English 275
22 September 2016
The Complexity of Marriage in “Shiloh”
Bobbi Ann Mason’s short story “Shiloh” deals with the complexity of human life and emotion through the lens of a middle-aged man experiencing great marital strife. Though the plot is not complex, the characters are. “Shiloh” follows a couple who, throughout their lives, have never understood each other. Their marriage lacks empathy, effort, and communication, which causes underlying problems between them. The intricate characters and symbols of tragedy in “Shiloh” support the themes of the difficulty of a troubled marriage, and the complexity and misunderstandings a fundamentally flawed relationship can have.
The protagonist Leroy and his wife Norma Jean are both complex individuals who lack an empathy for each other. Narrated in third-person limited, “Shiloh” spends a significant time on characterization, and the major characters inform the story more than the plot does. Leroy and Norma Jean are both round characters, with psychological complexities, various motives, and individual goals. Leroy aspires to build a log cabin for his wife, which is a symbol for Leroy’s newfound desire to give his wife a home she never had. However, throughout their entire marriage he was focused only his job, and he now does not understand why his wife is not welcoming him home as he thought she would. Throughout their marriage, Leroy has never tried to understand Norma Jean, nor her desire to move on from him and find her own purpose.
Norma Jean is trying to figure out her role in life, and takes up many hobbies such as music, cooking, and weightlifting. She also enrolls in a local community college studying English, to which Leroy comments, “‘What are you doing this for, anyhow?’” (Mason 368), not understanding her desire to grow as a person. After this, Norma Jean is frustrated with Leroy and the way he does not understand her nature. In turn, she does not understand why he lived their whole marriage without wanting to truly know her. Not wanting to disregard her lifetime of being neglected by Leroy, Norma Jean does not want to accept his new—and seemingly too late—efforts of being a good husband. Later in the story, Norma Jean says, “…you won’t leave me alone” (Mason 371). Both Leroy and Norma Jean are complex characters, and have become elusive to each other. This brings great complexity into the root of their marriage, causing issues that are difficult for them to overcome; the main issue being that Leroy and Norma Jean do not understand each other.
The reason Leroy and Norma Jean have this misunderstanding is because they have spent no effort in truly getting to know each other. Leroy, a former trucker, comes home to a wife he no longer recognizes, and perhaps had forgotten many times throughout the years. The narrator writes that early on in their relationship, “Leroy remembers Norma Jean catatonically beside him in the hospital and himself thinking: Who is this strange girl? He had forgotten who she was” (Mason 363). In the present day, Leroy does not know his wife any better than he did in the hospital. Sitting at home, “[Leroy] sees things about Norma Jean that he never realized before” (Mason 365). In all their years of marriage, Leroy never took the time to get to know his wife. Consequently, Norma Jean never got to know her husband, either. They both lived separate lives, and are now forced to reunite at a time when they understand each other least. This significant misunderstanding is the root of their marital issues, and supports the themes of the difficulty and complexity of marriage.
Because of Leroy and Norma Jean’s misunderstanding of each other, they are not able to cope together with significant life experiences. This lack of unity pushes them further from each other, harming their already troubled marriage. For example, their infant son Randy dies unexpectedly when they are both eighteen. His death is a symbol which informs the theme of the difficulty of marriage, because this event further pushes them away. At the climax of the story, when Norma Jean tells Leroy that she is leaving him, she says, “I feel eighteen again. I can’t face that all over again” (Mason 371). Norma Jean is implying that she cannot relive the isolation in her marriage she experienced once before. Leroy and Norma Jean were married when their child died, but they experienced their grief independently, without support from each other. This isolation drove them further away from each other, showing that from the start of their marriage they were not united. Even decades after the death of their son, they cannot communicate their grief in order to cope together. Their marriage is troubled to the core, because of their misunderstanding with each other, and their isolation in dealing with the complexity of significant life experiences such as loss and grief.
Years of damage from misunderstanding each other has caused further trouble in Leroy and Norma Jean’s marriage. After Leroy’s mother-in-law inadvertently accuses Norma Jean of neglecting Randy resulting in his death, Leroy “opens a king-sized bottle of beer, and pours it into two glasses, dividing it carefully” (Mason 367). Rather than using this moment of anguish as an opportunity to talk about their grief over their son’s death, or the guilt Norma Jean is apparently feeling because of it, they use alcohol to escape discussing it altogether. Neither Norma Jean nor Leroy feel close enough to each other to talk about such a deep and painful experience. However, since it was a shared experience, there is a sense in the story that this grief cannot be overcome until both of them acknowledge that it exists. This is evident in Leroy’s lament when his son first died. At the hospital, Leroy thinks, “Nobody knows anything... The answers are always changing,” (Mason 363). Set in the 1970’s, the doctors cannot explain their son’s death. Leroy is desperate for concrete answers—as well as closure—and because of this he runs further away from his contrastingly complex and elusive relationship with his wife. Neither Norma Jean nor Leroy have the relational security to face their grief inside their marriage, because they cannot understand each other, which has caused them a troubled marriage.
The short story “Shiloh” wrestles with the complexity of human life and emotion, specifically through the lens of a troubled marriage. Following the story of two adults who have experienced the tragedy of their son’s premature death, Mason shows how an already troubled marriage can become detrimental to both parties. Neither Leroy nor Norma Jean are happy with their life together; Leroy spends much of the story dreaming about a log cabin he will never have the resources to build, and Norma Jean recycles many hobbies and college aspirations, trying to figure out how to move forward in life. “Shiloh” has an overarching theme of the difficulty of a troubled marriage, showing the complexity and at times misunderstandings of such personal relationships. Leroy and Norma Jean have together experienced death, and this tragedy adds to their relational trouble, creating a barrier between them. Mason’s short story showcases how a marriage can fall apart when it lacks empathy, effort, and communication. More than that, however, “Shiloh” shows the complexity of human life and experiences, through a story many Americans can, on some level, relate to.
Works Cited
Mason, Bobbi Ann. “Shiloh.” Mays, pp. 360 - 372
Mays, Kelly J., editor. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Norton, 2014.
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