Alice Munro's short-story Face

The unnamed narrator of Alice Munro's story "Face" is born with a birthmark covering almost the entirety of one side of his face. According to the narrator, who in turn is relying a great deal on his mother's account of these matters, this causes his father to reject him. His father takes one look at him in the hospital nursery and tells his mother "What a chunk of chopped liver" and threatens "You don't need to think you're going to bring that into the house"(New Yorker, September 8, 2008, p.59).

The boy actually grows up in this house for nine years, living in proximity to a father whose "most vivid quality was a capacity for hating and despising"(59). He internalizes a warped view of himself, remarking at one point, "Of course, a production like myself was an insult that he had to face every time he opened his own door"(59). Accordingly, he and his mother go out of their way to keep the fact of his face hidden, not only by keeping the boy out of the way of the father, but also by keeping the fact of his face hidden from the boy. On one level, this is done by strategic placing of mirrors. On another, it's done by keeping the boy hidden from the world at large. All for his good, or so the boy believed and the man remembering does as well. He's to be seen but not too clearly. Gradually, he loses sight of what he looks like; he minimizes the mark on his face, believing "that half my face was a dull, mild sort of color, almost mousy, a furry shadow"(64).

Of course, as the story argues, love is based on sight. Whether it originates in the physical or finds a home there, it is dependent on the body.

The little boy in the story longs to be loved. His mother can't. She's dependent on him. The fact of his face serves her as an explanation of why her marriage has failed; she's failed to produce an acceptable son to the father. She binds with the child as his self-sacrificing protector. As the son recalls, "She had been devoted to me-not a word either of us would have used, but I think the right one-till I was nine"(60). On his side, he remains loyal, defending her decisions when he can, pleading ignorance of her motives when he can't.

Seeking love, the little boy develops crushes on various older women he happens to come across. However, when he's about four, he develops a friendship with a little girl about his age, Nancy, who lives with her mother in a gardener's cottage on the grounds of his home. In reality, this is proves to be a childhood love of sorts. Living in an isolated area, estranged from parental figures, the two children develop a love between them that proves profound. Although she clearly proves to be the love of his life, The narrator can't bring himself to call her this; instead, he's almost erased her but for a single incident with her that he refers to as "the Great Drama" of my life.

The narrator hedges and evades on the way to remembering this great drama, admitting during one such digression, "how I circle and dither around this subject," (61) yet gradually recalls an afternoon when both are eight years old and exploring in the cellar. They discover some old jars of paint and brushes with badly stiffened bristles. Loosening up an old brush with turpentine, the boy begins to write on the wall with paint. The little girl "had her back to me ad was wielding the paintbrush on herself"(63). Using a loud red paint, she's painting her face to match his face. She's "overjoyed, as if she had managed something magical"(64)and asks "Now do I look like you?"(63).

The little boy is horrified. He feels this as an insult. He wishes to be loved. But this means either not seeing him, or, only seeing him as he's come to see himself. The little girl's come to love him fully. She's come to love his birthmark. Her seeing it forces him to confront something he wishes forgotten. Loving him wholly, and as a body, she loves a part of himself he can't face.

This is a strange and heartbreaking story. It is most remarkable for it's form. Although it is a horrifying tale, it is told in a conversational style. We witness a man in the process of remembering a significant event, the one love of his life. Munro skillfully sketches a man's memory as it struggles and moves by indirection to an event he can neither bear to remember or forget.