The Brother by Robert Coover
"The Brother" by Robert Coover is a thought-provoking short story that explores themes of familial duty, ambition, and the consequences of misguided actions. The narrative centers around a narrator who grapples with his elder brother's eccentric decision to build a large boat in a field, seemingly disconnected from any body of water. Despite his skepticism, the narrator chooses to support his brother, leading him to neglect his own responsibilities, including caring for his pregnant wife. As the story unfolds, a deluge rains down on their farmland, prompting a crisis where the narrator seeks refuge with his brother, only to be rebuffed.
The tension escalates as the narrator's wife reflects on the futility of their situation, questioning the wisdom of their actions. Ultimately, as the floodwaters rise, the narrator is left contemplating his choices and the fate of his family from a hilltop, while his brother sails away in the boat. The story's closing moments evoke a sense of helplessness and questioning of sanity, as the narrator realizes the grave implications of their decisions. Coover's work invites readers to reflect on the complexities of brotherly relationships and the unpredictable nature of life.
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The Brother by Robert Coover
First published: 1969
Type of plot: Parody
Time of work: The time of the biblical Flood
Locale: Probably the Middle East
Principal Characters:
The narrator , an unnamed man who appears to be Noah's brotherHis wife His older brother , also unnamed but probably the biblical NoahHis brother's wife
The Story
The narrator contemplates the most recent of his elder brother's "buggy ideas": building a boat—a rather large boat, in a field far from any water. Although he is skeptical, as are his and his brother's wives, he does what he always has done for his sibling. He helps and humors him, though he also wonders how his simple-minded brother has managed to learn so much about boat building. Devoting more and more time to helping his brother, the narrator guiltily neglects both his own farm and his pregnant wife. She, however, manages to sow enough seed to ensure their survival during the coming year if it rains sufficiently. After the boat is completed, the brother takes up residence on board, much to his wife's disgust and the narrator and his wife's amusement. Then rain begins to fall. Initially the rain gives the young couple a reason to stay indoors together, but as it floods their fields and ruins their crops, the narrator's wife wonders despairingly whether they should have wasted their time building a boat themselves. When the downpour turns into deluge, the narrator goes to his brother to seek temporary refuge for himself, his wife, and his unborn child, but he is silently rebuffed. Fighting the rising waters, he reaches the relative safety of a nearby hill, from which he sees the boat sailing into the distance and his own house nearly covered.
As the story ends, the narrator—after a futile attempt to save his wife—is back on the hill again. He calculates that he may have a day left if the rain continues. Unable to see his brother's boat, he wonders how his brother knew the rain was coming. He concludes that "it's not hard to see who's crazy here I can't see my house no more just left my wife inside where I found her I couldn't hardly stand to look at her the way she was."
Bibliography
Andersen, Richard. Robert Coover. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Cope, Jackson. Robert Coover's Fictions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Evenson, Brian. Understanding Robert Coover. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Gado, Frank. First Person: Conversations on Writers and Writing. Schenectady, N.Y.: Union College Press, 1973.
Gordon, Lois G. Robert Coover: The Universal Fictionmaking Process. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.
Kennedy, Thomas E. Robert Coover: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1992.
McCaffery, Larry. "As Guilty as the Rest of Them: An Interview with Robert Coover." Critique 42, no. 1 (Fall, 2000): 115-125.
McCaffery, Larry. The Metafictional Muse: The Work of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982.
Maltby, Paul. Dissident Postmodernists: Barthleme, Coover, Pynchon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Pughe, Thomas. Comic Sense: Reading Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Philip Roth. Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1994.