Suicide-by-shotgun tradition

The Suicide-by-shotgun tradition is a recurring motif in the novel, introduced through the narrator's neighbor Frank, who becomes the latest in a line of four generations of men in his family to die by shooting himself in the arse with a shotgun. The narrator presents this as a darkly comic family inheritance, a 'tradition' of self-inflicted death that she contrasts with her own deviant, eccentric existence as a mother and wife. The tradition functions as a lens through which the narrator examines the animality of rural life, the mechanization of human behavior, and the thin line between following custom and committing an act of profound violence against oneself.

The Frank Family Inheritance

The tradition is first revealed through the narrator's account of her neighbor Frank, a man living a few miles away, who is described as the oldest of seven siblings. Last Christmas, Frank fired a shotgun into his own arse, an act the narrator imagines must have been a 'nice surprise' for his pack of kids. The narrator immediately frames this not as an isolated tragedy but as the continuation of a family pattern: Frank's great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all died by the same method. The narrator's dry observation that 'at the very least, you could say it was his turn' transforms what might be a shocking act of violence into a grimly predictable family obligation, a hereditary duty passed down through generations like a name or a piece of property.

Tradition as Animal Instinct

The narrator uses the Frank family tradition to illustrate her broader meditation on the animality of rural life. She observes that the people around her prepare for winter 'like animals,' chopping wood for the cold season, and that 'nothing distinguishes us from them.' The shotgun suicides are presented as part of this same animalistic pattern — a reflexive, almost instinctual behavior that the men of the family follow without question, just as they would follow the seasonal rhythms of wood-chopping. The narrator explicitly includes herself in this animal world, declaring that despite being 'an educated woman, a university graduate,' she is 'more of an animal than those half-dead foxes, their faces stained red, sticks propping their mouths wide open.' The tradition thus becomes evidence for her claim that human beings, even those who consider themselves civilized, are governed by the same blind, repetitive drives as the animals around them.

The Narrator's Contrasting Deviance

The narrator sets the Frank family tradition against her own situation, which she describes as that of 'a normal woman from a normal family, but an eccentric, a deviant.' While the Frank men follow their family's suicidal tradition with mechanical regularity, the narrator's own deviance lies in her refusal to conform to the expected patterns of motherhood and marriage. She lies hidden in the underbrush, spying on her naked husband and son splashing in a blue paddling pool, dreaming of a knife in her hand, and yet she does not kill them — she drops the knife and goes to hang out the washing 'like nothing had happened.' The contrast is pointed: the Frank men kill themselves because it is their tradition, while the narrator, who fantasizes about violence, does not act on her impulses. Her deviance is internal, a matter of thought and desire, whereas the Frank family's tradition is external, a matter of action and repetition.

Mechanized Death and Mechanized Love

The tradition also connects to the narrator's broader critique of mechanization in human life. She describes herself and her husband as 'one of those couples who mechanise the word love,' using the word mechanically without genuine feeling. The Frank family's shotgun suicides are presented as the ultimate expression of this mechanization — a death that is repeated so many times it becomes a routine, a custom, a tradition. The narrator's own violent fantasies, by contrast, are anything but mechanical; they are vivid, sensory, and charged with desire. The sun on her palm feels 'like a knife,' the sky is 'red, violet, trembling,' and she is 'hot and bothered by the tingling between my legs.' The tradition of suicide-by-shotgun thus stands as the terminal point of a life lived by rote, while the narrator's deviance, however disturbing, represents a refusal to surrender to that mechanical existence.

The Tradition's Narrative Significance

The Suicide-by-shotgun tradition serves as a darkly comic counterpoint to the narrator's own struggles with suicidal ideation and violence. Where the narrator's thoughts of self-harm are presented as a private, anguished interiority — the sun on her palm feeling like a knife she could use to bleed herself dry — the Frank family's suicides are public, communal, and almost festive, occurring at Christmas and leaving behind 'a pack of kids.' The narrator's irony in describing Frank's death as 'a nice surprise' and 'following tradition' underscores her alienation from the community around her, a community that treats death by one's own hand as a matter of course. The tradition thus becomes a measure of the narrator's distance from the 'normal family' she ostensibly belongs to, and a reminder that the line between following tradition and committing an act of violence is thinner than it appears.