Bad Paper #2

Darlene McCoy
Margaret Amis
Writing 2
6 May 2010
Dear Reality, You've Been Denied!
As the story ID, by Joyce Carol Oates opens, readers are taken to a 7th grade math class where they find a mildly buzzed protagonist working hard to pass a lusciously purple kiss imprinted on a Kleenex to a boy “you didn't trifle with” who went by the name of JC. When there is a knock at the classroom door her teacher, Ms. Nowicki, goes to open it, and this protagonist, Lisette, takes her chance. The boy receives the note, crumples it, and shoves it in his pocket. She then hears her name called by the figures at the door - two police officers. The officers take Lisette to the local hospital, and proceed downstairs to the morgue. Lisette is asked to identify a woman's body - potentially her mother's. When she observes the body, Lisette instantaneously denies that it could even possibly be her mother. Lisette cannot see - she cannot even begin to think that her mother is the mangled corpse sprawled out on the steel bed.
Lisette Mulvey would be a typical middle schooler if she didn't have have to worry about getting prescription eye drops, didn't have to worry about her scars, or the dead nerves in her face. Lisette Mulvey would be a typical middle schooler if her father hadn't have broken her eye socket, nose, and mentally damaged her for life. She wouldn't have to wear dark-purple tinted prescription glasses. Her vision wouldn't be horribly clouded. She'd be just like everyone else - infatuated with her looks, and what the boys thought when they looked at her.
The glasses and injury that set her apart are a symbol of Lisette's inability to conscientiously identify her world. She cannot see that JC will exploit or potentially hurt her in the future. She cannot see that her father has anger issues. She cannot see that her mother is dead, even when her corpse is thrust before her eyes. She only sees what she wants, and anything else, well, just does not exist. She does not accept anything that is potentially detrimental to her life. She simply lives, day by day, not even caring for which day it is, dazed by her own actions, and sometimes, other forms of intoxication. How do we, then, as readers know that these terrible things are true?
Oates guides us to these conclusions by adding tidbits of information to her story. In the case of JC, Oates includes one sentence that undoubtedly lets us know who he is: "A girl had asked JC if he'd ever shot anybody and JC had just shrugged and laughed." Most 7th graders don't shoot people, or even know how to use a gun, or for that matter, own guns. Lisette's own description of how she came across her injuries reveals her father's issues, and even more so, her inability to realize those issues. "Daddy [was] shouting behind her, swiping with his fists - not meaning to hit her." There are many clues sprinkled into the entire short story that lead to the conclusion that the dead woman in the morgue is Lisette's mother. The fact that she disappears randomly for unknown numbers of days, the fact that she finds ways to weasel out of answering direct questions about her profession, and the fact that Lisette's mother doesn't want her to wear lipstick are all subtle clues to her prostitution. And this dead woman was found in a drainage ditch behind a sleazy motel -- not an uncommon resting place for a freshly slain hooker. Mentioning that the wallet found near the corpse carried the ID of Yvette Mulvey could even be considered a not-so-subtle hint, yet Lisette still refuses to see any connections between any of the aforementioned ideas.
When Lisette is finally confronted with the issues surrounding her parents, she cannot cope with the ideas presented to her. Officer Molina, the cop that is most focused on in the story, tells Lisette that her father is not, in fact, a sergeant in the army anymore, but that he has been AWOL from his position for a year. She is so shocked that she begins to shiver furiously. She cannot control the truth. Next, the officer leads her over to the corpse. Lisette looks over the body, thinking that, “This was not a woman, but a thing – you could not really believe that it had ever been a woman. Some sad, pathetic, broken female, like debris washed up on the shore.” She begins gagging, and the officer leads her to a restroom in case of vomiting. Lisette demands to be taken back to school, taken back to JC. The officers comply, and when she arrives, Lisette's friend Keisha inquires if she is “O.K.” to which Lisette replies, while laughing into the “bright buzzing blur,” “Sure I'm O.K. Hell, why not?” She returns to the girl who knows only what she has seen, and she had not seen her mother earlier that morning. She continues to live in a daze. She refuses to cope with the reality of her life.
And who could blame her? Her mother was a prostitute, found dead in a ditch, her father was a raging lunatic with anger issues, and from the way her life is going, she herself will possibly follow in her mother's footsteps, her first client being JC. She has nobody, no one, not one person in the world to turn to. Nobody to take her to get her prescription eye drops, nobody to tell her to care enough about herself to wash, nobody to tell her what's right from wrong. Is it okay for this girl to just deny reality, because hers is so horrid, or should she try to confront it and conquer it?
Lisette Mulvey is used as the protagonist in Joyce Carol Oates' short story, ID, to explore how this grimy, grungy girl copes when the true circumstances of her life are shoved in her face, like a plate of freshly prepared worms, still squirming. And through her experience -- readers are forced to attempt to identify their own "true circumstances,” and ponder the idea of denying reality.