Flash Fiction Narrative Analysis: Pamela Painter’s “Snap Judgment”

[Editor’s Note: We are grate­ful to Lee Martin’s arti­cle “Stu­art Dybek’s ‘Sun­day at the Zoo’: A Class in Nar­ra­tive Struc­ture,” an arti­cle that served as our own mod­el for the struc­ture of the nar­ra­tive analy­sis essay of short short fic­tion.]

Two dead mice have drowned in the toi­let is how Pamela Painter begins her flash sto­ry “Snap Judg­ment” pub­lished in Quick Fic­tion 11. That this scene is quick­ly men­tioned again in the sec­ond sen­tence allows the nar­ra­tor to accom­plish sus­tain­ing this image through­out the sto­ry, no mat­ter the out­come.

Dead mice are the top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion of a cou­ple who have just fin­ished love­mak­ing. Some­thing is going on here and the nar­ra­tor lets us know. Ordi­nar­i­ly after sex he would be think­ing of French toast, bacon or smoked salmon and her soft-scram­bled eggs and chives. Here is the con­flict. Things aren’t as they nor­mal­ly are.

They’re talk­ing mice and mouse­traps when they should be talk­ing food. “So I bought traps. Two traps. Three days lat­er, I caught two more.”

Then the nar­ra­tor intro­duces a lit­tle bit of ono­matopoeia with a Snap! The sound you hear when the mouse­trap gets the kill. The read­er hears this sound loud and clear and so does the girl­friend. There is much wrong in this rela­tion­ship shroud­ed in the sub­text of the best mouse­trap. He explains the virtue of snap ver­sus poi­son or glue boards. Glue boards were cru­el, poi­son also.

We now see and hear the con­flict con­clu­sive­ly when the girl­friend comes into focus. She pulled the cov­ers up to her shoul­ders. “What do you have against mice?” she asked. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing that the first words of the pro­tag­o­nist are defen­sive and mousy, even as she tries to defend mice.

But she is engaged in the fight and takes him down as she rolls off sta­tis­tics. He’s on the floor. He knew almost every­thing but he didn’t know this. She knows she’s win­ning and doesn’t let up: ham­mers him until he retreats. “For every mouse you kill—snap—you can be sure there are sev­en more flit­ting about your kitchen, nest­ing in the walls, doing what we’re doing. Did.” She con­tin­ues, “A buck mouse can impreg­nate four doe mice in one day.”

He says, “You’re telling me that at min­i­mum I still have six­ty-three mice still in my house?” And she lets up, a lit­tle, but not real­ly, when she lets him know the six­ty-three mice will not all be the same age.

By story’s end the con­flict is resolved. No mouse­trap can beat the for­mi­da­ble repro­duc­tive skills of the house mouse or for that mat­ter a deter­mined woman. He pulled her in close to him, fit­ted her hips to his. “Snap,” they heard from the kitchen.

This final scene nice­ly loops the sto­ry back to the open­ing scene and reminds us that although things appear resolved they real­ly aren’t.

FF.Net Author’s Note
 

Lor­na Brown Gor­don is a poet liv­ing and work­ing in the Philadel­phia area. She received her under­grad­u­ate degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh. She is cur­rent­ly try­ing to mas­ter nar­ra­tive fic­tion.