Hi! This is Charlie on “Cowboys” by Susan Steinberg.

A couple of techniques that I really liked in “Cowboys” were the use of word choice and the narrator’s acknowledgement of the story as a story  and her use of techniques. The author contrasts her word choice with the words of the doctors, family and other “serious” people. She describes an idea in her own voice, saying “My mother said, You have to kill him” and then asserts that her mother “used technical terms” (29) or that “The doctor said, A machine is making him breathe” and that “He did not use the word machine” (27). This contrast highlights the narrator’s idea that she is not “serious” (26) and the distance between the emotional point of view of the narrator and the medical point of view of the “serious” people, as she point out when she asks for her mother’s advice from a nurse’s perspective: “I’m not talking morally. I’m talking medically” (28). The word choice creates a divide between the raw power of the narrator’s emotions and the technical nature of the other characters’ approach to death.

The other really interesting technique is how the narrator addresses the audience, saying “The metaphor is unintentional” (28), “There is not intentional meaning in this story” (28) and “There are not more details to tell” (31). Not only is unusual and surprising, but it attacks the superficiality of stories and emotions. Just as word choice attacks the assumed prestige of the “serious” people, so do the denials of meaning or importance attack the prestige of “serious” stories, stories that try to do everything right. The narrator denies any meaning behind her life, and also her story. Lastly, by condemning superficiality and imposed meaning, it adds meaning to the story. Greatly ironic and fascinating.