Critical Response to Elephants in Our Bedroom

Critical response to Michael Czyzniejewski’s

Elephants in Our Bedroom

           

The author (I’ll refer to Michael Czyzniejewski as the author because it’s such a long last name) uses many useful tools in his collection of short stories that I can use in my own writing. The author uses symbolism and foreshadowing in his writing. A great example of this is the title story Elephants in Our Bedroom.

In the beginning the author notes the elephant he received and placed in his bedroom, but then he describes the main character of the story and his wife. The man buys a dog and then his wife forces him to get rid of it. In the end the elephant is the tension between the man and his wife. The author uses many tools in this story. One is foreshadowing in the beginning of the story about the elephant that is brought up in the end. A second tool is metaphor. “I play games with the elephant when my wife is in the room, hoping she’ll take notice, say something, something to initiate dialogue” (Czyzniejewski, 43). The metaphor, or symbolism, is the actions of the man with the elephant. He is acting out to get the attention of his wife, but it’s impossible. Another great tool the author uses is what I like to call the “Snowball effect,” and by this I mean the momentum be builds in his stories.

The author begins the story in a normal fashion. It seems like a normal story about a man who buys a dog and then is forced to get rid of it. The story turns into hyperbole about a man who has an elephant in his bedroom to capture his wife’s attention. The opening story has a similar format in Wind. In this story, about a man watching his child and the child gets hurt, the author establishes a somewhat normal, but that world is changed as the background of the man is described with his absurd family. Once again the author uses a technique where he mentions something in the beginning that isn’t resolved until the end.

Prison Romance was a really interesting story. This was a little more serious than some of the other stories. I felt it was ambiguous and didn’t really have a true ending, but I thought it worked as a short story. It captured what a restricted, or long distance, relationship sometimes feels like. I felt like this was an experimental story, and it showed me as a beginning writer that a story can capture one feeling and you can lack a complete story arch if you do it right. IT’s like we talk about in class, know what the rules are and if you’re able to break them and get away with it, then it’s a great story. Prison Romance is a great example of this.

Sleeping Through Starvation had a very good comical part to it. “In the office, I ask my doctor what he thinks, his index and middle finger in my ass. . . One ape in a lab in Korea puts the round peg in the round hole. . . .” (Czyzniejewski,158). I thought this was a great line in the story. This story is similar to the others in the book because the author established something in the beginning, the man going to the doctor, then diverts the reader’s attention to something else, his child, then reverts to the beginning story mysteriously. 

There are a few things I can take from this book of short stories. The first is that foreshadowing and symbolism, much like the Coats’ story, is very important and a great tool to keep a reader’s attention. It teases the reader to bring something in at the beginning, go away from it for awhile, and then refer back to it in the end. Also, like in Sleeping Through Starvation, sometimes not explaining the joke, or leaving it open ended, is more powerful than outright saying it.

I really liked the author’s stories. They touched on real life problems and situations and put a humorous touch on them without demeaning the problems. It was a fun book to read and very well written. I also thought the author’s use of very short sentences and “run-on” sentences helped capture what the story was about. The stories read like someone who was sitting down with a friend and explaining what happened.