Analysis of Alice Munro's Boys and Girls (Essay Example)

Imagination is powerful. In our world, imagination is thought of as a childish trait. As children, we are more imaginative than we will ever be in our lives. Many children have big dreams for their future. These imaginations of becoming firefighters and movie stars are crushed by the world around them. When we become older, we realize that the situations and reality that surround us limit our imagination. In Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls, we follow a girl who lives on a farm with her parents and younger brother, Laird. She displays the thought process of the narrator as she transitions from a child to a girl. Through her story, Munro demonstrates that imagination assists individuals’ willingness to embrace their uncertain future, but reality often prevents them from being about to do so. 

At first, the narrator’s imagination is what fuels her daily routine. Like any other child, she dreams of being a hero. When she is sure that her younger brother Laird falls asleep, she tells herself stories. In these stories, she is the hero. She shoots guns, rides horses, and participates in parades where townspeople celebrate her heroism. These dreams are in a world that was identical to her own “yet presented opportunities for courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice.” All three traits are usually suited for men. The narrator’s ability to imagine these scenarios emphasizes that she is willing to embrace an uncertain future. She wishes to be like her father and work outside on the farm but is oblivious to the fact that her gender limits her duties. To her, the work that her mother was responsible for inside the house was “dreary” and “depressing” while on the other hand, her father’s work was “ritualistically important.” Although she does work alongside her father outside, she knows that there is a separation between the role of men and women in society. Her living environment already has a future set out for her, but the power of her imagination allows her to believe she can live a “boy’s life.”

As she starts to mature, the adults in the narrator’s life are slowly affecting the way that she thinks. Her mother constantly wishes for her to become more ladylike and stay in the house with her rather than doing work with the boys outside, yet she is still unaware of the restrictions she has due to her gender and believes she can work on the farm. She regards her mother as an enemy: “She was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more… keep me from working for my father.” When she overhears her mother speaking about how her brother will soon be a “real help” to her father, the narrator begins to dislike her more. But this did not discourage her at all. She believed her father would keep her outside with him, as she could not imagine Laird doing the chores that she does. In addition, her grandmother and mother are repeatedly telling the narrator to act like a girl. Even answers to simple questions were “none of girls’ business.” The protagonist begins to see how every adult, excluding her father, has rejected the idea of an uncertain future. The narrator continued to slam doors and sit with her knees apart to keep herself free. She did not want to succumb to the stereotypes that were surrounding her. However, her imagination is slowly dissolving as time goes on. As her imagination fades, so does her desire to accept her uncertain future. 

The narrator asks her brother to join her in watching the deaths of two horses. These horses, Mack and Flora, were horses that were to be killed and fed to the foxes on the farm. She invited him to watch, with the mindset that she could prove her maturity over him. But when the first horse Mack was shot, the narrator became tense. She always aspired to be like her father until she witnessed the death of Mack. When Mack was killed, the men watching did not have an ounce of sympathy for the horse, while the narrator was mournful toward the animal. Due to the lack of sympathy that her father had, there was now a clear separation between girls and boys in the narrator’s life. She began to care more about her appearance, wondering if she would “be pretty” when she grows up. However, when it was time to shoot Flora two weeks later, the narrator did not want to watch at all. Although she had lived on a farm her whole life and understood that these animals needed to be killed to feed the foxes, she “felt a little ashamed” toward the work that her father did. Flora ends up escaping from her father. As the horse does so, the narrator is told to run and close the gate so that Flora would not leave the farm. The narrator sets off and reaches the gate before the horse, but she leaves the gate wide open, opposing her father’s calls, letting Flora out. 

In this story, there are many similarities between the narrator and Flora. Both the horse and the narrator are girls, and neither are in control of their destiny. Flora is a horse who is set to be killed to be fed to the foxes on the farm. By letting Flora run out of the field, the narrator experienced a sense of freedom. She opens the gate although she knows her father will eventually catch Flora. When she does this, she realizes that her future is no longer uncertain; that she will eventually have to push her imagination aside and comply with her role in society. She divides her and Laird’s room, trying to make her side fancier and more feminine. Now, rather than dreaming of saving others, she is dreaming of being saved. At dinner time, her father “dismissed [her] for good.” and announced that his daughter is “only a girl.” Instead of resisting his comment, she accepts it: “even in my heart. Maybe it was true.” After her incident with the horse, the narrator is no longer willing to embrace her uncertain future. Without her imagination, there is nothing left to hold onto, forcing her to submit to society’s expectations. 

As the narrator of the short story Boys and Girls matures, she is forced to push her imagination aside and reject her uncertain future. She loses her imagination through a series of events that developed her way of thinking. The fading of her imagination causes her to reject her uncertain future and comply with her assigned role in society. In Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls, we learn that reality tears individuals apart, causing them to lose their imagination, ultimately resulting in the rejection of their uncertain future.