The Scream in Alice Munro's "The Time of Death"

Résumé En

In spite of its title, "The Time of Death" is built around a central ellipsis - the time of Benny's death - while it presents the reader with "the times of death", that is the different ways the characters experience and react to that death, reactions which all appear inappropriate. What we are made to see is what surrounds the gaping hole of death. This gaping hole around which the world is built may be linked to Edvard Munch's famous painting, The Scream, which immediatemy comes to mind since the whole short-story builds to a climax: Patricia's wild scream. Although apparently a belated and completely inadequate response to Benny's death, Patricia's scream proves perfectly adequate, breaking through the polished surface of civilization to reveal the animality society tries to erase. However, the short story defies any clear-cut interpretation as the complex handling of point of view and voice as well as the dense network of images refuse the reader any solid ground on which to base a secure interpretation, creating a world which, as in Munch's painting, wavers and melts, an apt rendering of "the time of death".