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Steve Downing

Writing 101-16

Mr. McMahand

12 November 2004

Gap-Toothed and Heavy: Perspectives Of Exclusion

In “Sarah Cole: A Type Of Love Story”

Appearance and class are two primary indicators of success and, as such, are also the

determinants of social superiority and the qualifiers for acceptance into the illusive mainstream.

In his “Sarah Cole: A Type Of Love Story,” Russell Banks develops a singular example of

inequality among individuals from opposite ends of their social and economic spectrums. Of

these two characters, Ron is unquestionable more successful and Sarah less fortunate.

Accordingly, Ron has the upper hand in the relationship from the beginning and Sarah follows a

step behind. However, this interpretation, obvious as it may seem, is written nowhere in the text.

Banks instead makes it apparent to the reader by playing with our perception. It is his method of

shifting the story’s point of view that creates our awareness of the exclusion in Ron and Sarah’s

relationship.

When Sarah and Ron first meet, the author’s use of the third person omniscient

perspective allows Ron to describe the disparity in their appearances with some objectivity.

According to the description, “Ron is effortlessly attractive, a genetic wonder, tall, slender,

symmetrical and clean,” and even Ron’s flaws, “only contribute to his beauty” (150). Bank’s

words come across merely as a physical characterization; however, were it instead Ron speaking

directly of his attributes, the reader might be less inclined to the believe him. Similarly, the

narrator lists Sarah’s features: “pocked complexion, bulbous nose, loose mouth, twisted and

gapped teeth, and heavy, but receding chin,” and summarizes the description with a general

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picture of her as, “a woman homelier than any he has ever seen or imagined before” (152). Since

these words come from a removed speaker, Banks prevents the interpretation that Ron is only

exaggerating the freakish unattractiveness of this woman. Therefore, the reader can more easily

accept the characters’ substantial dissimilarities. Moreover, Sarah informs Ron that she only

approached him on a dare, implying that under normal circumstances she would not have

considered talking to such a man. This information allows the reader to arrange the characters

subconsciously by their physical appeal and thus to establish the initial power structure of the

relationship within his or her mind.

However, besides mere looks, social class also determines control in the relationship, and

so Banks’ use of the third person during Sarah’s first visit to Ron’s apartment is no coincidence.

Ron lives in a modern, single-bedroom on the Heights near downtown Concord. Everything

about his living space is classy, not necessarily exorbitant but certainly above Sarah’s means. His

apartment exudes a superiority that Sarah senses when she “stands nervously at the door, peering

in,” and from the second she steps inside, Ron is in control (158). More than just feeling

awkward in someone else’s home, Sarah is completely out of her element—anxious, unsure

where to place her hat, and staring at a “silvery gray twenty-one-speed bicycle,” that’s leaning

against the wall, “slender as a thoroughbred racehorse,” seemingly possessing more confidence

than she (159). We learn all of this, of course, from Ron’s words since the control that he

possesses in his relationship with Sarah extends even further in its retelling. As the wealthier,

more attractive, and consequently more powerful participant, he decides what details we learn,

how we see Sarah and what we will feel about each of them in the end.

Following the introductory physical descriptions, a first person account of the developing

relationship more accurately captures Ron’s feelings and inappropriate intentions. Describing his

specific drive in pursuit of Sarah, Ron says:

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My concern then, when I was first becoming involved with Sarah, was merely

with the moment, holding on to it, grasping it wholly, as if its beginning did not

grow out of some other prior moment in her life and my life separately, and at the

same time did not lead into future moments in our separate lives….I did not know

how cruel this was. When you have never done a thing before and that thing is not

simply and clearly right or wrong, you frequently do not know if it is a cruel

thing, you just go ahead and do it. (155)

Ron is not attracted to Sarah; on the contrary, he is fascinated by the novelty of her appearance.

He aims not to connect with her emotionally but only to prolong this instance of experiencing

such an oddity, and he reveals this to the reader directly in the first person. Similarly, both he and

Sarah are interested in the inappropriateness of their relationship—Sarah as a rare opportunity to

date someone out of her league and Ron as a fetish for her grotesque appearance. Ron is well

aware of the panoptic gaze when he describes, “They were lawyers, and I knew them slightly.

They were grinning at me. I grinned back and got into my car” (157). Although he’s seemingly

not bothered by the onlookers, Ron’s preoccupation with Sarah is wholly fueled by their opinion.

This is why he relates in first person his pursuit of “the moment” during his conversations with

Sarah: an obsession direct from the mouth of the obsessed (155).

Banks again utilizes the third person point of view to add veracity to two situations that

we might otherwise expect Ron to alter in the telling: their first kiss and first sexual encounter.

Although the entire scene preceding Sarah and Ron’s kiss—Ron meeting Sarah, going into her

apartment, seeing the picture of her kids, etc.—is told in the first person, Banks briefly switches

to third person for less than a page to describe the specific moment when Sarah embraces Ron.

He even prefaces the change in narration with “picture this,” allowing the reader advanced

knowledge that he will be relating a complex and vital scene as a removed observer (163). In this

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manner Ron ably describes both the second-hand furnishings in the apartment and the way Sarah

rolls her torso against his with the same unaffected objectivity. The credibility he achieves in

doing so is crucial in understanding the dynamic of Ron and Sarah’s relationship because within

the same passage Banks again emphasizes the disparity in their social standings and appearances.

Ron’s perfect physical presence contrasts and overpowers Sarah whose unattractive features

seem to sense their own inferiority; moreover, her tasteless clothing and stained linoleum make

Sarah unworthy of Ron even while in her own home. This antithesis, though, is only valid in the

reader’s mind under the context of an onlooker’s description; as with the characters’ initial

portrayals, impartiality is essential.

The latter situation, Ron and Sarah’s first sexual encounter, parallels the former in design.

Banks leads into the shift in narration using the first person. Ron remembers the weather that

Sunday morning, Sarah’s demeanor as she hands him his shirts, the silence in the room while

they undressed themselves, and then Banks switches to third person before the actual intimate

episode. The duration of this shift in the point of view is shorter than the previous, and Banks

doesn’t alert the reader to it in advance. He changes within the same sentence from, “we were

both standing naked,” to, “two naked members of the same species, a male and female” (166).

However, it serves the same function as the previous switch by directing the reader toward an

appropriate interpretation of Ron and Sarah’s relationship. Moreover, not only does it displace

Ron himself from the action, but the use of the generic terms “male” and “female” removes the

specific identities of both characters from the situation. At this point it makes no difference

whether it’s actually Ron and Sarah in the story. The situation would still serve the author’s

purpose with any two people involved—as long as one is more attractive and economically

successful—just as at the beginning of the story when Ron informed us that the events could

have taken place anywhere at any time: “it doesn’t matter” (149). Although Banks returns to first

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person only six lines after the switch to third, following a break in the text, this passage

reinforces the dominant themes of appearance and class in the story and allows the reader insight

into the author’s particular interpretation of Ron and Sarah’s relationship.

While the initial third person passages provide believable descriptions of the characters

and their lifestyles and the first person more accurately presents Ron’s motivations, the final

change to third person is the most significant in the story. Immediately preceding the last switch

in narration, Ron speaks with one of Sarah’s ex-coworkers in a first person conversation that

takes place years after his relationship with Sarah. During the interchange Ron realizes that he

actually does love Sarah Cole—regardless of the fact that he has to imagine her being dead to do

so. At this point the dynamic of power that had existed in their relationship, the inherent

exclusion, as well as Ron’s obsession with Sarah’s ravaged legs and yard sale furnishings and

her insecurities about all these flaws, has melted away for the two are equal in Ron’s newfound

love. Then, immediately following Ron’s fanciful digression, Banks returns to the third person

perspective to finish the story and portray the ultimate example of inequality in Ron and Sarah’s

relationship. The break up lays to rest any questions about who ultimately is in control. Although

Sarah has temporarily deluded herself into believing that her opinion matters and even

demanding, “you owe me, Ron,” their time at El Rancho only drives Ron further away (168). In

the end it is Ron who has the final word, standing in his upscale apartment amidst lavish

furnishings with a hand on his bicycle’s chrome-plated handlebars. He tells Sarah it’s over, and

nothing she does, including flat out refusing to leave, can change his decision. This above all

exemplifies the power structure that exists in their relationship—one of mercilessness and

autocracy. The fact that Ron’s actions are in the third person (i.e. he has removed himself from

them) tells the reader exactly how to interpret the situation: Sarah is helpless and poor with no

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control over her life, and in his mind, Ron kills her. Ten years later, looking back, he can’t even

bear to narrate the events as if he were in any way involved with them.

Ron says he loves Sarah; he also calls her a “disgusting, ugly bitch” (175). Sarah comes

to believe that she deserves “friendship and respect;” she also returns to a husband who beats her

(168). It’s not difficult to see Russell Banks’ intention in his “Sarah Cole: A Type Of Love

Story.” He has created a biting representation of exclusion dependent upon the social qualifiers

of inequality: class and appearance. He accomplishes this by shifting the story’s point of view,

thus forcing the reader to recognize the separation in Ron and Sarah’s relationship. But might not

there be another reason for his telling of Ron and of Sarah? It seems that Banks was insistent also

upon defying the paradigm of physiognomy. Even Chaucer’s 14th century characterizations

portrayed people as we do today—they who look good are good—and yet Ron is a beautiful man

of deplorable action and Sarah a homely woman undoubtedly more deserving of Ron’s beauty.

Russell Banks seems indeed to be questioning the validity of those qualifications that merit

acceptance into the mainstream as well as our perception of the exclusion that follows.

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