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The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro Lecture (Patreon)

Published:
2023-06-02 17:59:59
Imported:
2026-06
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  • Lecture for Alice Munro I.mp3

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Content

'The behaviour of his heart was on display. I tried to ignore it. It seemed to me that paying such close attention - in fact, dramatising what ought to be a most secret activity - was asking for trouble.'

Today we're conducting a deep reading of our first emotionally powerful short story from Alice Munro: 'The Moons of Jupiter.'

We are discussing symbolism, subtext, death, rebirth, empathy, close reading exercises, memory, ageing, irony, reaching out to our loved ones, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 introducing this short story
  • 2:30 what does the title mean?
  • 4:00 the process of rediscovery
  • 4:40 how to read a short story
  • 5:30 our approach to this story
  • 6:30 close reading & rereading
  • 8:00 the feeling of being human
  • 9:00 Alice Munro’s empathy machines
  • 10:00 ‘I found my father in the heart wing’
  • 11:00 why should we focus on first lines?
  • 12:00 a question to ask when reading fiction
  • 13:00 discerning the theme of this story
  • 14:00 on relating to the story’s narrator
  • 15:00 the power of imaginative literature
  • 16:30 on stories vs personal memories
  • 18:00 dramatising secret activities
  • 19:20 whose heart is really hurting?
  • 20:00 the power of specificity in fiction
  • 21:00 on ordering words for emphasis
  • 22:30 life, death, trauma, & mundanity
  • 24:00 learning more about the narrator
  • 25:40 why do we harden our hearts?
  • 27:00 the strange mixing of temporalities
  • 27:40 how to create a compelling story
  • 28:00 when our parents become our children
  • 33:00 expanding our understanding of another
  • 35:00 living in the world of our mind
  • 37:00 knowing others because we are them
  • 38:00 ‘I couldn’t tell the years apart’
  • 40:30 how short stories teach us to listen
  • 42:00 ‘before him only shoreless seas’
  • 43:30 reaching out to the ones you love
  • 44:30 preparing for death and rebirth
  • 45:30 what do dreams of death mean?
  • 47:00 the soul, auras & near death experience
  • 48:00 rediscovering one’s family relationships
  • 50:30 transformation, trauma & memory
  • 54:00 being pulled to the planetarium
  • 55:00 are we at the centre of it all?
  • 56:30 the ironic message in this story
  • 58:00 ‘tell me the moons of Jupiter’
  • 1:00:00 the last page of the story
  • 1:01:30 on doing what we mean to do
  • 1:02:00 the message of this short story
  • 1:03:00 some questions for you

Questions for You:

1) What did you take away from 'The Moons of Jupiter'?

2) What do you make of Alice Munro's writing style?

3) Do you find the short story reading experience rewarding?  

And please do let us know which parts of this short story most resonated with you. It would be wonderful to share some of our favourite lines and passages. 

Happy reading, folks!

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Comments

Denise Powers

Ah! Thank you Ben for yet another gripping lecture on a masterful work of art. This story reverberates within me as only a truth can. Munro gives us an intimate look into the secret thoughts and feelings of Janet, who aches for all that she is and all that she isn't. We are exposed to those thoughts and the feelings (either articulated or pushed aside) as clearly as Janet's father's heart is there on a machine's display, to be observed and read by all who might pass by. Haven't we all feared at some point that our innermost thoughts and feelings are exposed to everyone? She is afraid to look at the machine because she is afraid of what might be in there. She is afraid she is going to find evidence of her worst fear - that she is to blame for everything bad that has happened in all of their lives, because she is simply not good enough. Oh! my heart aches for Janet. Her childhood experiences - all those memories so richly etched on her 'soul' are the same things she has passed on to her own children. They are the same things she inherited from her own father. He had had dreams of a different life, but he had a family to provide for, and perhaps he is not half as smart as he thinks he is either. He was a history-reading blue collar worker. That is it. Perhaps he blames his family for keeping him 'small'. That would be easier than accepting that responsibility for himself. It is easier to make Janet responsible (even for calling on the wrath of God for sewing on a Sunday, never mind the fact that Dad hadn't cleaned the flue). She tries so hard to be someone else, to look like someone else, to squeeze herself into different clothes, that would look good on the person she wants to be. She wants to be anyone else. She craves acceptance and acknowledgement from her father and he cannot give it. She has chased success as a writer, but he doesn't acknowledge her success. Even if he ever did, she knows she would have to atone for it. He kicks her in the shins, right at the end, by expressing his disapproval of her divorcing a man he had not approved of to begin with, because he was not very smart (not nearly so smart as his other son-in-law) And this is the crux of it, isn't it? This is how we pass down our pain from one generation to the other. Janet is at her father's side, craving his attention, the same way that Judith is there for Janet. Both are loved less than their siblings, but they are the ones who need love from their parents. Janet is with her father. Peggy is not. Peggy married the smart man. She has a wonderful life with smart kids. Janet is a failure. Janet carries with her this terrible weight of rejection of her true self, by her father and by her daughters. She knows (thinks she knows) that she deserves this because she is not good enough. But, perhaps her father gives her a parting gift. Is he comparing her to Ganymede, who is not a shepherd, but the cupbearer to Jove? A cupbearer is a person of high rank, a person highly trusted and endeared.

Helen Lyons

Hi Ben thank-you for the great lecture. Coming a little late to this but I enjoyed this story and it is the first experience with Alice Munro although I think in my massive collection I already have some of her work. I love the short story form and this did not disappoint. Alice Munro conveys so much about the human experience in this small slice of someone's life - the inner dialogue that we constantly have, the memories of our family and experiences that we constantly analyse and go over in our minds. It's amazing that even though we are raised within families and we go on to create our own, everyone has their own perspective of what happens. We are all living in our own universe. My own children talk about things in the past and their perspective is so different to mine.