Response to "Those Who Stay and Those Who Go"

One very interesting choice Ann Daum made in “Those Who Stay and Those Who Go” was her utilization of lists.  This technique happens quickly, appearing as early as paragraph four, and continues throughout the piece.  These lists always include mundane, unglamorous facts or circumstances. 

Take, for instance the list of trivial jobs the high schoolers have access to: “Kids can work at the truck stop, waiting tables, pumping gas, or washing dishes, through high school and beyond.”  This list is boring, long, and monotonous, not unlike the quality of employment kids who select those jobs would experience.  In other words, this list imitates the way of life for the townsfolk of Murdo, South Dakota. 

Lists also come in a paragraph of small sentences, short and definite in composition, like a tyrant’s declaration:  “Loneliness is just another disease here.  Its symptoms are sicknesses, too.  Depression.  Alcoholism.  Parochialism.  Suicide.”  This list is boldly laid out, harshly punctuated, again, mimicking the tone those words are supposed to convey.

Perhaps the most interesting duty served by Daum’s lists is the way they perform as a sort of character in the midst of her story; their personality dark, weathered, and stubborn, their activities repetitious and wearisome, just like every other citizen of Murdo.  Her lists create a tone and atmosphere that allows the reader to understand the bleakness of the story’s setting, because in our reading we experience a repetition and exhaustion all our own.