Short Story 2: "Rock Springs"



A brooding Richard Ford

Odds and Ends:

 

If you have not taken the Dante essays, you must schedule an appointment with me to do so ASAP!

 

If you did not discuss the Oates story, you must schedule an appointment with me to do so ASAP.

If you will not be in class on Wednesday to discuss "Rock Springs," you must schedule an appointment with me to do so ASAP.

Have "Rock Springs" read for tomorrow! 

Remember: Thursday is Mr. Wermeling's last day! I will arrive around 7:30 on Wednesday and Thursday, and will stay quite late both days. I will be in the English office 3rd and 10th, and will be in Room 260 for 5th lunch. If you would like to visit me during 7th or 8th, you may schedule an appointment with me in the Writing Lab by clicking here. 

 

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From Drew Perry's take on "Rock Springs" for a series of pieces called "Stories We Love" for Fiction Writers Review:

It’s a story about entropy. About falling further and faster apart. About hanging on even when it’s well past time to hang on. It’s a story about race and capitalism and crime and love and marriage, all the Big American Things—Do you see what happens? This is meant to be some kind of craft talk. I’m supposed to somehow point to the ways in which the story glues itself together, and I can’t do it. “Rock Springs” is a story I understand only through its moments: through the woman and her damaged son in that glowing trailer park, through the cat staring up at Earl like he “was the face of the moon,” through Edna delivering to Earl, after it’s certain they’ll break up, one of the most wrenching, most darkly funny, most beautiful lines I know in all of letters: “Eat your chicken, Earl,” she says. “Then we can go to bed. I’m tired, but I’d like to make love to you anyway. None of this is a matter of not loving you, you know that.” It’s that line, that chicken line, that returns to me again and again. It’s one of the handful of lines from the various stories I know that’s always, always with me, a reminder that even when you are, in fact, chasing the Big Things, your characters still have to eat and want.

And here we’ve reached the end of all this without time for me even to talk about the end of the story, a fiercely triumphant last note that’s as much about literature itself as it is about Earl, more broken now than he was back on the highway when the oil light came on. There he is, down in the parking lot, and he looks back up at the hotel, at Edna and Cheryl, and at us, really: “What would you think a man was doing if you saw him in the middle of the night looking in the windows of cars in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn? Would you think he was trying to get his head cleared? Would you think he was trying to get ready for a day when trouble would come down on him? Would you think his girlfriend was leaving him? Would you think he had a daughter? Would you think he was anybody like you?” He is, of course. He is the car thief inside each and every one of us.

CLICK HERE FOR A PDF OF "ROCK SPRINGS"
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"Rock Springs" Prep Activity:

- Dissect one prominent symbol in "Rock Springs." How does the symbol function? What does it contribute to the piece?

-What does "Rock Springs" say about:

• criminality (Is Earl a criminal? Is Earl evil?)
• responsibility and adulthood
• fatherhood
• masculinity
• race
• consumerism
• womanhood (How are women portrayed in the story?)

- "Rock Springs" was published in 1987. What do we know about America in the late 80's? How might this impact the events of "Rock Springs?"

- What do we make of the scene with Earl and the woman with the phone? Is this scene allegorical?

- In what ways is "Rock Springs" similar to "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"