Decisions, decisions.

Again and again when trying to focus on the production on any kind of cogent thought about “Boys and Girls,” I come back to Munro’s description when her character throws the gate open. “...I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do this, it was just what I did.” I try to be as careful a reader as anyone else, but that sounds like bull to me. Usually when I read something I can feel relatively sure that when I see something the author has written, it is significant. When Yeats writes “Perne in a Gyre” for instance I can be sure that he wrote that phrase for a reason. But Munro, in the above, specifically makes her statement absurdly ambiguous. Not only does she not provide any motivation for the character (although any reader can furnish their own) she for some reason writes, “I did not make any decision to do this,” as though her character has had a lapse of her senses, or a moment of pure insanity, or demonic possession.

What is it to make no decision? To make no decision is virtually impossible: when a person comes into a state of affairs that they can perceive and understand, they immediately begin making decisions. When any person stands in front of an open gate where a horse is escaping, and they are told to close the gate, they make a decision, no matter what. If they close the gate, it is because they have decided to. If the open the gate as wide as they can, it is because they decided to. Even inaction is decision: if the person stands entirely still they have decided to allow the gate to remain closed or open, however they are. The closest I can imagine a competent person making no decision in this situation is to flip a coin, or otherwise determine randomly, as to whether or not to leave the gate open. The person will be then responsible for the gate being open or closed, but they will not have decided that state of affairs within themselves, though they will be as responsible as if they had decided. The only other explanation for the character making no decision that I can understand is that she was somehow incompetent at that moment, either by bodily injury or by insanity. Munro’s character doesn’t have a broken leg, and she did not flip a coin. It seems to me that the character must have some kind of mental deficiency.

In the next paragraph, Munro describes how her character realizes that she has not helped the escaping horse; the horse will be tracked down and killed anyway. Munro describes how her character has disobeyed her father and now will no longer be trusted. Then she states, “Just the same, I did not regret it [...] [opening the gate] was that only thing I could do.” In this the author implies that the character had sympathy for the horse to be killed. By mentioning regret, Munro also implies that the character ought to feel ashamed of herself. But if the character is not in their right mind, and if her sympathy for the horse did not influence her because, of course, there was no decision made to be influenced, then what do these facts matter? They matter for absolutely nothing, unless Munro’s point is that little girls become little women, and a trait of little women is insanity.

One of two things is happening here. Either Munro made a terrible blunder in stating that her character made no decision, because it appears that the character did make a decision. Or, Munro lied to her reader. The difference here is whether Munro made the decision to write a contradictory statement or not. I’ll let an accident slide, but I don’t think I could tolerate this if it were done on purpose.