Male Ventriloquism Analysis

She had a rough voice gentled, between London and Liverpool, as the group voice was. When Roland began to speak, after this, she put a hand over his mouth, which was as well, for he had nothing to say. Later, Roland noticed, as he himself had his successes, Val said less and less, and when she argued, offered him increasingly his own ideas, sometimes the reverse side of the knitting, but essentially his. She even wrote her Required Essay on "Male Ventriloquism: The Women of Randolph Henry Ash." Roland did not want this. When he suggested that she should strike out on her own, make herself noticed, speak up, she accused him of "taunting" her. When he asked, what did she mean, "taunting," she resorted, as she always did when they argued, to silence. Since silence was also Roland's only form of aggression, they would continue in this way for days, or, one terrible time when Roland directly criticised "Male Ventriloquism," for weeks. And then the fraught silence would modulate into conciliatory monosyllable, and back to their peaceful co-existence. When Finals came, Roland did steadily and predictably well. Val's papers were bland and minimal, in large confident handwriting, well laid out. "Male Ventriloquism" was judged to be good work and …show more content…
Val had never, during their time together, proposed to Roland that they visit her mother, though Roland had twice taken her to Glasdale, where she had helped his father wash up, and had taken his mother's jeering deflation of their way of life in her stride, telling him, "Don't worry, Mole. I've seen it all before. Only mine drinks. If you lit a match in our kitchen, it'd go up with a