The Temple by Joyce Carol Oates, 1996
The magic trick:
Solving a mystery with an answer that only sets the reader back to the start looking for symbols and meanings
Is there anyone better than Joyce Carol at combining the thrillingly macabre with the tenets of high literature?
Here is another of her stories that gets you on the edge of your seat immediately. In this case, we’re drawn into the search for the source of mysterious mewing and scratching sounds.
The riddle’s solution isn’t clean or clear. The reader sees now this isn’t a pulpy thriller; it’s literature; and it’s time we go back over the text analytically, looking for symbols and signs.
Which is thrilling in its own way, right?
And that’s quite a trick on Oates’s part.
The selection:
There, again, the vexing, mysterious sound! – a faint mewing cry followed by a muffled scratching, as of something being raked by nails, or claws. At first the woman believed the sound must be coming from somewhere inside the house, a small animal, perhaps a squirrel, trapped in the attic, beneath the eaves, or in a remote corner of the earthen-floored cellar; after she searched the house thoroughly, she had to conclude that it emanated from somewhere outside, at the bottom of the old garden, perhaps. It was far more distinct at certain times than at others, depending upon the direction and velocity of the wind.
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