We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates

I’ve finished We Were the Mulvaneys, and I liked the majority of it. The characters were quite interesting. Each member of the Mulvaney family is completely different from the next, making them seem like the perfect, or typical, American family in the respect that there’s a businessman, homemaker, football star, cheerleader, brain,and baby.

I’ve started writing the paper, and my main idea is about selfishness and individuality. I think each character exhibits his or her own type of selfishness, only shown after the sexual assault that happens to Marianne on Valentine’s Day. And yet, through this selfishness comes a blessing, where each individual Mulvaney is able to move past the family name/identity and become an individual.

The main theme that I discovered throughout this novel is about individual growth. Each individual was only able to grow after he or she left the Mulvaney home/family because of the assault. In the epilogue, Oates gives a type of “happy” ending to the family (but happy isn’t the most accurate word that I would use to describe the ending) because each character can come to terms with being a Mulvaney and with all that has happened after the night of Valentine’s Day because he or she has discovered the individual within, making them stronger as a whole. (Happy isn’t the word that I would necessarily use to describe the ending because although they come back as strong individuals, making them an overall stronger family, I feel that they haven’t truly come to terms or fully made peace with what happened. Michael, Sr., died with absolutely no peace with what had happened to his beloved daughter, and the family was never able to reconnect, which is what makes the ending a truly sad one. But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about in my paper; it was just a side thought that made me dislike the ending.)

So, the overall theme that I'm writing about is the correlation between selfishness, identity, and individuality (all connected to the assault).