With Shuddering Fall is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, first published in 1964 by Vanguard Press. A Fawcett Publications paperback edition was issued in 1973.Johnson, 1994 pp. 218-222: Selected Bibliography, Primary WorksCreighton, 1979 pp. 161-169: Selected Bibliography The first of the many novels by Oates, it is set in the fictional Eden County, as are her early short stories.Creighton, 1979 p. 41Johnson, 1987 p. 4
Plot The story is presented from a third-person omniscient point-of-view. The focal character is the 17-year-old Karen Herz.
Karen lives with her fundamentalist Christian and authoritarian father on his farm. His youngest daughter, she is in thrall to his religious fervor and appears to be content to submit to his paternalism. She is particularly impressed with the bible story of Abraham and Isaac, and longs for absolution. Karen becomes embroiled with Shar, the teenage son of a neighbor. She rejects his sexual advances, but the encounter leads to a fist fight between Shar and Karen's father. The vindictive patriarch demands of Karen that she seek retribution against his abuser. Shar attempts but fails to rape Karen, after which she gives herself to him. She follows Shar when he leaves to pursue the transient and risky life of a driver on the racetrack circuit. Max, his promoter, is a cynic who derives a vicarious thrill from his protogee's reckless abandon on the racetrack. Karen fulfills her father's dictate by sending Shar to his death in a race, first having vindictively rejected his love.Creighton, 1979 pp. 41-47: Plot synopsisJohnson, 1987 p. 30: Plot sketch
Retrospective appraisal Though Oates has laced the novel with "perennial best-seller ingredients," her work is endowed with elements of "literary and philosophical allusions" that transcend the narrative featuring sex and violence.Creighton, 1979 p. 47Johnson, 1987 p. 13-14: "With Shuddering Fall...uses biblical myths to provide structural frameworks and symbolic references to otherwise realistic stories."
Biographer Joanne V. Creighton, however, detects an inadequacy in the development of Oates's protagonists: "Perhaps the novel's most blatant weakness is the failure of the two main characters, Shar and Karen, to come to life as credible creations. Lacking reality, they do not engage the readers empathy and sympathy."Johnson, 1987 p. 47: "...the relatively narrow psychological exploration of Oates's first novel, With Shuddering Fall..."
With Shuddering Fall stands as a significant apprenticeship effort that anticipates the themes and structure of Oates's subsequent five novels.Creighton, 1979 p. 41: "more ambitious and ultimately less satisfactory as a work than the early collections of short stories though it examines many of the same themes much more intensively." And p. 47.
Theme The ironically named "Eden" County serves both a symbolic and literal function in a novel that is "most centrally a study in the nature of innocence."
At the center of the work is the irreconcilable differences between Karen and Shar, each of whom strives for self-identity. Their "diametrically opposed personalities" do not prevent them from becoming lovers, but dialectically ensure that the contest between "a Christian versus pagan-world view" will end in tragedy. Biographer Joanne V. Creighton writes:
Literary critic Greg Johnson identifies the "biblical myths" that provide framework and "symbolic resonance" for the novel.Johnson, 1987 p. 14 Commenting on With Shuddering Fall and the short fiction that Oates sets in Eden County, Johnson writes:
Footnotes
Sources Creighton, Joanne V. 1979. Joyce Carol Oates. Twayne Publishers, New York. Warren G. French, editor. Johnson, Greg. 1987. Understanding Joyce Carol Oates. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, South Carolina. Johnson, Greg. 1994. Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne's studies in short fiction; no. 57. Twayne Publishers, New York. Knowles, John. 1964. "A Racing Car is a Symbol of Violence" The New York Times, October 24, 1964. A Racing Car Is the Symbol of Violence Accessed 15 January 2025. Oates, Joyce Carol. With Shuddering Fall. Vanguard Press, New York. Pagones, Dorrie. 1964. "Price of Survival" Saturday Review, November 28, 1964.