Oh, William! (to borrow from Elizabeth Strout) I always look forward to your comments and am particularly interested in your take on this moving and complex story. What do you think the annunciation is in this story?

I loved Lauren Groff’s book “The Fates and the Furies”, and couldn’t wait to devour “The Matrix”. I have to confess I am not moved by this story. It is so diffuse – like it would have been better to be a full-length novel. There is too much packed into it. I don’t know what the “kernel” is.

The “annunciation” I take to be a comment on motherhood – there are three types of mother here, Anais, Griselda, and the narrator’s own mother, each has her good and bad points. But the narrator herself seems to abandon her family regularly, many years later, which seems too faint and shallow a type of motherhood to me.

The quote “in every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death” – clearly a comment on motherhood transcending all other forms of emotion, as a protective madonna.

The phrase echoes Dylan Thomas “I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, …. and my effort is their self-expression.“

A quote which I think is sublime. On reflection, I am even more convinced that this would be a great novel.

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/851304-dylan-thomas-i-hold-a-beast-an-angel-and-a-madman-in-me-and/

I think this story is great. Paradoxically, that is why I have had such a difficult time writing about it. The better the story, the better I want my commentary to be. Now I have just decided to bite the bullet and accept imperfection.
Actually, I agree mostly with what MAH and Senior wrote. There are six types of mother-child connections in the story. First is the narrator —I will call her Nara for short. (“Nara is a girl’s name of Japanese, Hindi, Celtic origin meaning happy.” Narrator is not always happy, but she ends on a happy note.) Nara’s mother is too busy with her other children and being a wife to come to Nara’s graduation. Later Nara gets some insight into her mother’s psychology – as she leaves after her weekend visit, the mother’s posture slumps and her shoulders droop. That is the price of letting yourself become a slave to others, letting your motherhood role consume you.
Second is Anais. She is running from an abusive man trying to protect herself and her child. (This bad man is the only male presence in the story, aside from the anonymous Madonna painters.)
Third is Nara’s job cataloguing information about children in foster care.
This work is echoed in the fourth mother-child bond, Nara’s role as a surrogate or foster child for Griselda (not sure I have that name right.) .
Fifth is Griselda’s relationship with her two biological daughters.
Last, and perhaps most important, is Nara’s mothering of her own children.
To me, all of these connections make up the “kernel” of the story. Maybe more of a pod with six peas inside. With these various instances of motherhood, Groff shows many ways that a woman can relate to her children.
One way is her mother, who effaces herself in the service of her family. A second is Griselda, who lives independently, out of touch with her daughters. Another is Anais, for whom fear is the overwhelming emotion. Because of this fear, she can only do so much for her child. She gives $1,000 to a radio preacher, money that would do something wonderful for her child.
Nara’s way of being a mother is the most prominent. As MAH wrote: ‘It seems to me that she takes time away from family to recharge from time to time–to calm the “times when my life seems so small that the darkness in me has no outlet”, but she also says, “I have always returned, and, when I do, I am a mother who sees her children fully.”’ In this quote I think we can see Groff’s implicit assertion that a woman has to be herself first, before she can be a good mother. And that a woman can only be so good a mother. Trying to do more will hurt the mother and her children.
Here is a quote from an interview with Groff: “I would say that we all have quiet subterranean rebellions going on at all times. I adore my husband very, very much but not a day goes by that I don’t have thoughts that he’d be horrified to know about.”
I speculate that Nara, and perhaps Groff, is bipolar. That fits with the 10-mile runs alternating with periods of darkness. Here is a quote from another interview: ‘Groff is also spectacularly fit thanks to her morning boot-camp sessions and ten-mile runs. “If I don’t exercise every day,” she says, “I go into a death spiral of depression.”’
Finally, we have the Annunciation motif. Of course, it represents the motherhood theme. But how? About these Madonnas, Nara says: “Each woman is one in whom the animal was briefly overcome by the god that lived within her.” First, we need to recognize that this is not a religious statement. Groff writes, “Each Madonna wears the face of a particular mortal woman whom the artist loved.” Also, notice that “god” in the above quote is lower case and that the god is not a person, it is “that”, not “who”. So the god that influences a woman to become a mother is a life force, a generative impulse that counters the death impulse – Freud’s “Love and death”. When the religious inspiration for the Madonnas, Mary, was told that she was to bear a child, she accepted. Just as every woman who becomes a mother accepts that life-affirming impulse.
Second, I don’t know that I agree that Groff is saying that motherhood transcends all other forms of emotion. At the least, it doesn’t preclude times of darkness. Or 10-mile runs.
My analysis is all pedantry, unpacking the elements of the story intellectually. What is great about Groff’s story is that she weaves all these lives and incidents seamlessly with each other in an arresting and emotional way.

MAH: We’ll said, all of your interpretations. I agree that depression is more prominent in Nara’s personality. I raised the manic part as a possibility.

Once again of many times, coming in late, after everyone else has gone home. It was a job to find this discussion, because “Annunciation” isn’t listed in the index under Lauren Groff. If any one reads this, please let me know.

I read the story in the New Yorker when it came out, then today listened to the author’s reading *and read it once more, then read the comments above. I never imagined I’d make such a project out of it! There are still several passages I could and may well review again.

So thorough were the commentaries that I’m happy to have read them and not work over most of those issues. I have more questions than analysis to offer. Also a few personal responses to the story.

It’s a great story, for me not least because it feels real, as if it really happened. The story is believable; the narrator–okay: Nara and the characters are actual people; only objectively do I take them as fictional. Did anyone else feel this way?

I feel this is wholly successful and sufficient as a story, no need for it to have been expanded to a novel. Is anything essential missing?

As I read, I thought I’d have preferred if Nara hadn’t told us certain things ahead that she learned later, letting us wonder until Griselda told her why the mastiff didn’t bark and how the mastiff “put his two great paws on Griselda’s shoulders…”. Or was her way of writing one of the reasons the storytelling seems authentic?

The man in the tree with the bees the only actual male presence in the story, thogh a minor character. Luce’s dad is not on scene, nor is the televangelist (almost certainly male). But that’s an interesting point, that story focuses only on women.

Not to condone sending money to charlatan televangelists, but Anais’s life being as tough as it is, she may feel the need for this belief and a connection to something which seems to keep “body and soul” together, keep her functional.

I, too, like the last lines of the story, about how each representation of a Madonna “wears the face of a particular mortal woman whom the artist loved. Each woman is one in whom the animal was briefly overcome by the god that lived within her.”

I was left with the question: Why the word “annunciation”? Being, in Christian belief, as told in Luke: Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would give virgin birth to the messiah. Is there any specific meaning in that, relating to the story? Or is the word merely used to be suggestive of motherhood?

My favorite interpretation is the last remarks made by MAH (comment above):

[Nara’s] “annunciation (the incarnation of god or goodness or grace) is finding the light, having the “god” within win out over the animal within—most of the time.”

MAH, are you a ma?

Okay, I’m done here. But I can’t leave without mentioning that Groff’s new novel, The Vaster Wilds, is WOW! Maybe her best book to date.

Oh thank you, Senior! I’m glad you’re reading comments, and are a Lauren Groff fan, too. I’ve read all but Monsters…, Fates…, and her recent novella What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf? So much on my BID list (before I die), and I’m senior, too.

What say you on my question, what’s missing in the story that would require a novel?

Where else have you commented? I’m new here, commenting only since October, and finding few recent commenters, This is such a great reader’s site! Where is everyone?

Good luck taking your time on Vaster Wilds. I couldn’t put it down!