Shiloh and Other Stories, a book which was originally published in 1982 and won several national and international awards of critiques, is written by Bobby Ann Mason, a talented American writer who started her professional activities as a journalist in New York journals and magazines.
The book represents a compendium of short stories, each of which touches on some socially important problems of change, adaptation, war, consumer cultures, and Southern American working people traditions. In the current analysis, particular attention is paid to Shiloh, the first short story of Bobby Ann Mason’s book, which proved to be the most valuable for the critiques.
Constructing the plot and story’s characters, Bobby Ann Mason draws on the metaphor of postwar subdivisions – new communities and houses for people belonging to different social groups, but predominantly those who came back home after the war. These subdivisions were often superficial and experimental, which deeply affected the lives of people in them.
These consequences may be understood, referring to Leroy and Norma Jean Moffitt’s family. To say generally, Shiloh is about a man Leroy, who lives in Kentucky and has to end his job as the truck driver because of the accident. The plot is driven by his attempts to adapt to new patterns of life after the accident and adjust to quick urbanization and cultural change within the formerly rural territory. Difficult relations between Leroy and his wife Norma Jean serve as an arena of plot development and are also deeply affected by the abovementioned changes.
There is no denying the importance of the fact that the accident, which happened to Leroy, deeply changed his relations with Norma Jean. She pays less attention to her invalid husband, who is passive, does not want to search for a new job, and can not adapt to new living conditions. As Bobby Ann Mason says, “Leroy is quite bewildered by all the change.”
The changes are also evident as far as Norma Jean, Leroy’s wife, is concerned. She seems to pay less attention to her husband but more to her physical fitness and beauty. Being frustrated by the changes taking place in his favorite town, Leroy finds consolation in building small models using kits – these childish imitations are used to replace real things and events, which Leroy lacks.
Here we see that Bobby Ann Mason tries to make her story plot-driven rather than character-driven, paying more attention to underlying artistic and realistic appeals and ideas, which are deciphered by characters. Norma Jean is possibly the most altered character through the course of the novel.
And this happens because she considers the transformation of her daily life and outside environment as positive and progressive developments. This is expressed by her refusal to live in a log cabin (reminding her of the past) that her husband is willing to build. Norma Jean admires popular culture that quickly spreads over formerly outdated rural life and desires to become ’a new woman’.
Shiloh plays the role of metaphor in Bobbie Ann Mason’s story. It expresses the trend to uniformity and blankness, which followed modernization and the assault of mass consumer culture in the early 70s. Its image shows the consequences of losing one’s identity and traditions and trying to adapt to new conditions, which offer false directions and promises.
To sum it up, our analysis shows that Bobbie Ann Mason’s story is tremendously thrilling and philosophical, raising important mindset questions having to do with every modern person.