Birdland

I felt that there was some kind of organizing structure that had to do with looking to the past to define the future. Several of the characters seem to follow this structure. Mayor Dillard and Lookout Mountain Coley look to their past to maintain their friendship. Lookout “will not run against his friend…Too much has passed between them” (19). Mayor Dillard continues to stake Dillard Does It Better signs all over the little town each election term. Driven by his superstitions, “he visits each of his constituents in person, bribes us with hard cider and the promise of a brighter future here in Elbow” despite the fact that he runs unopposed as he has for the last eleven terms. He simply continues to do what he has always done.

Similarly, much of the town’s future is based on the past of its football team. The entire town comes together to watch every football game at Dillard’s Country Store. They get very worked up over it. They live in the glory days of the “great Bear Bryant” and “Lookout’s punt return”. The narrator wishes he could “call all the broadcasters in New Jersey who have forgotten how great we used to be, how we won a dozen National Championships, how Alabama lost only six games in the first ten years of my life” (13). The story has more of a happy tone at the end, mirroring the hope the town has when their team starts winning again. The success of the football team defines the future of the town.

Archibald, the original bird-keeper, follows this structure as well. We find out that when he died, he “was deep in Alzheimer’s by the time of his death and was unable even to recognize his own children when they visited” (8). I find it interesting that because he no longer had a past, he couldn’t have a future.

The Blonde’s character is a little different but she still follows the basic structure. She wants to return to New Hampshire. She tells the narrator (Raymond) several times that she can’t stay in Elbow with him (“‘This is not my baby,’ she says. ‘This is not my life.’” (17)). Elbow is not her past so it cannot be her future. Eventually, Elbow does become a part of her past, especially once she becomes pregnant. Like the narrator said, “You can get used to anything, given time” (9). Now her past consists of both Elbow and New Hampshire and both influence her future: “We have reached an acceptable compromise: spring in Rhode Island, fall back here” (19).