Arthur is open to the fluidity of knowledge and

conversation, whereas Miriam is a closed, resistant. Miriam’s regular misfires of prediction and

sadness in reminiscence throughout the novel portray this neatly. For now, Miriam describes her

feelings as “stupid”, and her character as “someone in a play, you know, the mother? That old

bitch, can’t let go, nobody’s good enough for her boy.” (Cronin 5) Further frames within the

frame. In her own frame of mind, Miriam is character she despises, whose future is already

written. Unlike Arthur, who has a freedom from foretelling, Miriam paints her self stuck,

doomed to enact her insurmountable prejudice. Later, Miriam is decidedly not stuck, in her

communion with Sandra. There is a disconnect Miriam experiences, unlike her husband and son.

Her judgments are often wrong, and reality repeatedly surprises her in panning out unlike she

pictured.

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Despite the dissonance of judgments in real time, Miriam and Arthur are revealed on

page 6 to have occupied the same, “strangest dream”. Their bond is in the murky, psychic realm.

Arthur returns to his foretelling, trying to explain it to her, and in the process, recalling or

embellishing his feelings and what occurred. But this newly formed adaptation of his fateful

dream is the evolution of his mind. How he recalls dictates what he will do. “The old metronome

of marriage,” is an image summoned, “a long hallway…blackness, a yawning chasm as vast as a

stadium,” follow. “The memory of it makes him feel strangely happy,” though “some of it” was

“bad”. (Cronin 6) It is repeated, the happy impression of the dream state on Arthur. However, the

details fade, and what is imparted to his wife is that she “saved [him], again”. There is a kiss

between them, and Arthur goes on to recall Miriam’s place in their shared past. As he

imaginatively stands in the past, eavesdropping on his wife and children at bedtime, she says,

“See? This is real”, solidifying herself in the novel as a beacon of reality, concerned with the

tangible details of the family’s existence.

Arthur’s trajectory continues toward his wife, and away from his secret, Dora Auclaire.

The reminiscence of their quasi-affair, and his succinct farewell signify the end of his

meandering. His focus has sharpened significantly with his dream’s impressions. Though, this is

not the last of the letter. It returns to his children, as if he sent a bottled message via time’s

waters. It is a part of his legacy, a hidden text in their lives, for Kay and O’Neil to puzzle over,

and attempt to situate their values and feelings over the man they thought their father was,

afterward, who he seemed to be, and what that makes them. In his last solitary spotlight in Mary

and O’Neil, Arthur sees his own shadow, roused by the memory of his father’s death. Here is

where, again, foretelling and retelling intersect. In this case, the impression is “a dark chill

[twisting] through him”, and Arthur is quick to shake off this fearful premonition, discounting it

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as “nothing, just a trick of the light, of the time of day and his own need to hurry”. (Cronin 22)

He may be happy at the thought of his death with Miriam, but the bitter cold, as he requested

earlier, is what he seeks to avoid. In Cronin’s world, one may know of their death, but cannot

control the way it occurs.

This is a lot of time spent on Arthur’s dream, with good reason. Through him, intuition is

inextricably linked to the Burkes to guide their behavior, and commune with each other. The

ramifications of his dream, his letter, his choices are the roots from which the novel may

develop, and ultimately evolve through his son. While Arthur does not physically inhabit the

entirety of the material, he is an absolute shade for O’Neil and Kay—a touchstone to go back in

reflection of their family and childhoods, a model with which to adhere or deviate.

Miriam Burke, née Braverman, is the flip side. Her foretelling is off-kilter and/or nil, and

her memories, i.e. Kay, are off target. Miriam’s role in the narrative is the embodiment of

incongruity. Her choices are repeated discrepancy and misunderstanding. She spontaneously

decides to stay at the fateful hotel so near to the scene of her and Arthur’s deaths. Her illness

with cancer sets the stage for genetic history that Kay must later battle. Her view of Kay as a

child, and the resulting relationship is erroneous. The reader discovers this in later stories

spending time with Kay - her perceived coldness does not originate from Kay at all, it originates

from the difference between Actual Kay, and the Kay That Miriam Imagined. This is a different,

equally effective manner with which Cronin perpetuates the stories and novel.

The focus on Miriam begins with obituarial language, a boiled down blurb of her past.

The end of it is a question, is she dying? (Cronin 22) Although this suspicion is caused by a

recent discovery of a lump in her left breast—“a dark presence met her and then took shape”, it

is not the perpetrator. (Cronin 23) In the wake of this knowledge, she doesn’t negotiate with

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higher powers like Arthur, she exclaims “Not this! Not this!... what happened to them, those one

in nine? It was more than panic she felt; it was death, making its way to her door.” (Cronin 23)

While Miriam is correct in her fear of impending death, it is not the cancer that will deliver the

final stroke. She clearly does not know what shall become of her, she only knows the “acorn”

that she feels in her breast, and its “electric current” zapping her to attention. (Cronin 23) A

“fatalistic calm [fills] her”, and her life takes on an “orderliness” it did not previously possess.

She becomes “unaccountably ravenous”, and does not reveal her news to Arthur – choices and

motives of which she cannot make sense. (Cronin 24) Miriam is at home engaging in omission.

The notion of the secret that Arthur introduced comes home to roost with his wife. In the two

weeks prior to the current action, Miriam tells small lies about her activities in an act of love,

hoping to shield her husband from her illness. Additionally, it is an act of self-preservation, “the

longer she remains alone with the knowledge of what is happening to her, the longer she herself

is saved.” (Cronin 24) Her illness is not even named as cancer. Substitutes such as “the affected

breast”, “palpable mass”, “married patient” are the terms of her, “something—somewhere—

else.” (Cronin 25) Telling of any kind is not in her purview.

Behind “smoked glass” (Cronin 25) she recalls Kay’s wedding, revealing herself as a

living ghost. Miriam remembers dancing with O’Neil, and the fulfilling happiness he provides

her. This is counteracted by “[missing] him when he [is] standing right there”, which she also

does not understand. By contrast, when Miriam attends the party with Sandra and O’Neil, a

retelling of the prior wedding dance, it is presence (of the lump) that knocks her for a loop. “Her

mind adrift in the past, a tiny ball of fire ignites within her.” (Cronin 56) The physical world of

presence and absence is her domain, and words do not move her. Yet, she finds the most joy in

her oracular son, O’Neil, and her life partner is Arthur. There is a clear magnetism and affinity

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for each other, despite difference. Miriam is integral to the family, so much so that more than

once, her ghost enters O’Neil’s life over the phone, and is construed as one of the shades in his

lesson on The Odyssey. Perhaps, O’Neil is haunted by the exchanges his mother missed, or could

not even conceive. And/or, that she could not be more like him, or his father, and how painful he

perceives such blindness to be. He mourns her lack, and takes it into himself till the conclusion.

Miriam’s import does not end there. Justin Cronin subverts the logic of her character by

giving her another accurate suspicion: her take on Jack, whom she “couldn’t quite bring herself

to like… much as she’d tried.” (Cronin 27). She regards him as “rigid and fusty”, and most

importantly “unlike O’Neil”. (Cronin 27) Moreover, Miriam believes it is her fault that Kay “had

chosen to fill the gap with Jack”, the gap being the “certain unnameable tensions” between

mother and daughter. (Cronin 27) Cronin never admits or denies if Miriam is correct in her

speculation RE Jack, he only bestows upon her a fraction of truth in the same way he described

her knowledge of her imminent death. Her foretelling may be off somewhat, but as a parent, and

a character inscribed with presences and absences (the physical) she is emblematic of what the

future holds for her children.

Kay has the unfortunate position of playing out, retelling, a version of what could have

happened to her mother had she undergone the trials of cancer. Family members are, in essence,

versions of the same person via genetics, mannerisms, and possibly background. Debts left

unpaid in past generations recur for receipt in future. When Kay and O’Neil settle accounts of

their parents’ home, they fall into the habits of their parents, a replay of Arthur and Miriam—

their “hours… meeting in the living room in the events for a cup of tea”, leading to O’Neil’s

dream of being married to Kay. (Cronin 85) And in his support of Kay in the final recurrence of

cancer, O’Neil gets to be a man at the end of her life, as he wished to be when his parents passed.

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He gets that chance to see her through, without having to wonder at the mystery. Without having

to be haunted. Within the Burke Family Logic, Kay serves as the retelling, bound to O’Neil with

more than blood, bound with his role as foreteller. Their trajectories through plot reflect their

family roles.

The star, or main focus of the novel, is O’Neil Burke. His Tiresian qualities are given

pride of place. His every relationship is imprinted by this quality: father, mother, wife, sister,

nephews, children, students and colleagues. Early in the novel, Arthur’s prophetic dream recurs

through O’Neil, who retells the story of his parents’ death, or what he assumes they went

through. He, “though it makes no sense to think it, sees them holding hands”, which is a distinct

detail from the Arthur Dream—holding hands. “O’Neil will one day hold his daughter’s hand

when a nightmare has awakened her…” (Cronin 71) This is the figurative passing of the torch,

and the exemplification of the retelling and foretelling intersections of the novel. It is a

connection to his parents that O’Neil continuously returns to, trying to make sense of their deaths

and his feelings. Kay and Miriam have similar experiences; Arthur and O’Neil are of the same

mind.

O’Neil is the living legacy of the nuclear Burke family unit. Psychically and physically,

he perpetuates the Burke name. Where Miriam had love for Arthur despite their different

mindsets, Mary loves O’Neil due in part to their sharing the same wavelength. Without grand

gestures or proclamations of love and devotion, or the many obstacles that should have

disallowed them ever meeting, Mary and O’Neil have a quiet, strong devotion to one another.

Ghosts are a major theme of their similarity. When they work in their house, the “idea that the

house was haunted” pleases them. (Cronin 169) Mary crafts it into being—noticing the fans

turning the wrong way, hearing footsteps. When the ghost of the young woman finally appears,

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Mary “has no alarm; she had been anticipating this, or something like it.” (170) This ghost, along

with the parental spectres O’Neil encounters, are tangible intangibles: a visible symbol of an

echo of the past, a message transcending time and their originating space, into the future beyond

their deaths. But what facilitates their appearance? Are Mary and/or O’Neil chosen? Is there

some radiating residue due to their openness to free movement through intuition? Yes. And it is

this undisclosed thread that holds their marriage with such certitude.

Through Mary’s third pregnancy, O’Neil knows without being told, what’s more,

understands why Mary doesn’t tell him – that she needs her secrets, and as such he turns his

belief into a secret as well. (Cronin 239) This he learned from his mother, also without having to

be told, as he experienced her secrecy after her death. This in contrast of their first try to

procreate, where they tell the story of what their baby would look like and be interested in before

they can conceive. (Cronin 172-173) They play and imagine, the reader fully knowing there is no

way to predict how one’s child will behave, look, or who they will be. But she will be named

Nora, and the reader can see into Mary and O’Neil’s preferences and hopes for the future.

The closing bracket of the novel, the final story, “A Gathering of Shades” is the catharsis

point for O’Neil. For the length of the book, he has facilitated, been adored, procreated, and

supported. Once he returns to work, the final original Burke, O’Neil is allowed to feel. He

teaches The Odyssey, one of the most well known epics and examples of frame narrative around.

It makes sense that in trying to imbue his students with the message of the selected passage,

O’Neil must face what “he [knew] was about to happen.” (Cronin 242) Though he predicted

falsely the location and time, “all along he had hoped it would happen when he was alone, or else

with Mary.” (Cronin 242) Mary, his partner in intuitive understanding. Nevertheless, time

“becomes suspended”, O’Neil puts the puzzle together of how he’s about to arrive at his

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emotional outpouring, recalling months of travel and long hours he endured assisting Kay, and

like his mother before him, he has to hold onto the physical world, the table, so he will not fall

from the force. (Cronin 242) He discusses the value of knowing the future with his students, and

a variety of answers, none O’Neil’s are thrown out. This guides him to read aloud from The

Odyssey, “a moment of deepest poignancy”, opening the door to communicate with his own

grief, symbolized by the mother. As Odysseus sees the ghost of his mother, O’Neil finds the

haunting within himself, the one shade, portent, with which he had thus far been unable to

converse. But he does engage. A student “draws the shade over the small square window” to

keep this relief private, and the group hold with O’Neil until he is finished. (Cronin 243) While

he did not foresee that his students would know the source of his grief, the bond he shares with

them allows for understanding anyway. O’Neil is not alone, and is reaching toward the next

generation continuously as a teacher. The legacy of his values, of his frame of mind shall

continue, as Cronin alludes to in detailing O’Neil’s popularity and letters from former students.

He makes an impact.

In the New York Review of Books, February 2013, Oliver Sacks wrote “Speak, Memory”

and sums up quite well what this essay sought to display:

This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.

Justin Cronin employs retelling and foretelling through intuition, absence, presence, and

physicality. He does so to create frame narrative, to create space where families may gather and

bond that linearly would not be permitted. In doing so, Cronin is able to embody an odd feature

of family – uncanny knowledge. What one does or does not do in relation to how the ones who

came before thought and behaved. This is what every soul must decide so frequently. Correct,

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dead wrong, repeated or fresh, all facets that move characters and people forward in the attempt

to comprehend.

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Works Cited

Cronin, Justin. Mary and O'Neil. New York, NY: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2002. Print.

Sacks, Oliver. "Speak, Memory by Oliver Sacks." www.nybooks.com. New York Review of Books, 21 Feb. 2013. Web. 08 Oct. 2014.

<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/21/speak-memory/?page=2>.

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