The Piano Player In Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteride

The novel Olive Kitteride written by Elizabeth Strout contains 13 short stories, one of which is The Piano Player. Angela O’Meara is the main character of this chapter. Though she has been the piano player at a local cocktail lounge for over twenty years, she comes to work slightly drunk to accommodate for her stage fright. When looking at her behavior, she displays traits that show that she has a reflective personality. A reflective personality is one of 4 basic communication styles, influenced by dominance and sociability. In this case, a reflective communicator is someone who has a low dominance and a low sociability. As written in Selling Today: Creating Customer Value, Chapter 4, “Dominance can be defined as the tendency to control or prevail over others.” (Manning 77), while “Sociability reflects the amount of control we exert over our emotional expressiveness.” (Manning 78). Angela O’Meara is low in both dominance and sociability, and she occasionally falls into the excess zone of this communicator, which brings forth a “high degree of

In this short scene, Malcom shows up to Angela’s house unannounced, acts like he is the boss of her, and proceeds to yell and curse at her. He knows how Angela will respond to this because he has been with her for 22 years. Malcom has a high dominance, so naturally his personality will prevail over Angela’s. Based off of this interaction, it appears that Angela is possibly afraid of Malcom, which is why she broke up with him over the phone and not in person. Due to Angela’s reflective personality, she will naturally “control emotional expression” (Manning 83), meaning she will not display her feelings openly. Angela did this in reaction to breaking up with Malcom over the phone, which prompted Malcom to come to her house, and shout at her on the