Victory over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
"Victory over Japan" by Ellen Gilchrist is a short story that explores the complexities of childhood experiences against the backdrop of World War II. The narrative follows a third-grade girl named Rhoda, who is both fascinated and repulsed by her classmate, Billy Monday, a boy who has recently become a subject of gossip due to an incident involving a squirrel bite. Rhoda struggles with her desire for her mother's approval while grappling with the harsh realities of life, including her father's absence due to the war.
As the students prepare for a paper drive to support the war effort, Rhoda's relationship with Billy evolves from one of disdain to collaboration, as they partner up for the event. However, their innocent endeavor takes a dark turn when they encounter disturbing magazines while collecting papers from a suspicious house. This moment leaves an indelible mark on both children and highlights the loss of innocence that can accompany the harsh truths of the adult world.
The story culminates with the announcement of Japan's defeat, juxtaposed with Rhoda's internal conflict about her father's potential return and the trauma reflected in her visions of warfare. Gilchrist's tale captures the intersection of childhood naivety, the impact of war, and the struggle for understanding in a changing world.
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Victory over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
First published: 1984
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of work: 1945
Locale: Seymour, Indiana
Principal Characters:
Rhoda Manning , the narrator, who recalls a moment when she was in the third gradeHer mother Billy Monday , her third-grade classmate, a rabies victim
The Story
When the story opens, Rhoda is enthralled with imagining particulars about Billy Monday's "tragedy": He is to have "fourteen shots in the stomach as the result of a squirrel bite." With ghoulish awe, Rhoda describes the ritual of the school principal and Billy's mother coming to get him every day when it is time for his shot. Using the pronoun "we," she speaks for the whole class in her descriptions. She and her best friend Letitia joke with each other about how they themselves would react to such a situation. By contrast, Billy Monday sits on a bench by the swings not talking to anybody. He is a small, pallid boy whom everyone ignored until he was bitten.
Although Rhoda is disgusted by the fact that Billy can barely read and that his head falls on the side of his neck when he is asked to do so, she is also fascinated by him. Rhoda is the only third-grader to have had an article published in the elementary school paper, and she determines to interview Billy for another article. Her first efforts at this during a noon recess cause Billy to withdraw into the shape of a human ball. Mrs. Jansma comes over to comfort him, sending Rhoda off to clean the chalkboards.
Meanwhile the school is gearing up for another paper drive to help the war effort. Rhoda jumps to her feet to be the first volunteer and to claim Billy Monday as her paper-drive partner. At home, Rhoda's mother rewards her for volunteering to be Billy's partner by baking her cookies. Rhoda feels pleased and goes outside to sit in her treehouse with cookies and a book. As she daydreams about becoming like her mother, it becomes clear how much she wants and needs her mother's approval, especially with her father off fighting in the war. Her mother has been painting liquid hose on her legs, getting ready for a visit from the Episcopalian minister, and Rhoda thinks about what an unselfish person her mother is. Later she overhears the adults talking about her approvingly, in intimate tones. Rhoda smugly returns to her book with a fresh supply of cookies and loses herself in the dialogue of a romance meant for adult readers.
On the Saturday of the paper drive, there is a slight drizzle, and Mr. Harmon, the school principal—who was shell-shocked in World War I—gives the children assembled on the school playground a patriotic pep talk. The third-grade class is leading the drive by seventy-eight pounds.
As Rhoda and Billy begin pulling a red wagon into the neighborhood assigned to them, Rhoda interviews Billy for the article she plans to write. Billy gives her a few unsensational answers and she continues to make herself the heroine by pulling the wagon and going up to the doors by herself. They are so successful that Mrs. Jansma later says "she'd never seen anyone as lucky on a paper drive" as Billy and Rhoda. They all decide to make one more trip.
As it gets dark, Rhoda and Billy decide to try a brick house that looks to Rhoda like a place where old people live; she thinks that old people are the ones with the most newspapers. This time she urges Billy to go to the door with her because she is tired of doing it herself. A thin man about Rhoda's father's age answers the door. This time Billy asks the man for papers; it is the first time that he has spoken to anyone but Rhoda all day. They follow the man through the musty house to the basement stairs, where he says they can have all the papers that they can carry. The children feel lucky when they find a large stack of magazines. Excited about winning the competition, Rhoda eagerly goes up and down the stairs filling the wagon. When she returns, Billy beckons her to look at what is inside one of the magazines: nude photographs of young children. They leave the house immediately, not closing doors or stopping to say thank you. Outside they discover that all the magazines from this house are of the same kind. After throwing them away, they part company and Rhoda tries to comfort Billy by saying that at least he will have something new to think about when he gets his shot the next day. Then she twice urges him not to tell anybody. Uncharacteristically, he keeps his head raised and looks straight at her when he says that he will not. He also asks if she will really be writing about him in the paper.
On the way home, Rhoda struggles with the images left in her mind by the photos and picks irises in an effort to please her mother. She writes her article about Billy, and it appears in the school paper. However, she never does get around to telling her mother about the magazines.
One day in August Rhoda is walking home from the swimming pool, and the man who gave her and Billy the magazines drives by and looks right into her face. She drops everything and runs home, scared and determined to tell her mother. When she gets home, however, her mother, brother, and several guests, including the minister, are crowded around the radio listening to the news. Her mother tells her to be quiet because they are trying to determine whether the United States has won the war. As they listen to news of the dropping of the biggest bomb in history on Japan, no one pays attention to Rhoda. She goes upstairs to think things over, feeling ambivalent about the war ending because it will mean the return of her father. Wrapped in her comforter, she falls into a nightmarish reverie in which she sits behind the wheel of an airplane carrying the bomb to Japan, but first dropping one on the bad man's brick house.
Bibliography
Bauer, Margaret D. "Water and Women: Ellen Gilchrist Explores Two Life Sources." Louisiana Literature 7, no. 2 (1990): 82-90. Traces the water imagery through several of Gilchrist's works, showing how connection to water empowers the female characters and reflects their own life-giving capability.
Christian Science Monitor. LXXVI, December 7, 1984, p. 38.
Kirkus Reviews. LII, August 1, 1984, p. 698.
Larue, Dorie. "Progress and Prescription: Ellen Gilchrist's Southern Belles." Southern Quarterly 31, no. 3 (1993): 69-78. Argues that the weaknesses of Gilchrist's work are the author's apparent approval of her heroines' prolonged immaturity and these women's consistent inability to learn from their mistakes.
McDonnell, Jane Taylor. "Controlling the Past and the Future: Two-Headed Anna in Ellen Gilchrist's The Anna Papers." In The Anna Book: Searching for Anna in Literary History, edited by Mickey Pearlman. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Explores the significance of writing and mothering in Gilchrist's second novel.
Matthews, Betty A. "The Southern Belle Revisited: Women in the Fiction of Ellen Gilchrist." Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 16, no. 1 (1990): 63-81. Holds that the source of Gilchrist's female characters' conflicts is their "tend[ency] to define themselves in relation to men." The author also provides an insightful reading of the relationship between the recurring characters Crystal and Traceleen, noting that Traceleen is "the voice of common sense and order" in the Crystal/Traceleen stories and the only Gilchrist woman "undamaged by her relationships with men."
The New York Times Book Review. LXXXIX, September 23, 1984, p. 18.
The New Yorker. LX, November 19, 1984, p. 190.
Newsweek. LV, February 18, 1985, p. 81.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXVI, July 27, 1984, p. 136.
Thompson, Jeanie, and Anita Miller Garner. "The Miracle of Realism: The Bid for Self-Knowledge in the Fiction of Ellen Gilchrist." Southern Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1983): 100-114. This first article to be published on Gilchrist's work provides a reading of the Calvinist elements in her first two books, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams and The Annunciation.
Washington Post. September 12, 1984, p. B1.
Woodland, J. Randall. " ‘New People in the Old Museum of New Orleans': Ellen Gilchrist, Sheila Bosworth, and Nancy Lemann." In Louisiana Women Writers: New Essays and a Comprehensive Bibliography, edited by Dorothy H. Brown and Barbara C. Ewell. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Reads several of the Gilchrist stories (from various books) set in New Orleans, including "Looking over Jordan" from Victory over Japan.