Uncertainty In George Saunders's Tenth Of December

George Saunders's short story "Tenth of December" recounts how a boy named Robin saves Eber, an old man dying of terminal cancer, from committing suicide. As the plot slowly unravels, the story shifts between Robin's to Eber's points of view and plays with the line between imagination and reality—uncertainty and certainty—to drive home Eber's overwhelming realization of why he should continue living at the end.

The story opens with Robin's narration about walking to the frozen pond near his house and watching out for his enemies: the "Nethers" (Saunders). On the first read, the beginning makes no sense. Saunders thrusts his readers straight into the story—or straight into Robin's head—so the readers are left floundering in uncertainty. They

The confusion and uncertainty the aperture generates strengthen the effects of the story's dream-like narration, which, in turn, confines the reader in a time-suspended limbo. Because the narration gives the readers the feeling of being in a dream, like a dream, time is warped and illogical. Nothing makes sense as Robin jumps from real to imagined and remembered events, and the reader's uncertainty mirrors Eber and Robin's denial of their situations. Like how the reader cannot see through the thick haze of tangled events and understand what exactly is happening, Eber and Robin willingly trap themselves in a false reality to live a moment without facing truths they do not want to accept—Robin being the bullied kid and Eber making a selfish choice because he fears becoming a burden to his family. In their imagination, Robin becomes a hero who saves Susan, and Eber's children praise Eber for his decision to die, claiming "he was a father" and that was "what a father does" (Saunders). The convoluted timeline helps reinforce the delusions Robin and Eber blind themselves in and places the readers in the characters' mindstate to amplify the connection between the characters' interiority and the

When Robin's mother comes to save Eber, Eber's narration becomes an endless torrent of him remembering moments from his past as if his life is flashing before his eyes and imagining what he would do if he survived to meet his family again. Though paragraphs of Robin and Eber's stream of consciousness fill the narration throughout the entire story, the effect is dialed to eleven in Eber's last vignette. The temporal ratio is heavily skewed towards the story taking longer to read than for the characters to experience. For example, the time it takes to read Eber's last vignette is significantly longer than the time it physically takes him to walk to Robin's house with Robin's mother, and this temporal dissonance traps the readers in this middle ground between dream and reality, where events play out more slowly. It is the slow unraveling of trauma—the slow unraveling of coiled thoughts and denial loosening into acceptance of reality. Every moment is extended and hyper-focused on Eber's racing thoughts because this event is life-changing for him. That moment of revelation is like the climax of a symphony that continues throughout his thoughts about how he must live because he "can't do squat if [he's] gone" (Saunders). For Eber, the entire piece is an epiphany—a broken man realizing there is still a reason for him to live. So this single event is