Oxentenko 1 Katrina Oxentenko ENGL 2413 Professor St.

Pierre September 20, 2012 The Inner Workings of Good People In many stories, paying close attention to the setting can reveal details about the current situation and the characters. In Good People, a short story by David Foster Wallace, a man named Lane A. Dean Jr. sits with his girlfriend on a picnic table and contemplates a problem they are going through together. However, it is several paragraphs before we come to the conclusion that there is an issue ( and even longer before we know what it is), as the narrator seems to go on about what the man sees around him more than the situation he is in or what he thinks and feels about it. This story is told from a third person point of view, but the narration is limited. We only see the story from Lanes point of view and he seems to want to think about anything other than the problem at hand. I propose that this story is one in which the setting (in this case, specifically their surroundings) gives us, as readers, an insight into how Lane A. Dean Jr. feels and views his situation throughout the story by shifting and changing as he does. At first Lane is unwilling to confront the situation at hand and this is illustrated by several external indicators. The first indicator of Lanes surroundings is described as a park in which the grass was very green and the air suffused with honeysuckle and lilacs but is followed closely with the angle of the sun made the water of the shallows look dark and a description of a tree pulled down by storms into the dark shallows, its ball of exposed roots going all directions and the trees cloud of branches all half in the water (216). This is synonymous with his life in that he lived a charmed life that once seemed perfect, normal, and comfortable to him just as the

Oxentenko 2 familiar scene before him was usually a peaceful and beautiful place, but now theres something ugly and ruined marring his perfect life like the tree felled by a recent storm. Just as he couldnt see into the dark shallows into which the downed trees roots disappeared, he also couldnt seem to see his own situation clearly. Throughout this part of the story, Lane tries to avoid any coherent thought about his situation at first and the cloudy shallows reflect this narrow psychological field of vision. The scene begins to unfold as Lane begins to examine himself. He talks about the situation a little, though we as readers still do not know what that is, and begins to examine himself and his faith. He thinks about how whatever they did together was wrong and he wants to fix everything, but seems to be afraid of the consequences. He imagines hell as a great battle in which no one fights; the armies just sit at a standstill, as frozen as he feels in that moment. As he begins to think about the situation, the water again changes, reflecting the movement of his thoughts as he notices that the water close up wasnt black now, and you could see into the shallows and see that all the water was moving but gently (220). We notice that the water is much clearer and that it is moving around slightly, no longer stagnant-looking. At the same time Lane finally begins to confront his situation and try to understand what he thinks about it. Lane begins to examine himself and his own take on what is happening, though his train of thought toward the actual situation is still not very coherent. This is illustrated by the partial visibility into the water that reflects the confused direction of his thoughts. Lane begins to think about the rest of his situation and as he does a sudden flash on the lake seems to bring everything, the water and his thoughts, into clarity. Once Lane cannot examine what he is feeling any more, he begins to think about Sheri. He realizes that she probably does not want the same thing as he thinks he does. As she shifts towards him, he looks

Oxentenko 3 out over the water and felt he could take this all in whole: everything seemed distinctly lit, for the circle of the pin oaks shade had rotated off all the way, and they sat now in sun with their shadow a two-headed thing (220). Then he begins to imagine what Sheri is about to say. He can perfectly see a possible way the conversation will play out, just like he can see everything in the scene before him and it makes him challenge something he had not allowed himself to think of before this moment. He wonders if he could love Sheri, and if together they could care for each other. Just as their shadows became one shadow with two heads, perhaps the two of them could work together. He sees (or thinks he sees) everything about the situation, Sheri, and himself, and comes to the beginning of a conclusion he can live with. The felled tree still sits in the water just as the situation will not go away, yet he believes he is able to see into all angles: the now clear water and into the hearts of himself and Sheri. Some parts of the surroundings also give us insights into the characters more base emotions. Lane talks about his mother for a while and about how much she seemed to like his girlfriend, then very suddenly mentions that the shallows lapped from different directions at the tree as if almost teething on it (217). This gives the impression that this thought made him feel an emotion that was eating away at him; he feels guilt. This correlates when we find out that Sheri is pregnant. As Lane tries not to think about the situation, we notice that he felt sun on one arm as he pictured in his mind an image of himself on a train, waving mechanically to something (217). His thought reveals to us that he wants to run away from the situation, yet the sun on only half of him could mean that he knows this action to be hypocritical and two-faced although he doesnt actually say it. We are told that Sheri is also mostly cast in shadow at this point in time (all except for her face) and at the same time Lane muses about how little he really

Oxentenko 4 knows her and what her reactions to him will be or what she is really thinking about what is happening to them. The setting in Good People could arguably have nothing to do with any of the characters thoughts and feeling. Or it might be argued that it gives pointers as to how perhaps Sheri feels throughout the story. However, the author concentrated only on Lane because it is his point of view he wants us to see and understand. Understanding Lane is very difficult because of how confused his thoughts are and how many other topics he thinks about other than the situation, but we see that the water gets clearer and clearer the closer Lane gets to understanding himself. Other aspects of the scene around him can be interpreted as the physical incarnation of his somewhat absent emotions. The physical setting of the story gives us a possibility of insight into what he could be feeling and it fits with what someone who is contemplating the abortion of their child might be thinking. The setting gives us an in depth preview of the inner workings of Lanes emotions and the direction of his thoughts present within the story.