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 God. 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 God. This idea is
supported by the fact Helen hints at using her own father as a God 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 is God and Helen is Eve, she is protected by a greater power and given everything in
order to make her happy but what ultimately dooms Helen is her insincerity.

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 the most sincereness 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 God to her. 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). The insincerity in her
responses rise up 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…her God.
This leads on to the relationship that Helen and her father have. Helen is essentially being
insincere to her God figure. We can see that the father assumes the role of God 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 God figure 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.
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”.
The father is predominantly the God figure 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 as her father kills her for her common sincerity in their
conversations. The father, having been working hard for as long as he has been in order to give
the best to her daughter, has to kill her because she is “forgetful of her duty”(Bernd Engler,4)
which is becoming someone different than her father. This standpoint offers a different
understanding of the text and allows us to think deeper on just why her father had to kill her.