(The short story “THE NIGHT THE STARS FELL” by Dustin M. Hoffman appeared in One Story, issue 289.)
(Yeah, I will SPOIL it.)
I’m really late to the party on this story. “THE NIGHT THE STARS FELL” by Dustin M. Hoffman was published May of 2022 in One Story, and I got around to reading it this past week. I wasn’t planning on writing about this story, since it was published almost a year ago, but when I finished reading it, the piece kept poking, and gnawing at me.
The story takes place on a Thursday night when all the stars in the night sky have fallen and disappeared. There is Jack, a former accountant who has been unemployed for eight months and spends his days watching tv, and his nurse wife, Catherine, who has remained employed at the local hospital to keep the two of them financially afloat. We learn that Catherine had a miscarriage a little over eight months ago, and their lives haven’t been the same since. It is on this night, that Jack has decided to talk to Catherine about how they should try again to have a child, but with the stars disappearing from the night sky, the conversation doesn’t occur. They decide to drive around town, to witness the chaos as the end of the world appears to be close. They end up at a bonfire at a local grocery store, where Jack makes a realization about his wife.
One of the things that I appreciated with this story was the decision to make the external event, the stars disappearing, just on the very far out edge of possibility, though highly unlikely. I will take a wild stab in the dark here and say that the stars disappearing is a stand in for the Pandemic; a global event that brings about change and self-reflection. And that’s what I think the story was really about – watching how these two depressed and dissatisfied people deal with a life changing event that is beyond their control, or ability to affect the outcome. They are powerless. But this situation is handled with a light touch, and allows a few moments of humor to pop up, which was refreshing. (It’s not lost on me that the disappearing stars could also function as a metaphor for the miscarriage, but I’m sticking with the Pandemic.) Without these uses of humor, the story could have easily spiraled out of control.
Even with all of that said, this is a story about Jack and Catherine, and their relationship. When we are introduced to Jack, he is presented as a man who has given up – unemployed for the past eight months by his own passive-aggressive doing, he watches Discovery Channel all day, keeps the curtains drawn. He is showing all the signs of depression with his inaction. He’s a schlub and starts the story at a very low point. Catherine is also depressed, but acts out. Her first reaction to seeing the stars fall is to reach out and try to stop it from happening. Also, she has no issue slapping Jack to get him to focus on the issues at hand. She climbs out of the car, and throws her shoes. Though pointless sometimes, Catherine does take action. Both of their depressions are springing from the same place – the miscarriage. I liked that Jack and Catherine had this dualism. It’s not a revolutionary narrative trick, but in the right hands it can be very effective.
Now, as the story unfolds it is revealed to us that Catherine, after the miscarriage had an affair, only for Jack to go and have his own affair. We are informed they reconciled after working at it, only to land in a rut of a banal existence with the help of their top-of-the-line HD TV. This paragraph of backstory is given to us right in the middle of the piece, and I know it was meant to function as the explanation of how they got to this place in their relationship when we first meet them. But, this development struck me as odd, especially for Jack. From what we know of Catherine, she is acting out on her depression, thus having an affair fits with her character. But Jack? The guy who never leaves home and watches tv all day? I mean, to have an affair, you have to put for a little effort. What we know of him, he doesn’t follow through with putting out effort.
I justify my reasoning of this by referring back to the beginning of the story. We are told Jack is ready to try again at having a baby, and that Catherine just needs convincing, but that is only a red herring. When Catherine returns home, and tells him of the stars, he cannot focus on her, but continues to watch tv. Catherine has to slap him, just to get Jack to focus on the issues at hand. To me, this says that Jack never truly intended for them to try again for a baby, let alone have a conversation about it, because it was never at the forefront of his thoughts. He might be saying that he wants a child, but he actions are to stay in front of that TV.
So, when we get to the end of the story, and Jack “realizes” what Catherine had gone through with the miscarriage, what is his action? He doesn’t go to her to try to console her, or share his new understanding. In fact, another person has to tell Jack that he needs to go to his wife. And as they drive home, the decision that Jack makes, if there is a tomorrow, is for life to go back to the routine. Jack’s decision is not to take action.
And then that gets me to this question; Can a story have a fulfilling conclusion if the protagonist does not take an action at the climax?
I think Hoffman attempted to do a little sleight of hand here with the ending. As Jack and Catherine are driving home, Jack, with his new insight to what he believes Catherine has been going through, says that she was right that didn’t try again to have a baby. While Jack appears to be referring to the end of the world that might be coming, Catherine’s agreement seems to be referring to the state of their relationship. Is this relationship a tragedy? Are they star crossed lovers, doomed to fail, or are their fates trapped in the stars, never to be changed? It’s an interesting idea, or metaphor, that Hoffman attempts to use, but ultimately, it falls flat.
It falls flat, in part due to how Catherine is not treated as an equal to Jack in the story. The narrator tells us what Jack is thinking and realizing, but for Catherine, we are left to speculate. We are never told what her thoughts are, and on a few instances, the narrator isn’t sure what the motivation for her actions are, only to tell us what Catherine “seems” to be doing. Catherine is treated as just another character, like the employees of the grocery store burning shopping carts in the parking lot.
Because of this decision, “THE NIGHT THE STARS FELL” is Jack’s story. And again, I ask, can a story have a fulfilling conclusion if the protagonist does not take an action at the climax? Jack’s hero’s journey, to use the Joseph Campbell’s theory, is that at the beginning he decides to take an action for a purely selfish reason, goes out in the world where he learns an insight about his wife, and then decide that he wants to go right back to where he started, without making any changes. Jack starts as a schlub and ends as a schlub; it’s not a satisfying journey for the hero.
Now, I try to follow the rule of critiquing the story that is presented by the author, and not the suggesting what I would have done if I had written the story. But in this instance I am going to make an exception. Mainly to ask; Why wasn’t Catherine the protagonist of this story? She is a much more interesting, and dynamic of a character compared to Jack. She’s complicated, troubled, conflicted, and faces a real crisis of conscious in this story. She also takes action and tries to do things to affect the outcome of the situation she is in. There is drama in her life, not only in her job but in her marriage. Why was Catherine relegated, and she was by the way she was treated by the narrator, to playing backup to a very bland Jack? Catherine’s character could go in a million different dramatic directions, while Jack is locked into a single predicable trajectory.
Like I said, I was late to the party on this one, but I do think there was an opportunity for a very honest, and humorous story to be told here. It just focused on the wrong person to tell its story.
Matthew Groff 