Ranch Girl by Maile Meloy from Contemporary American Short Fiction

The novel is told in second person, which gives the reader a intelligence of being in the story, at the same time being an observer. It begins with corpulent you where you stand in the socio-economics and in the eyes of your peers. If youre white, and youre non rich or poor but somewhere in the middle, its hard to have worse luck than be born a young lady on the Ranch. It doesnt matter if your father is the foreman or the rancher youre still a ranch girl, and youve been dealt a bad hand. (551)The story goes on, telling you where you where you live on the Ranch, who your father is (the foreman on Ted Haskells Running H cattle Ranch) and how you keep your room still embellish from when you were ten. You neer have friends over, so you can keep your room that way. You never have friends over because no one wants to come over to a Ranch girls house. The second person point of prognosis pangs at the readers emotions. You feel the hunger for attention and flush it creates when And y Tyler flirts with you.The author re-creates the tactilitys of a teenage girl, somewhere on the cusp of popularity, in much(prenominal) a way it is almost impossible non to encounter caught up with the story. I was never a Ranch girl, but when reading the story I felt akin to the feelings of the bank clerk. The experiences described are vastly different from whatsoever of my own child/young adulthood but the universal truths placed out are the same with any person. The storyteller has fallen in love with a boy from the rodeo. She goes and watches him controvert every Friday.She s 16 and the Ranchers daughter, Carla, and her curls they hair into perfect ringlets. Trying to catch Andys eye. When he gets up from fighting, he asks her to give him a rainbow and she twirls her rainbow gloved hand around his face. The narrator wants to get married Andy Tyler. The blushing hope of picking out her future husband harks back the authors understanding of a young girl. Virginity is a s important to rodeo boys as to Catholics, and you dont go home and fuck Andy Tyler because when you finally get him, you want to keep him.But you like his asking. Some nights, he doesnt ask. Some nights, Lacey Estrada climbs into Andys truck, dark hair bouncing in cracked curls on her shoulders, and moves close to Andy on the front seat as they fill away. But cowboys are romantics when they settle down they want the girl they havent fucked. (553) The narrator doesnt feel alike suspicious of Lacey Estrada because she knows that Andy is like every other rodeo boy. He wont marry a girl who he (or anyone else) has fucked. This statement is then contested later Andy Tyler dies in an accident.The paper announces in Andy Tylers obituary that he was industrious to Lacey Estrada. When reading this, the author goes on to detail the narrators feelings that you can almost judgement the salt tears from being hurt. Andys obituary says he was prosecute to Lacey Estrada, which only Lacey or doctor father could have put in. If you had the anchor youd buy every paper in town and evoke them outside that big white house where Lacey took him home and fucked him. Then Lacey shows up on the Hill with an engagement ring and gives you a sad grinning as if you shared something.If you were one of the girls who gets in fights on the Hill, youd fight Lacey. But you dont you look away (556) I sound shoot putting this piece into second person was an excellent choice. If the piece were in starting signal person, it talent have been too emotionally sentimental, or with too much angst. If the piece was in third, it superpower not have been adapted to capture the vulnerability of the narrator. The narrator shuts down after Andys death, although it might be because of his death she has more options than if he had been alive.The narrator feels cheated, alone since he died, but she continued through and through high school where her science teachers (who precept through her ign orant facade) encouraged and bo in that respectd her to go to college. In the first course in college, the professor accuses her of plagiarism because she can write. The feelings of frustration and anger, feeling cheated out of a life with Andy to be left alone. The narrator feels the expectations of others enshrouding her, something that would not have been if Andy Tyler had not died in that car crash. You are so well-disposed to have a degree and no kid, Carla says, You can still leave. (558).The narrator has the world around her telling her how she can still leave, how she has nothing to inter-group communication her to the Ranch, or to Montana anymore. She can go. But none of these things seem concrete whats real is the payments on your car and your moms softheaded horses, the feel of the ranch road as you can drive blindfold and the smell of the hay. But out there in there world you get old. You dont get old here. present you can always be a Ranch girl. (558) The tangib le things that attach someone to a place has nothing on the emotional ties. Andy Tyler might have died and left her alone, but he still ties her to the Ranch by his memory.The stolen life taken by a drunk driver took not only Andy Tyler, but also the narrators by taking him from her. She wastes her potential by pining and mourning someone she should have moved on from old age ago. The sad desperation is clear in the description, in how the author pictured the narrator through the second person point of view. The narrator comes off much more sympathetic and her motives are clearly understandable through the second person point of view. I dont cogitate that any other point of view could have given such a clear view of the narrator life.