“Face”
Clearly, the narrator was sensitive about his face when he was a young child. The narrator recalls, “I got the idea that half my face was a dull, mild sort of color, almost mousy, a furry shadow.” As a result of the sensitivity, he construed Nancy's face, which she had painted red during one of their playing sessions, as an affront to the narrator’s facial appearance. So, when Nancy showed her face to the narrator, he “ran through the cottage” while shouting, “I’m not red.” The shouting is a denial response that is intended to reassure that narrator that his face is not as repugnant as Nancy depict it.
Later, the narrator finds out that Nancy’s act of painting her face red was not a slight. The narrator’s mother, during an outing informs him, “She (Nancy) cut just that one cheek. Trying the best she could to make herself look like you.” Nancy’s incentive can be deconstructed using the Symbolic Self-concept. Having a cheek that is comparable to the narrator’s was stimulated by the yearning to be like the narrator so that she could feel complete. Accordingly, even though her mother prohibits her from ever playing with the narrator she stills believe that the narrator is contributory in her Symbolic Self. Relocating to another house does not change her quest to complete her Symbolic Self because it is a profoundly psychological question. Therefore, for Nancy the most vital symbol in her life is a scarred cheek.
The narrator’s dream, which informs his decision not to sell the house, indicates that his memories of Nancy are in the unconscious. Nancy is the poem reader who appears in the narrator’s dreams and reads him a poem. The decision not to sell the property implies that the narrator still holds dear all the memories that he created there with Nancy. The dream is a regression that permits the narrator to live through his childhood again . The narrator observes, “something had happened here (his childhood home). In your life there are a few places, or maybe only one place, where something has happened. And then there are the other places, which are just other places.” Clearly, despite the dramas that the narrator experienced in that property while growing up, the property is involved in the narrator’s life. Accordingly, selling the property is one and the same with vending the memories.
“Wild Swans”
Rose’s foremost objective for traveling to Toronto is to procure items that will make over her appearance. Alice Munro writes, “She had great hopes of silver bangles and powder-blue angora. She thought they could transform her, make her calm and slender and take the frizz out of her hair, dry her underarms and turn her complexion to pearl.” Rose’ hankering for change infers that she wants to be sexually appealing. Rose wants to embark on a journey of conversion that will make her a gorgeous and sexually-appealing woman.
The ‘minister’s’ encounter of the wild swans is similar to his encounter of Rose. The minster informs Rose that he came upon the swan in the course of a journey. Similarly, the minister comes across Rose in the train coincidentally. The symbol of the swan is vital because before boarding the train, Flo had sang ‘the undertaker’s song which mentioned ‘swan.’ In the song, the undertaker sang, “Her throat is like the swan.” Comparing a woman/ girl’s throat to a swan is emphasizes beauty. Perhaps, the minister’s narration about the swans is an indirect way to telling Rose that she is as stunning as a swan.
Rose’s fancies about the minister's hand surveying her body are ‘blown out of proportion.’ Before plunging herself in the sexual imaginations, Alice Munro writes, “A corner of newspaper touched her leg, just at the edge of her coat.” Perhaps it is Rose’s fantasy, of “longing to be somebody’s object. Pounded, pleasured, reduced , exhausted”, that catalyses her thoughts about the hand. All the movements of the minister’s hands are part of a ‘stream of consciousness.’
Evidently, Rose’s imaginings inspire her to clinch an Imaginary Order. Alice Munro writes, “But there was more to it than that .Curiosity. More constant, more imperious, than nay lust. A lust in itself, that will make you draw back and wait, wait too long, risk almost anything, just to see what will happen.” Rose is incapable of uttering the words, “please don’t” because it would bring her out of her Imaginary Order. Saying the words would make her realize that actually, the minister's hand is not stroking her body. Her oddity is activated by the longing of lust. Arguably, Rose’s Love Instinct (Eros) is emerging throughout the train journey because, even though she believes, “nothing was going to happen, nothing more. Her legs were never going to open. But they were. they were.” The Eros is so resilient that Rose cannot diminish it, even though she thinks that she is in charge of her body, the Eros triggers irresistible sensations that prompt her to open her legs involuntarily. All the stories that Flo told her about the crooked ministers are not enough to deter her Eros from growing.
