For this assignment i was required to pick a in class reading and present an arguable position by using secondary and supplementary sources. It had to have good reasons, a trustworthy tone, must appeal to the readers values, and must be considerate of other possible positions.
Diego Ordonez
Matenko
Killer Stories
14 November 2022
Why, you may ask. Was Helen doomed from the beginning? Her father seemed to be set from the very beginning on killing her daughter. What could someone have possibly do to motivate their own father to murder them. We are guided into thinking Helens father is this strong man who offers comfort and endless protection and would do anything to make sure her daughter is safe and sound almost like, at some points even parallels Jesus. Throughout the story even though it is never specifically stated the reason behind his motives we are given clues and vocabulary that describe the relationship between Helen and her father which give light to a biblical viewpoint on the story and the situation prescribed. This viewpoint can enhance our understanding on the issues present in the “By the River” by Joyce Carol Oates.
From the very beginning of the story we are made aware that Helen has done something wrong, even other side characters such as the old woman selling tickets are conscious of this as she “looked at Helen as if her eyes were drawn irresistibly as if she knew every nasty rumor and wanted to let Helen know that she knew”(916). Shortly afterward it is revealed that she had committed adultery at one point on her husband of around 5 years or so and from this we start to get an idea of the type of person Helen is. Helen was married to John, but why did she cheat on him? John was wealthy and loved Helen very much, she even had a child to take care of so why would she leave him. “And I liked John too , I didn’t marry him just because you told me to. I mean you never pushed me around. I wanted to marry him all by myself, because he loved me. I was always happy, Pa … You oughtn’t to have worked all that hard for me”(926). Helen speaks about John as this great person and it seems like any woman would be content to have a man like John with such attributes. The end of this line is very important though, she still keeps in mind the fact that her father has allowed her to be in the position in which she is now, but how genuine is she really being? Her father has given her everything that would enable her to live a long and happy life. This has to be kept in mind especially when Helen describes her father and her memories with him.
During the car ride home Helen has various memories recalled, memories which involve her father and from this we learn of him including his physical attributes and how he is.”If she had been afraid of the dark, upstairs in that big old farmhouse in the room . she shared with her sister, all she had had to do was to think of him.. He had a way of sitting at the supper table that was so still, so silent, you knew nothing could budge him. Nothing could frighten him”(922). Helen frequently describes her father in her memories as someone who would always be there for her, to protect her, someone to look up to, almost thinking of him as a savior. This idea is supported by the fact Helen hints at using her own father as a high being figure instead of someone like Christ : “ At Sunday school she and the other children had been told to think of Christ when they were afraid, but the Christ she saw on the little Bible bookmark cards and calendars was no one to protect you … He could not be of much help; not like her father”(922). The relationship that Helen and her father have conjured up is one resembling the relationship between God and Eve. The father and Helen seem to share this relationship, she is protected by a greater power and given everything in order to make her happy and the insincerity coming from Helen helps the reader uncover the real motives of the father.
Robert E. Sanders has written about insincerity and explained what it might look like: “For a particular speaker to produce an utterance whose generic speaker meaning is at odds with what the particular speaker presumably believes as a member of that community reveals insincerity”(120). Essentially for someone to be insincere they must not show genuine feelings with the topic at hand. In “By the River” the character that seems to show this the most is Helen as she never even manages to answer her own question on why she decided to return home and especially on how she feels about John. To who she is being insincere to, herself of course but to her father as well who has been derived to represent someone whom she looks up to. Throughout the whole car ride she never manages to figure out why she’s done the things she did as her father continually asks her the same questions on why she did it such as “Why did you leave with that man”(927), “Why did you run away with him”(927), and “Then why did you come back”(927). Helen was only able to respond with such answers like, “I don’t know, I told you in the letter. I wrote it to you, Pa. He acted so nice and he liked me so, he still does, he loves me so much”(927) or even thinking that a river could possibly be the reason for her return(927). Her responses make us question just how much of the things she has previously said about John she really means, she can’t seem to grasp an understanding on her own feelings; because how could she say she ran off with someone else because they loved her when she used that same line with her husband John? It seems that everything her father has done for her has gone over her head, it leaves us wondering whether or not Helen truly appreciates just all the things her father has gone through and done for her…the person who she rather believes in than Jesus.
This leads on to the relationship that Helen and her father have. Helen is essentially being insincere to her father . We can see that the father assumes the role of a higher being similar to if not equal to Jesus when he described his pleas to God and how he did not respond and finally realized he was in it all by himself and had to make due with that:“If He was up there or not it never had nothing to do with me. A hailstorm that knocked down the wheat, or a brought—what the hell? Whose fault? It wasn’t God’s no more than mine so I let Him out of it. I knew I was in it all- on my own”(926). God gave Eve everything in the garden of Eden and after all that she was still not content with what she was given and ate from the forbidden fruit from the tree. Her father gave Helen everything she needed to be happy and she was still not content with it. Near the end of the story the father opens up and we realize that all he’s ever wanted was for her to be “somebody” and not someone like her father and their family and that it meant so much for him that she married John. Just imagine working hard your whole life for someone that looked up to you and viewed you as sort of a savior so that they wouldn’t have to grow up and be treated less than by the townsfolk and they take your hardship for granted. With this we begin to truly understand the motives upon which the father acted upon. Her father still loved her dearly but she could not go unpunished.
Although some might simply just see the Fathers actions towards Helen as a usual planned murder in order to maintain his status which he worked so hard for within the community, it most definitely cannot go over the readers head that it can be recognized as a punishment or judement.
Professor G.D. Peters interprets the reason for the killing of Helen as so:
Even to the careful reader, it is by no means clear that he kills her because she has been the undoing of his entire life’s purpose, because he never comes out and says that … But when she left her prominent husband and ran off with another man—a man she equates with her father—she has shown herself to be the white trash her father fought all his life to make sure she did not become, and has dragged him down with her in the eyes of the townspeople and, more importantly,in his own eyes.(7)
From the clues in the reading this conclusion on the reason Helens father has decided to murder her has been derived. Many readers might not look beyond this and just see the father as a selfish man who just wants to keep his status and the level he has reached from years of work. It had to be done, her daughter has done something horribly wrong and he has to be the one to offer judgment.
Bernd Engler describes the situation very well:
When a son is forgetful of his duty, when the state entrusts the father with the sword of justice, when the laws require punishment at the hand of the father, then will the father heroically forget that the guilty one is his son, he will magnanimously conceal his pain, but there will not be a single one among the people, not even the son, who will not admire the father, and whenever the law of Rome is interpreted, it will be remembered that many interpreted it more learnedly, but none so gloriously as Brutus.(4)
Oates uses Helen, the daughter in this case who did not live up to what she was supposed to by her father, not being a “hillbilly” with the marrying of John. The father, as admirable as he may be, cannot accept the betrayal that her daughter has committed against him, leads her to her death and stabs her “By the River” but the act will never be forgotten. He acted as “The Father”. He does what he must even if it hurts him, concealing his pain as Bernd Enlger has stated.
The father can be predominantly recognized as a higher being in the eyes of Helen in the story “By the River” and Helen is the one that “The father” takes care of. Helen struggles to figure out her true feelings throughout the text and never manages to do so which enables the reader to uncover the fathers motives early on. The father, having been working hard for as long as he has to get to the point in the community in which he is, decides to be the one to punish her daughter. This standpoint offers a different understanding of the text and allows us to think deeper on just why her father had to kill her.
Works Cited
Sanders. (2013). The duality of speaker meaning: What makes self-repair, insincerity, and sarcasm possible. Journal of Pragmatics, 48(1), 112–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.11.020
Engler, Bernd. “Excerpted from: Nightmare Visions of Eden: Recollections of Home in Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘By the River’ .”
Oates, Joyce Carol, “By the River.” Fictions. Eds. Trimmer, Joseph F., and C. Wade Jennings, San Diego: HBJ, 1985, pp. 940-952.
Peters, G.D. “Subtext in Oates’ ‘By the River.’” 18 Oct. 2019,
