First-Person Fiction

This short story was an interesting exploration of relationships in different forms and how starkly they can vary from person to person and even from time to time. From the beginning paragraph, where Lois explained that she was Jewish woman who was heavily tattooed with Jesus Christ on her (multiple times) along with a Buddha on her back, to the ending where she compared her body to a love letter to her dead husband when she felt that she hadn’t become a museum to him yet, this irony seems to be something that follows the narrator throughout her lifetime.

One of the most noteworthy relationships is between Lois and her mother, “She had always been a glamorous woman, never going anywhere without a mirror, checking and rechecking her reflection, straightening, maintaining.” That was what Lois noted about her mother on page 9, “When I was a teenager, there were days that I didn’t look in the mirror at all; I avoided my shadow passing in shop windows.” This insecurity about herself immediately following her perception of her mother, and I think is telling. Most meetings with her mother later on in Lois’s life, after she married Tiny and began having her body become a memorial to his career as a tattoo artist, she said she would cover up her body more and more to hide her tattoos. The one time that Lois’s mother saw her full body of tattoos, she was harsh and blunt enough to say that “you’ve finally made yourself into the freak you always thought you were.” (p. 18) She knew how her daughter thought of herself, as not comfortable in her own skin, and she all but says that she thinks Lois ruined her body. Lois was keenly aware of, not only her mother’s judgement about her decision to let her husband leave his markings all over her body, but of everyone else’s as well. She seems proud to let Tiny experiment on her and grow as an artist on one hand, but on the other she specifically pointed out how she hated people trying to look at her arms when shopping for food. 

It was also ironic how her cousin, Babs, the reason that she met Tiny in the first place, and someone who was wild enough to get a “black and white bow on her tush” (p. 5) had settled down with a husband who gave her a family and a good income, and only occasionally had a bit too much whiskey had the life that it sounded like her mother wanted for her. Lois seemed to think of herself as wild by saying that Babs had lost her wildness whereas there was almost nothing to insinuate that her own life has been unconventional besides Lois marrying a man who was thirty-one years older than her and letting that same man tattoo almost every inch of her. 

Lois’s relationship with her own body was too complicated to say that she loved it at the end of the story, but the fact that she described it as a love letter is telling enough to show that she didn’t regret it. Other than feeling agitated at other people’s judgment, throughout the story she appears to mellow out with more and more of her tattoos, and she becomes more focused on tattooing her husband while he was in the hospital, placating her mother’s needs, and she even turned down a young tattooist who wanted to take photos of her body to see her husband’s work. Her body wasn’t only a love letter to Tiny, it was her own, and she no longer had to feel like a ghost in her own blank skin. 

Reading “It’s Bad Luck to Die” offers a look into a lifestyle that may be considered ‘alternative’ by today’s standards. By 1960’s standards, the very topic of the story would be considered taboo: A couple who express their love through the art of tattoos. 

The way in which the narrator speaks to her audience, to the reader, indulges them in the tale of her love with Tiny, her husband and a tattoo artist.  The narrator tells the story in a composed manner. Reminiscent, though not painting the past as overly happy. She starts off peppering facts about herself into the introductory paragraph. She’s Jewish, from Des Moines; she has had Jesus Christ tattooed thrice on her body. Then she casually drops in the fact that she’s telling this story six months after Tiny was laid to rest. When starting out the story, the most striking aspect that first hits the reader is the age gap. The narrator is fresh out of high school and falls in love with a 49-year-old man whom she knew for only a year before tying the knot. It can set the stage for instant judgement at first glance; however, if the reader continues, they may find themself forgetting about the age gap as the narrator speaks. The narrator details her experiences over the next several years of being married to Tiny and the exploits that came with marrying a tattoo artist in the 1960’s. The way her mother disapproved of their tattoos, but knew she could do nothing about it. The change that came over the narrator’s cousin, Babs, from wild girl to politician’s wife. The passage of time, its toll on Tiny, and the effects of old age catching up with him. Tiny’s death is not explicitly talked about, though the narrator does convey the sense that by the end of the story, Tiny most certainly is gone.

On a final note, the way in which the narrator describes the tattoo process–the preparation steps the artist must perform pre-needle, the level of pain experienced by the receiver, and the aftercare–illustrates that the author, McCracken, must possess an amount of experience with tattoo parlors. It’s also intriguing to see the ways in which the author views reasons for getting a tattoo, and it is fascinating to see the different reasons for tattoo acquisition for different people. Whether it is a decision made while drunk, a dare, a search for a wild time, or as an expression of love.

Below are a number of questions, in no particular order, that we’ll be considering throughout the semester. Attempting to answer them as you read — or to at least bear them in mind —  will give you a sense of the complexity and nuance of first-person point of view and the variety of ways that first-person narrators reveal themselves to the reader even if their attention appears to be focused on what happens in the story. Considering these questions about your own stories, your own narrators, will help you craft more complex and convincing characters.

What has set the narrative in motion? What has caused this person to say, implicitly or explicitly, “I have a story to tell” or “This is what happened to me”?

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Is the narrator speaking? Writing? Thinking? Does the narrator suggest — or seem to imagine — an audience? If so, who?

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What is the narrator’s perspective on the events that take place in the story? Are those events recent or long ago? At what point do we discover the narrator’s perspective? At the story’s opening? At its conclusion? Somewhere else?

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What does the narrator believe the story is about? Who does the narrator believe the story is about? Does the story suggest the narrator is mistaken? How? Why?

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What might the narrator not know or misunderstand about herself? About others? About her own or others’ past or present behavior, motivations, affections?

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How would you describe the nature of the narrator’s presentation? Is it a reflection? A confession? An explanation? A revelation? A self-defense?

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How would you describe the tone of the narrator’s presentation? Wistful? Angry? Nostalgic? Tender? Inquisitive?

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Does the narrator change over the course of the story? Does the narrator change through the act of telling the story?

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In what way is telling the story a meaningful act for the narrator?