Samuel

As I was reading the story of “Samuel” by Grace Paley, and the afterword concerning short story structure, I found myself thinking about the story itself.  Throughout the reading of Short Stories it calls for us to examine and dissect the story, looking for the effect the writer intends with her/his words.  Paley states she wrote Samuel “to set you up for the “shiver of recognition” in her final sentence.  When you understand her intricate way she used language to create her fictional world, the story’s effect has an even greater emotional impact.”  (pg. 1671, Reading Short Stories)  What exactly is the "effect," or "shiver of recognition" Paley is aiming for?  In order to understand or perhaps look at it more in-depth and discover more there, I decided to decipher the concept of "effect" and how it played out in the story. 

If one was to consider the very definition of the word "Effect" and look it up in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, this is what you would find:

Effect (noun)

: A change that results when something is done or happens: an event, condition, or state of affairs that is produced by a cause: a particular feeling or mood created by something: an image or a sound that is created in television, radio, or movies to imitate something real.

With this definition in mind, and the concept of Edgar Allen Poe's "effect" on short stories and literature, as stated by Louis Menand's Essay "True Story: The Art of Short Fiction," one can draw the conclusion Grace Paley's short story "Samuel" is well suited to, as Poe stated " At the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magicians puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated..." (pg. 1670, Reading Short Stories)

The story of Samuel takes place during a time period when subways trains were not automatic, such as in the 1970’s.  In today’s modern age a person would not find chains, such as the four boys held on to, or the emergency cord of which the man pulled, causing Samuel’s death.    Author Grace Paley managed to bring us back to an age when the NYC Subway was run by a Conductor.  The setting for the story was as important as the story itself, lending to the wishful, bygone, and feeling fleeting by, swiftly along the subway tracks, never to return in the same way it once was. 

Though the story is called Samuel, it is not actually about Samuel himself; rather the reader is given wistful and even angry glimpses of fellow passengers as they view the four young boys, playing and misbehaving.  The youths’ behavior causes memories and emotions of various degrees around them, though they are originally oblivious to the adults and what they are feeling due to their innocent antics.   You, the reader can feel the tension and anticipation building off two main players within this story, the man in his anger over his lost youth, and the woman who is afraid of becoming embarrassed in public. 

The story almost has a cause and effect syndrome to the outcome.  If the adolescents had never misbehaved and played upon the subway would the woman have felt the need to scold them for their antics on the platform?  Would the man have taken it upon himself to pull the emergency cord, hoping to teach the boys a lesson, and be a good citizen; never thinking his actions would cause the death of Samuel, one of the boys?  If the man had never pulled the cord would the mother of Samuel have to realize she could, and would, never replace her son? 

In the end Paley’s “shiver of recognition,” came for me in the fact that all actions have a reaction and we must think before doing.  Had the man never pulled that emergency cord, which is to say Samuel would have died such a harrowing death, ending his short life before it even had a chance to begin?  Though it is simply a story, Poe’s words of “effect” live and breathe in the emotions and imagery created by the idea of what could be if one simply reacted without thought.