AUT Master of Creative Writing Thesis Exegesis - Scholarly ...

AUT Master of Creative Writing 2008
Shorty © Michael Botur 2009
‘You ask him what the hell he’s searching for and he won’t say because
you’re pretty sure he doesn’t know. He starts heading up the stairs. He’s
headin for the top so he can look down at you.’ - Narrator
Eating Is Cheating concerns a couple, who contribute very little to
the world, finding redemption through their relationship. The female
narrator goes out of her way to wreck the life of a virtuous visitor who
enlightens her husband. Whilst attacking her own partner, the Narrator
withdraws from social interaction, cutting herself off from friends and work
and especially the religious community into which she is invited to join.
Anita Harris writes that ‘When young people are reluctant to
participate (in communication) their silences and absence must be
interpreted carefully, for disengagement may be a way to retain power
and knowledge’ (Harris 2004.) By disengaging from the church and her
social peers, the Narrator feels she is strengthening herself through
consolidation. Furthermore, the Narrator has an uneasy relationship with
unfamiliar cultures. Her own subculture is not tightly defined, but is
implied as being ‘trashy’ and unrefined – Brake’s subcultural model
defining subcultures (dress; argot; values) can be witnessed here in
considering the narrator’s polyester clothes and bare feet, slang and
expletives, and her solipsistic values. Normalcy and decency are less
rigidly defined in the central city; in contrast, suburban areas are
associated with more rigid codes of appropriate conduct (Falconer p.190)
– hence the suburban Narrator’s cultural insecurity as she is delivered to
church in Act II.
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