A Multitude of Sins: Under the Radar - Character Development

Richard Ford's A Multitude of Sins is a collection of ten intimate short stories, each of which found me guilty upon turning each page, as if I were reading through diaries detailing first-party accounts of tumultuous relationships. The story that struck me was the unrelenting Under the Radar, where a young woman tells her husband of a recent affair with the host of the dinner party they are travelling to attend. Although the piece is just over ten pages long, it has the impact of three hundred, and led me to dislike both parties in the relationship without resorting to gimmicks or excessive violence.

Marjorie, the despicable wife, displays a great deal of complexity however banal she may be. Ford, after being prompted by an interviewer on which of the stories his readers would've liked him to expand, immediately brought up Under the Radar. We are treated to internal dialogue and given brief descriptions of Marjorie and her husband Steven, but character development becomes especially important given limited space. The protagonist is defined by her actions, and what they reveal about her personality. "She was fond of getting a little tipsy at parties and lowering her voice and sitting on a flowered ottoman or a burl table top with a glass of something and showing too much of her legs or inappropriate amounts of her small breasts." (143) We are made aware of her transgressions in public that foreshadow her affair with the elite Yale-graduate George Nicholson, and although she does little in the car, Ford hints at her promiscuity by describing prior actions. What she does do is force her husband, who after little deliberation strikes her in the nose, to check on a dying raccoon on the highway, before revving up the car and driving off into the distance, never acknowledging her fault in their conflict.

Our lovely protagonist Marjorie's dialogue shows her to be both conniving and obscene. She begins by apologizing, but this is negated by the inappropriate environment to do so. A year later, in a car, on the way to her ex-lover's party? After Steven breaks her nose with a brutal slap to the face, a poor response brought about by his shock at her revelation, Marjorie's true colours begin to show: "I was sorry when I told you... Though not very sorry... Only sorry because I had to tell you. And now that I've told you and you've hit me in the face and probably broken my nose, I'm not sorry about anything--except that. Though I'm sorry about being married to you, which I'll remedy as soon as I can." (150) Marjorie was looking for a way out of the marriage, and Steven was lured into giving her one. She is also highly abrasive, as indicated by her profanity-laden anti-redneck tirade: "So now, will you as a gesture of whatever good there is in you, get out and go over and do something to help that poor injured creature that those motherfucking rednecks maimed with their motherfucking pickup truck and then because they're pieces of shit and low forms of degraded humanity, laughed about?" (150-151) The entire story makes me wonder how destroyed the (by most accounts) docile Steven is after two years of being married to this wretch. With dialogue, Ford shows Marjorie's undesirable character traits that bring out the worst in her husband.

Getting married young, Ford must think, is an ill-conceived idea. "The women who knew Marjorie Reeves thought of her as a bimbo who would not stay married to sweet Steven Reeves for very long. His second wife would be the right wife for him. Marjorie was just a starter." (143) Other individuals' opinions on Marjorie show the relationship for what it is: a confused young man erring in his choice of partner. Perhaps they envisioned a less violent outcome, but the idea of her being a bimbo seems accurate. Steven also bases his decision upon few criteria before rushing to the altar: "He'd liked her bobbed hair, her fragile, wispy features, translucent skin and the slightly husky voice that made her seem more sophisticated than she was, but somehow convinced her she was too." (143) Ironically, the excerpt most telling about the protagonist's personality is that her own husband never focused on personality, but only on physical attributes.