Flash Fiction Narrative Analysis: Susan Jackson Rodgers’s “That Reminds Me,” II

[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.]

Susan Jack­son Rodgers’ sto­ry “That Reminds Me” uses a sim­ple idea as the basis for the narrative—that mem­o­ries lead nat­u­ral­ly onto each oth­er and some­times refer back to them­selves. This brief paper ana­lyzes the struc­ture of this poet­ic sto­ry. How does Rodgers accom­plish what she accom­plish­es? How does her nar­ra­tive work? At the end of the arti­cle I’ve put togeth­er a “how to” list, in the hopes that oth­er writ­ers may find Rodgers’ nar­ra­tive struc­ture use­ful in writ­ing a sto­ry of their own.

The sto­ry begins in a kitchen where the nar­ra­tor is “slic­ing car­rots for mine­strone.” This action trig­gers a cas­cade of mem­o­ries that ram­ble through Ger­ry, her cur­rent boyfriend; Rick, her ex-boyfriend; Gerry’s imag­ined future wife (not the nar­ra­tor); the narrator’s anger at Gerry’s imag­ined betray­al; and back again to the kitchen and the car­rots.

The excel­lent last sentence—“everything is like this, one [thought] lead­ing to the next. The car­rots are just the beginning”—reveals the cir­cu­lar struc­ture of the nar­ra­tive and helps ham­mer home the theme, that think­ing about past loves leads one nowhere.

If I were to try to repro­duce the struc­ture of this sto­ry I would do the fol­low­ing:

1. Think of a dis­tinct action, such as slic­ing car­rots, upon which to base the chain of mem­o­ries,
2. Allow this action to ini­ti­ate a mem­o­ry cas­cade. If you wish, as in this sto­ry, the mem­o­ries may be based on an imag­ined mis­con­cep­tion (that Ger­ry does not think their rela­tion­ship will last),
3. Allow each mem­o­ry to lead onto oth­er mem­o­ries that reveal some­thing about the nar­ra­tor (for exam­ple, the narrator’s mem­o­ries of Rick hint that she was more in love with Rick than Ger­ry).
4. If pos­si­ble, allow the chain of mem­o­ries to become self-ref­er­en­tial. In this sto­ry, the nar­ra­tor is phys­i­cal­ly cut­ting car­rots and rem­i­nisc­ing and at the same time she is remem­ber­ing about cut­ting car­rots and rem­i­nisc­ing. It’s self-ref­er­en­tial and cir­cu­lar.
5. End the sto­ry by tying back, in as sub­tle a way as pos­si­ble, the cir­cu­lar­i­ty of the chain of mem­o­ries.

 

I think the word “sub­tle” above is impor­tant. From expe­ri­ence, I can tell you that this type of self-ref­er­en­tial­i­ty can turn out “hokey” (I have a draw­er full of “hokey” sto­ries to prove that).

 

I hope this art­cle elu­ci­dates some of the way Rodgers’ sto­ry works nar­ra­tive­ly. Try the struc­ture out for your­self. If it doesn’t work, there’s always the draw­er and a new fresh piece of paper.

 

FF.Net Author’s Note
 

Thomas Jay Rush is the own­er of a small inter­net-based soft­ware com­pa­ny, a fact he choos­es to ignore, focus­ing instead on writ­ing short fic­tion, cre­ative non-fic­tion, and poet­ry. Jay lives with his fam­i­ly in Glad­wyne, Penn­syl­va­nia.