A typical early George Saunders story, with variations, runs thusly: a down-on-his-luck narrator usually male in a vaguely dystopian American present slaves away at a cartoonish blue-collar job for little satisfaction and less financial reward.
Said narrator, robbed of agency by the social conditions of his world, is forced to make some difficult choice, the act of which and the outcome of which leads invariably to an ethically compromised position.
My God no. I wanted to be a high jumper. The main constant, as always, is a sense of absurdity and its near neighbor, futility. Henry Award , and the National Book Award That religiosity plays out in ways both sincere and parodic: on the one hand, many Saunders characters pray quite earnestly, while others offer religiously-grounded advice that the narratives seem to endorse however tentatively. These characters are transformed and steadied, as it were, by the sense that the world is seamed with mystery and benignity, by awakened impulses to reverence, wonder, self-forgetfulness, and care, and by coming into company with others.
These gifts make life more bearable, but they fall short of the gifts of absolute conviction or revival. Two hundred send-outs and no nibbles. He thinks of his children, Marcus and Howie, and how deeply they love a playhouse the narrator is still paying off.
Metaphorically, the story thus enacts a tension not unlike that between the language of Colossians, and particularly St.
