Response to "Convalescing" by Joyce Carol Oates

The beginning of this story immediately drew me in due to its unusualness.  I would probably never think to start a story off by talking about toothpaste, something that seems so benign, and for a character in the story to be asking another character about toothpaste in comparison to tooth powder is a good way to get readers hooked because it is such an unusual question.  I, for one, did not even know that tooth powder existed; I assumed everyone brushed their teeth with toothpaste. I also like how through the series of questions one of the characters asks the other, we learn that this story takes place around the time of the Vietnam War; I mentioned this in my previous post about the short story "Admission" and how I like this trick that writers use to inform their readers about important elements of the story such as the setting through dialogue rather than through description or expository writing (i.e. explanation).

I also loved on page 4, where Oates writes about how David Scott feels about his wife. How he was "in love with his wife but it was a condition he could not feel." That line really spoke to me because I believe it could possibly describe how many married men and women feel about their spouses. As I read further however, I realized that he felt this way because he had been in an accident and felt like he had "won" her hand in marriage in a former life, as if he was an entirely different person back then. Joyce goes on to write that "he could not remember, though he tried desperately, the enormous joy that must have been his" on his wedding day.  I then began to really feel for this character and was eager to learn more about his accident.

I love the way we learn about his accident. We learn while David himself remembers the way that he got hurt in a car accident and how he begins to piece who he is and the details of his life together while he lies convalescing (the title of the story!) in the hospital.  I love how at the end, he questions the way that he remembers certain life events, however, particularly his wife committing adultery and telling him that she wants to be with another man. It surprised me that he was so convinced that he was imagining all of this that he was willing to take a can opener and hurt himself in order to wake himself up from the dream he assumed he was having.  I also thought it was interesting that he considers that his wife could be thinking that he wants to use the can opener as a weapon against her, and that it truly terrified him that she could possibly be thinking that.  It is obvious that he really does love his wife, as he begs her to stay with him, and he decides that past events in his life are not that important, and he probably imagined the negative ones about his wife.