Is it the End or the Beginning?

During class, we started to discuss whether or not Norma Jean committed suicide at the end of Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh.” Did she end her life by jumping off the bridge? Did she feel the need to commit suicide because her marriage was going downhill, and her mother had caught her smoking, and her life was going back to when she was eighteen? Or did she not commit suicide at all? Did she merely go onto the bridge to obtain a peaceful, serene landscape where she can gather her thoughts without Leroy or Mabel, and just release everything that has happened in the past? I think the latter.

Norma Jean is confused. She feels like she is going back to her life when she was eighteen again with Leroy, and she “can’t face that all over again,” yet she “ha[s] this crazy feeling [she] missed something” (612, 606). I see Norma Jean as a woman full of contrasting thoughts. She never seems to know exactly what she wants. It seems like Mason characterizes Norma Jean as a woman who may be independent and seemingly okay with everything in her life, but truthfully, she is not. She has a fed up type of attitude with her life, which she discovers after certain triggers, such as Mabel catching her smoking. But does that make her want to commit suicide? I feel that Mason’s final paragraph gives Leroy a sense of false hope of living a happy life, but it gives Norma Jean a sense of real hope for her life as a truly independent woman. With a tranquil landscape such as the Tennessee River, her newfound hobby of exercising, and her words to Leroy, Norma Jean is able to reevaluate her own life in respect to herself, rather than to Leroy, rather than to Mabel, rather than to anyone else but herself. Her independence had already been previously shown through her want of Leroy to leave the house more often, but her self-reliance truly shines when she is alone on the bridge during the final scene of this short story. To me, overlooking such a landscape allows one to see further into the future; Norma Jean sees her dreams and her hope and her future over that river. Mason does not give an ending to Norma Jean’s part of the story. Norma Jean’s being on the bridge is not the final curtain of “Shiloh”; rather, it is a continuation of the story for Norma Jean. Perhaps it is the end of the story for Leroy, and possibly Mabel, but Norma Jean’s story continues after the author stops writing.

So, I think the notion that Norma Jean committed suicide is very interesting because I look at the scene from a more optimistic view when I see a sense of hope sprouting as the beginning, not the end, of something for Norma Jean. In my opinion, it’s almost as if Leroy is the one who metaphorically commits suicide. When “Leroy is trying to comprehend that his marriage is breaking up, but for some reason he is wondering about the white slabs in a graveyard,” he shows that deep within his heart, he does not care all that much about his marriage (612). Maybe he is concerned about Norma Jean and his own future, but they both know that the marriage is over, so there is no point for Leroy to have a sense of false hope, but I still feel Leroy’s false hope in the final paragraph. Norma Jean represents the stronger person in this story because she is able to gather herself even after the realization that things aren’t working out the way they should have. Leroy, on the other hand, almost pushes it to the back of his mind by thinking about other things and fails to take Norma Jean seriously when she states that she is leaving him. On the contrary, Norma Jena gives herself a sense of real hope when she tries to better herself with her exercises in the end, yet Leroy has a sense of false hope when he thinks Norma Jean is waving to him when she is standing on the bridge (613). Even after she leaves him, he still stands “admiring” her and gathering his thoughts when he wonders “Is she beckoning to him? She seems to be doing an exercise for her chest muscles” (613). (730)