Hope Is Other People: Joyce Carol Oates’s Melioristic Vision and the Promise of I Am No One You Know
Since the 1970s, Oates has been organizing her story collections around thematic notions. This article aims to discuss how this organizing principle can be seen at work in I Am No One You Know, a 2004 short story collection which deals with the relationship between self and other. To begin, a discus...
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| Udgivet i: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprog: | Anglais |
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Journal of the Short Story in English
2025
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| Online adgang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | Since the 1970s, Oates has been organizing her story collections around thematic notions. This article aims to discuss how this organizing principle can be seen at work in I Am No One You Know, a 2004 short story collection which deals with the relationship between self and other. To begin, a discussion of the way in which the title phrase functions as a unifying refrain demonstrates how this inscrutable notion permeates the pages. Then, the way in which Oates uses the common themes of sight and knowledge to depict increasingly tense scenarios through the first three parts of the collection is outlined. Finally, the article closes with readings of the two stories in Part Four, which compose a dénouement that instils a feeling a hope through the depiction of instances of human connection. |
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