ENG 113
Instructor Risch
Donna Stevens
Journal 3
January 12, 2011
“Killings” by Andre Dubus
My initial response to this work was that the characters were complex and layered. I enjoyed this intense dramatic story. The story gained my interest first because I could clearly see Matt as a loving father. Dubus made Matt very human. He came to life for me in the first sentence as he buried his son. I have two boys, so immediately I was hooked on the story. I do not know the pain of burying a child. I think it is a task that would nearly kill any parent. This is the first reference to “Killings.” Strout killed Matt’s son Frank and in so doing killed Matt’s dreams for Frank’s future. Our children live inside our minds in two ways. We see the physical child and the life that they will live out in the future. That is we dream, wish, and pray that their lives are better, richer, more fulfilling than our own. We want more for our children than we had experienced ourselves. Matt wanted the same for Frank. Matt could see Frank’s future with Mary Ann and her boys. He replayed the night that Frank was murdered over and over because he needed to remind himself of the person who had been killed and the future happiness that had also been cut short. He needed to remind himself of this loss the night he killed Strout because Matt was not a murderer in his mind, but he was so in his heart. Matt also felt that Strout killed a part of his relationship with his wife, Ruth. Matt and Ruth had been fairly content and well connected within their marriage. They clearly had open lines of communication because he had sat at home with her for a month after the funeral and she urged him to go play poker with his friend. He clearly loved his wife. Matt could not fix Ruth’s pain over Frank’s murder. Ruth’s dreams for Frank were dead as were his. This puts the score at five. Matt lost a son and a future watching what he would become. Ruth lost a son and a future watching what he would become. Matt and Ruth lost a future as Frank’s parents. The killings are piling up in Matt’s mind. When Matt went to play poker with his friend Willis, the pain over the killings had been consuming Matt for a month. As he walked in the night air with Willis, he thought of the Red Sox. Again Matt was reminded that life will go on. Ballgames, small pleasures were all darkened now because of Strout. Matt was reminded again of how his life had been forever ruined when he saw sympathy on the faces of his friends around the poker table. Dubus uses Willis’s example of that woman who murdered her husband and got off free as validation for the murder they were conspiring to commit. Dubus works the two of them up from validation to weapon and finally to the plan to kill Strout. When Dubus introduces Strout, I began to see him as a human. Strout was twenty-six and married to Mary Ann. Frank had been sleeping with Strout’s wife. Matt acknowledged that his son was sleeping with Strout’s wife for several reasons. Again, Matt was a man and a father. Matt saw Frank with this beautiful young tan Mary Ann. Matt related to Frank’s desire to love a woman intimately. He remarked to Frank before Frank died that he knew it was hard for Frank to leave that tan young girl in the bed. This was the part of Matt that dreamed of things that he would do if he were Frank. This part was now dead. No more dreaming for Frank of being with Mary Ann. The fact that Mary Ann was married to Strout did not matter in Matt’s mind because Frank and his dreams mattered more. The author gives details about Strout that make him appear to be kind of a loser. Matt furthermore validates the murder on those facts. The author talks of Strout as he is someone who had never really amounted to anything and was not really good at marriage anyway, so why not kill him. Dubus dehumanizes Strout further when he wrote that Matt did not look at Strout’s eyes in the rear view mirror. Dubus makes a futile attempt to have Matt feel sympathy toward Strout’s situation when Strout comments how Frank was making it with Mary Ann. It was too late by now for that fact to have any impact because five killings had already taken place. In Matt’s mind that was five to one, and the one never really amounted to anything anyway. While inside Strout’s house, Matt tried not to see Strout as a human who deserved to live, but there was a picture of Mary Ann with the boys in the hallway. This picture bothered Matt because Mary Ann had that same smile that she had with Frank. Here the author provides some doubt in Matt’s mind as to the sincerity of Mary Ann’s love toward Frank. Strout’s house was extremely neat. This is in contrast to Matt’s messed up, forever ruined life. Ruth can hardly get out of the bed and Strout made his bed neatly this morning. When Dubus wrote that Matt pressed the gun “harder than he wanted to,” this reiterates the fact that Matt was only a murderer at heart and not in his mind (Meyer 109). Strout begged again for his life when he stated that he would be forty-six when he got out of prison. This again validated the murder in Matt’s heart because Strout will still be younger than Matt was that fateful day. Strout will still have life ahead of him and Matt will not. When Matt returned, Ruth was smoking a cigarette that maybe she had bought as she ran into Strout for the last time. She was finishing the cigarette and Matt had just finished Strout. Matt was left with the thought of the woman that Strout must have been seeing. As he told Ruth what happened, the author wrote “the words had no images for him” (Meyer 115). The last line left Matt silently sobbing “in his heart” (Meyer 115). Matt had his face on Ruth’s breast. This circled around to the reference of Matt’s passionate dreams about Mary Ann and Frank and gave masculinity back to Matt as he cried. The heart reference further drives home the point that Matt was only a murderer in his heart. This was definitely a crime of passion, and no less a crime. I understand how Matt felt throughout this story and I empathized with the pain in his heart and his future situation. However, killing is wrong and murder is murder no matter if you gained the strength to do it with your heart or your mind.
In response to the questions on 115-16, I feel that Matt’s act of revenge is wrong. He ruined much more than he repaired with his actions. The emotions his character produces are first of all, sympathy, then empathy as I got to know him better. I was frustrated with him when he decided to kill Frank because killing is never the solution. I felt like Matt knew better, but he decided to follow his heart and not his head. I continued to be frustrated with Matt when he refused to look around in the house of Strout or look into Strout’s eyes because he knowingly dehumanized Strout. He had just buried his boy and now the Strout family must do the same. He refused to count the score from Strout’s side. At the end of the story, I just watched Matt kill himself, his wife, Willis and Strout. I felt sorry for him as he ruined what was left of the remainder of his loved one’s lives.
The title “Killings” is more appropriate than “Killers” because the story was more about the multiple lives that were lost than about the two killers themselves. The effects of Dubus’s ordering of events gave the events more impact. There was mystery in each paragraph and then details were revealed to me as I needed them. If things were in chronological order, then the emotions and layers of the characters would not be the same. By giving the story in this way, the background and reactions of the characters made sense. The Fowler family before Frank’s murder was steady and normal. After the murder, Matt cannot make sense of his life anymore and he strives get revenge on Strout for messing up his life. In paragraphs 32 through 75, I see Richard as a young boy who attended college and was just trying to find his way through life. He was just as ordinary as Matt except he had power over Matt because Richard first screwed up Matt’s life. The effect of Richard shooting Frank was that Mary Ann and the boy’s lives would never be the same and that if Richard could not have Mary Ann, then no one could. Richard could not have been thinking of the boys. He must have been consumed with helplessness and depression over the loss of Mary Ann. He stated several times that Frank was making it with Mary Ann. He shot him in the chest twice to make sure he was dead. He shot him in the face to make sure he was not attractive to Mary Ann anymore. Matt’s revenge is not well planned at all. The murder weapon is in the river, the body is in the ground and he drove all over the place for crying out loud. He even drove to Richard’s house. He left DNA everywhere. He not only had motive and opportunity, he had no witnesses as to his whereabouts during the crime. His wife Ruth and Willis know about the whole thing and he will have to trust that they don’t get interrogated, especially Ruth. Ruth is so depressed, she will probably sing like a bird when she is pressed. In fact, on the night of the murder, she wanted to have sex with Matt in order to soothe his guilty conscious. Matt had lied about sending Richard west because this gave Matt something less awful to talk. Therefore, the deed was possible. Also, it gave Richard enough consolation to get him to cooperate. At the end of the story, Matt feels like he has evened the score, but is heartsick about the coming consequences. This revenge killing will destroy the Fowler family. “Killings” can be considered a love story as well as a murder story because it was Matt’s love for his son that provoked the murder. The details of the killing and the disposal of Richard’s body reveal Matt’s emotions. In the killing of Richard, he did not look Richard in the eyes for any length of time because Matt was not a killer. He made Richard walk away from him to further distance himself from the act itself. He wanted to kill the nameless, faceless being that had destroyed his life and that of this son and wife. He buried the body in a hole so as to cover it up like it never happened. The significance of the leaves and the seasons changing over the grave meant that Richard would spend the rest of Matt’s life dead just like Matt’s son Frank would. I was completely frustrated with Matt as I read about his actions. I felt more sympathy and empathy toward Matt than I did for Emily in “A Rose for Emily” because Emily’s situation was that she had no life to begin with. She had psychological issues that ran so deep, but I did not sympathize with her. Instead, I was grossed out by her behavior. Ultimately, I understood why Matt committed murder. I did not agree with him, but I understood him. I understood his heart and how it must have ached. Murder is murder no matter if he gained the strength to do it with his heart or his mind.
