Shame and Embarrassment

I chose to trace the word "shame" throughout the novel A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. The word "shame" appeared 10 times within the 340-page novel. This term played a vital role in the novel because the sentiment of shame is what tied all of the characters together, as every single character felt its sting at some point in his or her life. That seems like a rather bold statement to make, considering that there are over 30 major and minor characters in the novel, and the word only appears 10 times. Even more strange, seven of the 10 times the term appears is within the first 30 pages of the book. However, it is important to recognize not only the use of the word “shame” but also the use of shame as an overarching theme. I believe that Egan chose to use the term so heavily in the first two chapters and then sparingly throughout the rest of the book in order to bring the reader’s attention to the word so that he or she would know that it is an important part of all the characters, and that once it was in the reader’s head she wouldn’t have to repeat it over and over.  So, rather than trace just the word “shame,” I also traced the theme of shame and how it affected each character’s life.

A chapter that I saw the theme of shame most pertinent was coincidentally a chapter in which the term “shame” was never explicitly written. The chapter titled “Selling the General” was dripping with Dolly’s shame and embarrassment over losing her career and her humiliating fall from grace. Instead of saying “Dolly felt shame about how her career ended,” Egan showed how ashamed Dolly felt through description and allowed the reader to come to the obvious conclusion him or herself: “La Doll had made a very human mistake—or so she tried to soothe herself at night when memories of her demise plowed through her like a hot poker, causing her to writhe in her sofa bed and swill brandy from the bottle” (141). Egan elicits the feeling of great shame without ever penning the word. In fact, Egan evokes equal or even more powerful sentiments of shame in passages where she allows the reader to connect the actions of the character to the feelings of the character. For example, compare the last sentence from Dolly’s chapter to this sentence from one of Bennie’s chapters titled “The Gold Cure”: “The shame memories began early that day for Bennie, during the morning meeting…” (19). Thus, the use of the word “shame” is less important than the use of words and description to promote the feeling of shame.

Shame and embarrassment for past and current failures, for painful memories, for medical and mental health conditions, for forbidden emotions in the lives of all of the 30-plus characters in A Visit From the Goon Squad are what truly tie this scattered series of short stories into a cohesive unit as a compelling and evocative novel.