Runaway: Stories

“His friendliness, compelling at first, could suddenly turn sour. There were places he would not go into, where he always made Carla go, because of some row.”

The first story, “Runaway,” introduces Clark as an ominous presence. The story doesn’t detail his difficult relationship with Carla, but his frequent and profound animosity shapes her existence. In Carla’s mind, her interactions with the community result from Clark’s various feuds, which dictate when and where she must go. Carla’s life is structured around Clark’s arguments with others, illustrating how quiet menace is a fundamental aspect of their relationship, introducing the theme of Gendered Expectations and Domestic Entrapment.

“When Carla moved in here, when she chose this life with Clark, she began to see things in a new way. After that she started saying ‘mobile home’ and she looked to see how people had fixed them up.”

Carla’s relationship with Clark changes her life, a change that her choice of vocabulary reflects. She once looked down on mobile homes as a marker of social class. Now that she lives in one, however, she frames her language more positively and works to improve her surroundings according to what people are doing in similar situations. Carla is accepting her new status, a status that Clark has imposed on her.

“I have always felt the need of a more authentic kind of life. I know I cannot expect you to understand this.”

When Carla flees her parents to be with Clark, she writes to them to justify her position. She’s leaving behind a comfortable, wealthy home to join Clark in what she now accepts as relative poverty. At the time, Carla frames this poverty as authenticity, potentially implying that her parents’ comfortable lives are somehow inauthentic.