Who Is Sissie's Life In Joyce Carol Oates Four Summerss

“Four Summers”, by Joyce Carol Oates is a multifaceted story written to illustrate the inevitable hopeless cycle of life that Sissie lives. Throughout the story, Oates hints that Sissie will unavoidably repeat the life of her mother. Oates writes the story to display Sissie’s life in four different summers, from four different stages of Sissie developing in to a woman. The separation of the four summers is critical to the story because it demonstrates Sissie’s maturation over the years and the realizations and opinions of her life she gathers while growing up. In part one of “Four Summers”, Sissie’s thoughts revolve around innocent observations of her parents. It’s evident that at this point in Sissie’s life that she clings to her mother and father for protection from the world. Although Sissie is very young she starts to notice her …show more content…
Sissie says, “Inside me there is something that wants to run away, that hates them” (28). Now that Sissie is older she notices the loudness of her family and she is embarrassed by their actions. Sissie sees a photo of her mom when she was young but says, “In the photograph she was pretty, almost beautiful, but I don’t believe it. Not really. I can’t believe it, and I hate her” (29). This is an important detail in the story because Sissie knows that her mother’s appearance is completely different now, which angers Sissie because she sees what time has done to her mother and worries what time will do to her. Throughout part two of “Four Summers”, Sissie is starting to become apprehensive of her future because of the negative effect her parents have had on her through childhood. The reader can see that Oates is using foreshadowing in this situation, to articulate that Sissie will be just like her mother, by saying how beautiful her mother once was compared to what she is