Three of the stories in George Saunders 2013 collection, Tenth of December, are written in the third person, but from multiple points of view. This approach allows these stories to have more than one primary protagonist. In each of these stories, these characters begin disconnected in various ways from the world around them which is the initial effect of a close third-person narration; the characters’ perspectives are narrow, sometimes to the point of being self-centered, and skewed in sometimes selfish ways. Ultimately, however, this technique is used to create epiphanies when these the characters connect with one another. This storytelling technique itself drives one of the major themes that all these stories have in common.
“Victory Lap,” the first story in the collection, is told from three different points of view. Although there is a third-person narrator, the different sections are written in the voice of the character who has the current focus. The story is about the attempted abduction teenager, Alison Pope. The story opens with Alison fantasizing about being the center of attention at a grand party in her honor. We get the sense that she lives a comfortable life, is coddled by her parents, believes herself to be a superior being—a modern princess:
Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday, Alison Pope paused at the top of the stairs.
Say the staircase was Marble. Say she descended and all heads turned. Where was {special one}? Approaching now, bowing slightly, he exclaimed, How can so much grace be contained in one small package? Oops. Had he said small package? And just stood there? Broad princelike face totally bland of expression? Poor thing! Sorry, no way, down he went, he was definitely not {special one}.
She does, however, have a moral conscious and in an innocent way, believes in the inherent goodness of people and her own noble intentions of doing good:
But as far as that rainbow idea? She believed that. People were amazing. Mom was awesome, Dad was awesome, her teacher worked so hard and had kids of their own, and some were even getting divorces, such as Mrs. Dees, but still always took time for their students. What she found especially inspiring about Mrs. Dees was that, even though Mr. Dees was cheating on Mrs. Dees with the lady who ran the bowling alley, Mrs. Dees was still teaching the best course ever in Ethics, posing such questions as: Can goodness win? Or do good people always get shafted, evil being more reckless. That last bit seemed to be Mrs. Dees taking a shot at the bowling-alley gal. But seriously! Is life fun or scary? Are people good or bad?
Kyle Boot, the hero of the story, is Alison’s next-door neighbor. Kyle’s family seem to be a little less affluent than Alison’s, and his parents are far more strict with him. He tries to follow their instructions to the letter, including minding his own business and not getting into the affairs of other people. Kyle faces a moral dilemma when he witnesses Alison being abducted:
His heart dropped at the thought of what he was letting happen. They’d used goldfish snacks as coins. They’d made bridges out of rocks. Down by the creek. Back in the day. Oh, God. He should’ve never stepped outside. Once they were gone he’d just go back inside, pretend he’d never stepped out, make the model-railroad town, still be making it when Mom and Dad got home. When eventually someone told him about it? He’d make a certain face. Already on his face he could feel the face he would make, like, What? Alison? Raped? Killed? Oh God. Raped and killed while I innocently made my railroad town, sitting cross-legged and unaware on the floor like a tiny little—
The third point of view is that of the would-be kidnapper. He’s planned this abduction ahead of time after seeing Alison in her yard. He dresses as a meter reader so that he won’t appear suspicious if anyone sees him at Alison’s door. His initial intent is to take her away and impregnate her to continue his family line.
He unlocked the door, swung it open. Moment of truth. If she got in, let him use the tape, they were home free. He’d picked out a place in Sackett, big-ass cornfield, dirt road leading in. If fuckwise it went good they’d pick up the freeway from there. Basically steal the van. It was Kenny’s van. He’d borrowed it for the day. Kenny had once called him stupid. Kenny, that remark just cost you one van. If fuckwise it went bad, she didn’t properly arouse him, he’d abort the activity, truncate the subject, heave the thing out, clean the van as necessary, go buy corn, return the van to Kenny, say, hey bro, here’s a shitload of corn, thanks for the van, I never could have bought a suitable quantity of corn in my car.Then lay low, watch the papers like he’d done with the nonarousing redhead out in—
These three narratives intersect when Kyle decides to intervene and rescue Alison, defying the lessons his parents have hammered into him for his entire life. He throws a rock through the window of the van, disrupting the kidnapper’s plans. The story ends back with Alison’s perspective. She intervenes to prevent Kyle from killing the kidnapper.
The story “Puppy” is told from two different points of view: Marie, the mother of Josh and Abbie in the story, and, Callie, the mother of Bo in the story. The two characters contrast with one another. Marie was abused as a child and is doing everything she can to make sure that her children do not suffer as she did. She encourages laughter in the household and under disciplines her children. Callie, on the other hand, has less money than Marie and has a son, Bo, who suffers from some sort emotional or mental issue. In order to prevent him from running out on to the interstate, she puts him in a restraint which she ties to a tree in the backyard.
The two families meet when Marie answers an ad for a puppy that Callie is selling because her family cannot afford to keep it. Marie sees Bo, tied to the tree in the backyard:
Marie stepped to the window and, anthropologically pulling the blind aside, was shocked, so shocked that she dropped the blind and shook her head, as if trying to wake herself, shocked to see a young boy, just a few years younger than Josh, harnessed and chained to a tree, via some sort of doohickey by which—she pulled the blind back again, sure she could not have seen what she thought she had—
Without knowing Callie’s circumstances, Marie passes judgment based on her own childhood. She doesn’t want to contribute to this situation and decides not to buy the puppy. She considers calling child welfare.
The story ends with Callie. Her family can’t afford to properly care for the dog. The dog will have to be killed. Callie doesn’t want her husband to be burdened with that task, so she takes the puppy out to a cornfield where she abandons it. She takes some of the money that she has hidden away and gives it to her husband, telling him that she sold the puppy.
In the book’s final story, Tenth of December, a young boy, Robin, goes for a walk to a pond near his home on a cold winter day. He finds a coat that has been left on a bench near the pond. He sees a man walking up a nearby hill without a coat. He picks up the coat and attempts to return it to the man. Robin’s narration gives us the rich fantasy that he creates in his mind: He is an astronaut exploring another planet.
The man, Don Eber, is terminally ill and in despair. His plan is to die from exposure in order to save his family the ordeal of coping with him in his final days. Eber sees Robin walking across the frozen pond with his coat. Robin falls through the ice and Eber is forced to rescue him:
Eber jog-hobbled out of the woods and found: no kid. Just black water. And a green coat. His coat. His former coat, out there on the ice. The water was calming already.
Oh, shit.
Your fault.
The kid was only out there because of—
Down on the beach near an overturned boat was some ignoramus. Lying facedown. On the job. Must have been lying there even as that poor kid—
Wait, rewind.
It was the kid. Oh, thank Christ. Facedown like a corpse in a Brady photo. Legs still in the pond. Like he’d lost steam crawling out. Kid was soaked through, the white coat gone grey and wet.
Eber gets Robin out of his wet clothes and puts him in his own dry clothes and sends him home. In the cold, Eber believes he is going to die and as hypothermia sets in, he begins to hallucinate. Reaching home, Robin tells his mother about Eber. She goes out to rescue him and with great effort brings him back home. There, he realizes that he has suddenly been given his life back.
All of these stories are about encounters between isolated consciousnesses and making meaningful connections. We get to live inside these consciousnesses through the use of this close third-person narration that shifts from character to character. The closeness could also be achieved by using a first-person narration for each of the characters. Saunders wisely avoids that by using third person. When a story changes point of view from one first-person narration to another, it’s very disrupting to the reader, who has to adjust her bearings. This breaks down the fictive dream state. Staying in third person and shifting focus give the reader just enough distance to smoothly transition from one character’s perspective to another.
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