Another kind of violence is verbal abuse. George uses Claire in verbally abusing his brother, repeatedly asking Aaron, her father, if he thinks Claire is sexually active. The tension between the two is characteristic of the stories in this collection. “Because what Meloy is singularly skilled in is articulating the simultaneous acknowledgment of a desire contrary to plausibility and the desire – deep, unrelenting, maddening, painful – for the fulfillment of that desire” (Habinek, 2009, NP). This leads to a very direct threat of violence, if only in Aaron’s mind. He considers throwing George off a very high ski lift as the George harangues him over Claire and the “dubious” ethics of making good money via a highly-esteemed profession. George, a bitter college dropout with a thin skin, needles Aaron relentlessly, leading Aaron to fantasize about “taking his brother’s parka in his hands and …show more content…
In “Travis, B,” Chet struggles with envy and his own feelings of inadequacy. In “Spy vs Spy,” the characters also struggle with insecurities and fears that actual imperil their lives. Both stories use violence as a kind of delivery device for the idea that people’s fear often harm them more than the objects of fear themselves, and both stories use quietly dramatic internal resolutions to show how people struggle and how they face their own fears. While few of us experience calamitous violence, most have internal issues to work on and conquer. Meloy sets her stories in this world, and her conflicts feel real and serious. She seems to suggest that people need to figure out their own issues before they can really relate to other people. Maybe real violence comes into play when people cannot do this at all. If you fail to understand your own fears, other people will always seem frightening and alien. The danger in that cannot be