Today we are featuring the trilogy of “Rhoda” stories from Ellen Gilchrist’s short story collection Victory Over Japan. In the titular first story, set in the final days of World War 2, Rhoda is a willful third-grader living in fear of when her disciplinarian father returns home from the war. In the second story, Music, she is a rebellious fourteen-year-old, obsessed with beauty and romance and constantly at war with her father. In the final story, The Lower Garden District Free Gravity Mule Blight or Rhoda, a Fable, she is a lost thirty-four-year-old at a crossroads.
Victory Over Japan: Third-grader Rhoda makes a special effort to befriend a shy, reclusive classmate being treated for rabies. Rather than an act of selflessness, the scheming girl wants to write an exclusive story about his condition for the school paper and impress her mother with her apparent kindness. Their childhood innocence is shattered when the two pair up for a paper-drive to support the war effort. Themes include victimization, gender stereotypes, loss of innocence, violence.
Original Text / PDF (4,000 words)
Music: Fourteen-year-old Rhoda’s parents have moved to a different State to make her stop smoking and acting like a movie star. Her father takes her on a business trip into the Kentucky hills where she is given a room in a house-trailer with a couple she labels as “poor white trash”. She escapes at the first opportunity to the nearest town, where gives up her virginity to a boy she meets in a pool hall. Themes include rebellion, class and racial prejudice, sexuality.
Original Text / PDF (9,850 words)
The Lower Garden District Free Gravity Mule Blight or Rhoda, a Fable: Now thirty-four, “wild” Rhoda has come to a crossroads. With two estranged children from previous marriages and her current marriage of five years about to end, she is considering her options. Temporarily short of money, she sells her diamond engagement ring for much less than it cost and commits insurance fraud by filing a police complaint saying it was stolen. Themes: freedom, despair, uncertainty, sexuality.
Original Text / PDF (6,100 words)