How Far She Went (Mary Hood, 1984) and Everyday Use are both well written short stories featuring a mother figure who critiques the actions of a young woman. However, they differ in the manner that the reader is shown qualities of each character, with the former using an indirect method, and the latter employing a more direct approach. The indirect characterization used in How Far She Went gives the reader a greater emotional tie to the character in question, and creates a far greater impact than directly stating the traits of the characters. How Far She Went opens by giving indirect characterization on the girl, giving the reader an impression of the nature of her relationship with her grandmother right off the bat: They had quarreled all morning, squalled all summer about the incidentals; how tight the girl‘s cut-off jeans were, the “Every Inch a Woman” T—shirt, her choice of music and how loud she played it, her practiced inattention, her sullen look.
By giving such a detailed portrait yet ingraining it in a less conspicuous manner than simply stating “the girl was like this”, it intrigues the reader, drawing them into the conflict of ideology between generations in just one sentence. This powerful stroke starkly contradicts the more than 3 full pages it takes Everyday Use to set up the nature of the relationships between the narrator and her two daughters. By spreading out the introduction to one of the most important facets of the story, the author risks losing the interest of the audience Unnecessary details are given “I knocked a bull calf in the brain between the eyes and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall” which may add to the portrait of certain characters but nonetheless lessen the impact of the moment by describing the setting and less essential characters to an unnecessary degree.
Both of these short works use the epiphany as a turning point in the relationship between a mother figure and her daughter. In How Far She Went, this occurs when the old woman drowns her dog in order to avoid detectioni She simply said “It was him or you” to her granddaughter and in an instant the audience understands that the dynamic of their relationship has irreversibly changed, bringing them together, It is far more impactful than the drawn out conflict between. Dee and her mother in Everyday Use, in which they are driven apart by the pretentious nature of Dee’s request for the quilts. By directly stating “as if that was the only thing you could do with quilts”, the reader sees that there is a wedge driven between these characters. However it takes the author many more words to put this inevitable happening into motion, diminishing the impact of the epiphany of their differences.
Even in the ending of each story, the more indirect method leaves a more lasting impression upon the reader. By painting the woman’s soaked dress as “the merest gauze between their wounds” the author gives their audience more to think about than the simple visual imagery of the narrator and maggie provided at the ending of Everyday Use By incorporating symbolism, it brings around the theme of understanding and ties it into a fitting end. To conclude, using an indirect method to characterize is far more effective in creating a lasting impression than directly stating things about the characters. This is not to say that there are no quality works of literature that employ direct characterization, but they must certainly make up for their lack of creativity in exposition of characters in other facets of the story. Indirect characterization allows the author to draw the reader into discovering, rather than being.
