world consists of their one room and Outer Space. The passage is part of
Donoghue’s communication about the night Old Nick visits after bringing
Jack a remote-controlled Jeep as a belated birthday present. Jack, in a fit of
Oedipal rage brought on by his sudden thought that Old Nick might be suck-
ing at his mother’s breast, uses the remote to send the Jeep off a shelf and
down on top of Old Nick’s head in the bed where he lays with Ma.
SMASHSHSHSHSHSH.
Old Nick roaring like I never heard him, something about Jesus but it
wasn’t Baby Jesus that did it, it was me. Lamp’s on, light’s banging in the slats
at me, my eyes squeeze shut. I wriggle back and pull Blanket over my face.
He’s shouting, “What are you trying to pull?”
Ma sounds all wobbly, she says, “What, what? Did you have a bad
dream?”
I’m biting Blanket, soft like gray bread in my mouth.
“Did you try something? Did you?” His voice goes downer. “Because I
told you before, it’s on your head if—”
“I was asleep.” Ma’s talking in a squashed tiny voice. “Please—look, look,
it was the stupid jeep that rolled off the shelf.”
Jeep’s not a stupid.
“I’m sorry,” Ma’s saying, “I’m so sorry, I should have put it somewhere it
wouldn’t fall. I’m really really totally—”
“ O K .”
“Look, let’s turn the light off—”
“Nah,” says Old Nick, “I’m done.” (48)Like Faulkner, Donoghue uses the synergy between the author-narrator-
audience channel and the author-character-character-audience channel to
communicate something that neither the narrator nor the characters report:
Old Nick began to strangle Ma and then thought better of it. Jack can’t report
this event because it occurs while he has his eyes closed. Neither Old Nick nor
Ma says anything directly about it because they don’t have to: they’ve lived it
and are focused on next steps. But by juxtaposing Jack’s descriptions of Ma’s
voice with the dialogue between Ma and Old Nick, the implied Donoghue
communicates the otherwise unreported event to her audience. Again, the
synergy allows the author to communicate something greater than the sum of
the information in each channel.
Furthermore, that synergy adds a rich layer to both the ethics of the told
and the ethics of the telling. The dialogue itself captures the power dynamic
between Old Nick and Ma and in so doing further underlines the violence that
AUTHORS, RESOURCES, AUDIENCES • 23