Part II: To Whose Country Have I Come?

Part II of them begins after a horrible event in which a girl gets nearly beaten to death and after a period of separation, a boy comes home.

This boy, Jules, is a young man with whom only the present mattered. His thoughts on these things start to change as the story goes along because of different events in his life that begin to press upon him. He sees a dead man for the first time, gets, and then quickly loses, money, and falls in love for the first time. These events change him, as life is wont to do, and he fills his head with thoughts towards the future. How can I change the world for the better?

He speculates on the rich, "they're all crazy with it, in this town. They live out in Grosse Pointe or in Bloomfield and they want to keep something hidden somewhere else- they're willing to pay a lot for it". As it is, many people keep things hidden from the rest of the world, making secrets for themselves just so that they can hide them. They have thoughts contrary to the way of the world and keep those thoughts to themselves, always wanting to be like the others, conforming. Jules is different in his wanting to change the world. He lives life in anarchy, forgetting or opposing rules set by others.

Most of this part of the story is about making the most of what you have, or if not, changing what you have. Its about questioning what you have and why you were put in this place, in this situation, with these people. Its about growing up, which we all have to do, and changing. About discovering yourself and the world around you.

Author's Note

In the Author's Note preceding the novel them, Joyce Carol Oates introduces her story as "a work of history in fictional form". In fact, the story is based on a series of letters she received while she was a professor at the University of Detroit. She says that the stories "pressed upon mine eerily, so that I began to dream about them instead of about myself, dreaming and redreaming their lives".

Indeed, there is a point in the novel in which I began to feel her pain. Maybe it is when Loretta woke up to find her newest conquest shot in the bed beside her by her own brother, crying when she realizes that this is real-life and not a practical joke. Maybe it is when I was introduced to the character of Jules for the first time and realized that he is the life of this story. Or maybe it is toward the end of "Children of Silence", when Maureen, good, sweet, intelligent Maureen, begins to dream of money and prostitutes herself so that she can get it, consequently leading her to two years in a state of comatose after being nearly beaten to death by her step- father. Or maybe it is when I began to see all the connections between each of these characters. They live their lives apart from one another, yet always seem attached in some shape or form, whether it be in a dream or at a dingy kitchen table drinking coffee with a long-lost brother. But thoughts of their lives began to enter their way into my head, my mind not too far from the latest drama.

The underlying theme to the entire story is the way in which families connect with one another in poverty and unfortunate events. Set mainly in Detroit around the time of the "race riots", the story presses upon thoughts on racism, independence, money, life and the past, present and future. All the central characters seem to live in a state of mind where neither the past nor the future are a reality. They get past things, even traumatizing, horrible events, with a swiftness unlike any other. They live for the now, the present and what it can do for them. They have no eyes for the consequences of their actions only thinking about things happening that very second. It "is the only kind of fiction that is real" said Oates, and really, there is no other way to describe it.

Part I: Children of Silence

them is broken into three parts, each with its own central theme. "Children of Silence" is about a world in which the characters are surrounded by those who are silent, by those who are fixed in their lifestyles and are only looking for a way to stay the way they are. People who "were anonymous, backward, exasperating" in their silence.

The "Children" of the so-called silence were just learning to live, just now figuring out what was what in the world, greedy for attention and yearning in their curiousity. They moved along with the others, yet were different from them. Sometimes conforming to their ways, sometimes disguising themselves as one of them, but more often then not, they were loud in their difference, proud in their obscurity. They "saw them all with their frozen faces, her mother and father, her sister, her brother, her grandmother, her aunt... the faces of all the world- frozen hard into expressions of cunning and anger". In the view of the frozen faces around them, they "crept in silence among them and waited for the day when everything would be orderly and neat... beyond their ability to hurt". They adapted to the fixed, rigid feel of the lives around them, making themselves believe that if they too settled down into frozen lives, they would be happy. The children are unaware, at this time, of the consequences of living life in an enforced routine. They slowly adjust themselves to the way of the world, only to find that it is cruel, unfair, and most of all, all about money. They start to understand life's rules, and try to get from under its thumb. Loretta and her constsnt moving from place to place, Jules in his need to leave his family behind and make money, Maureen moving past what others expected of her and into her rebellious period as a prostitute, her obsession with money: the feel of it, the thought of it, hoarding it all away for future use.

They make new friends: Loretta's new husband, Jule's women, Maureen's "men". They do things diffrently from before, distance themselves from what they know, letting themselves forget the people who not only love them but rely on them as well. The children get past the silence of their pasts, loud in their independence. Louder and crazier in their antics, they become. Louder and louder still, if only to get beyond the frozen faces of those that surround them.

"- and the essence..." American Theme Post

" and the essence of it was that they had all come very close to the edge of something... and some of the older people had breathed this in and turned terrified and helpless for life, but they, the young, they with their new babies and their new husbands, were on their way up and never would the bottom fall out again. The government in Washington was like a net set up not ten feet below them, to save them." - page 45 of them by Joyce Carol Oates

A lot of the American population, even today, are unaware of global conflicts and discrepancies within the government. They only concern themselves with the things that happen with themselves and let others do the rest. They trust in their government to save them, should they ever need saving. Trust in the government to make their lives easier, yet also blaming them when things go bad. This is especially true of young America, the bright, promising and "independent" youth.

The older generations are aware of the hardships life brings, many "terrified and hopeless" in the life they live. They are constantly on edge, wary of the things that surround them, suspicious of the people unknown to them.

The young, in contrast, are happy and anxious for their freedom. They latch onto whatever promises them happiness, they forget what it was like for their parents, knowing that they will be different. Social climbers, constantly trying to move up in the world. Doing what they can to be better than the rest, more successful.

This sense of excitement and hopefulness for the future is a constant feeling in the young of the American population. They have yet to taste the real troubles of life, its unfairness and its cruelty, and they go at life with a flair for hope. They take themselves away from their families, away from their past and lead new lives.

"One warm evening in August..." Image Theme

"One warm evening in August 1937 a girl in love stood before a mirror. Her name was Loretta. It was her reflection that she loved, and out of this dreamy, pleasing love there arose a sense of excitement that was restless and blind - which way would it move, what would happen?..." - pg 3 of them by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates begins them with the image of a girl looking at herself in a mirror. This girl is not in love with a man, not in love with a boy. She is in love with herself. She is in love with what the future could bring her, in love with what could happen to her on this day, Saturday. This image sets a tone for people who look toward the future for their happiness, not focused on the present and, in turn, sets a recurring theme for the rest of the novel.

At first it seems insignificant, this girl and her thoughts on her reflection. Her name is Loretta, Loretta Botsford, and she is no more special than any other girl. She takes pride in being like the other girls and is set in a routine that she has followed for years. Throughout the entirety of the novel, Loretta can be seen saying she will do something, but in the end, doing nothing at all. She is, like most people, full of hot air and talks just to talk.

The image of her getting ready for Saturday, pondering what will happen as the evening wears on, there is a sense of restlessness. As if there is a guarantee that SOMETHING will happen on this night. Loretta is neither the protagonist nor a sub character. She is one of the few characters who gets her story told from her point of view, one of the few characters with which the readers get to sympathise for despite her faults. Her ordinariness is what makes her key, as she is surrounded with the people whose views are extraordinarily different from her. She represents the everyday working class American of the 1930s and the 1940s: a gossip, a wife, and a mother. She is what the other characters get compared to throughout the story, as it is she who we are introduced to first. There isn't much depth to her, nothing original about her and because of this we feel sorry for her. For she is not very bright but not dumb either, not gorgeous but not ugly, and her emotions are up and down. She is a being of little, insignificant contradictions, a conformist to the ways of the world around her, never yearning to be different from any one person around her.


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