The passage from the novel “We Were the Mulvaneys” by Carol Joyce Oates is a remarkable flashback into Judd Mulvaney’s childhood. Although the speaker of the passage is an older Judd Mulvaney, the use of juvenile diction allows an “eleven, or maybe twelve” (40) year old child’s perspective to tell the story. The struggle Judd Mulvaney faced as a child is his identity in the world. This struggle is emphasized by the dramatic use of repetition, which sets the tone of little Judd Mulvaney to hopeless. The tense of the story, the use of repetition, and the emphasis on the meaning of life creates a young character’s thoughts as he transitions into adulthood. “That time in our driveway, by the brook” (1) immediately sets the time to the present tense and the subject to a memory. Through the use of flashback, Oates is able to show how the character has developed from that point in the past to the present. Also from the first sentence, it is apparent that the speaker, Judd …show more content…
Judd Mulvaney looks back at a point in his life in which he realized that life is finite. This is a turning point; he is beginning the transition from child to adult. The beginning of the story become dark, almost immediately when he says “lonely kids, or kids not realizing they’re lonely” (7-8) because this is when he begins to realize that children are oblivious to reality. The repetition of death, death, die, and dying symbolize that his internal struggle is with the concept of life. As animals grow on a farm, he sees himself beginning grow and develop into adulthood. And as animals die, others are “taking the place of those who died” (37-38), the realization of life and death influence Judd’s epiphany that humans follow the same path. The helpless tone of Judd Mulvaney’s childhood struggle encompasses the struggle many teenagers face as they are transitioning into