When I was reading “Great Falls” I kept thinking about one of JGB’s posted questions: “Why is the narrator telling the story?” I think that it’s clear that the narrator is trying to process a traumatic childhood event later in life. His mother’s infidelity, his father’s violence, and his mother’s subsequent absence is a lot for any kid to process in one night. I think this is further proven by the ending of the story. He asks questions that can never be answered, perhaps that there are no answers to.
Why wouldn’t my father let my mother come back? Why would Woody stand in the cold with me and risk being killed? Why would he say that my mother had been married before, if she hadn’t? And my mother herself- Why would she do what she did?
By asking these questions at the conclusion of this story, we know that they have been bothering the narrator his entire life. That he’s been looking for these answers and thinking about them since this night took place. They probably haunt him. The author could’ve just left the story there, with the implication that the narrator will never get over this night, that it will always follow him around. However, the last paragraph changes my understanding of the narrator. He answers his questions in a very nihilistic way, saying that people are cold, there’s just a little bit of awful in everyone. His answer is uncaring and bitter. Instead of ending the story with questions, we end the story seeing how this event affected the narrator in the long run. We see how it shaped his world view into what it is, bitter and apathetic.
I can definitely agree that the events that happened during his childhood made him bitter and apathetic. I also think though that some of that attitude he gets from his father. It is seen throughout the story that the father just appears very cold to his wife and son to some degree. This is probably what led to his wife cheating on him.
How are these questions different from the ones we get at the end of “Rock Springs”?