The Clan of One-Breasted Women – Rhetorical Analysis
All across the nation people have their opinions, guesses, hypotheses, and theories. As events unfold around us, we whisper our thoughts and fears. Sometimes our fears spread to those we speak with and we are soon drowning in the fear of our friends and loved ones. We choose to make up explanations, stories that appease those loved ones and bring them peace, but that peace never lasts. Terry Williams knows of this fear all too well. In her short essay The Clan of One-Breasted Women she addresses this fear and provides a way to quell it. In no more than seven pages, Williams tells a story of fear, explanations, and a constant search for truth. Put simply, Williams challenges her readers to cease to follow and obey blindly.
Terry Tempest Williams is a renowned writer, who teaches English at the University of Utah. Many of her works have been published and a few of her literary works have made their way to top name publishers, such as the New Yorker and The New York Times. Labelled a “citizen writer,” Williams often unites her love of nature and her passion for writing to educate others on the social and environmental issues around them ("Terry Tempest Williams :: Coyote Clan — Bio.). She not only writes about the environment, she studies and teaches others at the Utah Museum of Natural History, where she has served as a naturalist-in-residence (Williams, 1989). Before all this, however, Williams’ life started out in the desert of Nevada in 1955, where she grew to love the land, as she so beautifully tells us in this literary piece.
Williams opens this short essay with a brief, but touching introduction. She explains that she is part of the Clan of One-Breasted Women, as many of the women in her family are. Seven of the eight women she witnessed be diagnosed with breast cancer have all died, and she has had to fight her own battle with a malignant tumor and a couple of breast biopsies. For years, she was told and believed this was all due to the genetics of her family, and she never questioned that despite the evidence that her faithful LDS (Latter-day Saint) family members lived very different lives from what the experts describe as typical of those who are diagnosed with cancer. They never smoked, drank, used tobacco products, or even drank coffee. One day, long after the loss of her mother to cancer, Williams and her father sat down and found themselves reminiscing about the past. She describes a reoccurring dream of hers, of a bright flash in the desert, and her father explains that Williams saw this bright flash in person on a drive from California. For a variety of reasons, the United States government sought to advance their nuclear weaponry science and spent over a decade raining nuclear radiation over the virtually uninhabited desert. “. . . my family members were some of the ‘virtual uninhabitants,’” Williams states (Williams, 1989). The remainder of the essay is spent providing accounts of those seeking recompense for the pain that was believed to be caused by the nuclear testing of the 1950s.
As the essay progresses, Williams’ tone quickly changes from that of a worn and somber woman to a fiery and passionate fighter. Each word in her essay, after this introduction to her family history, paints a portrait full of disbelief and pointed questions. Where she herself is from Nevada and Southern Utah, Mormon, well acquainted with cancer, and a woman, one might argue Williams’ audience is the group of women who have shared her life experiences and taken part in that same pain. If this were the case, this essay is best read using the Feminist Criticism. However, where her purpose is to invoke an emotional reaction to spur her readers into action and this purpose leaves the door open to a much wider audience—any who seek answers to their questions—a better form of criticism might be the Reader-Response Criticism. Both work well for this essay and pull the writing into different lights, and both forms of criticism help to see her purpose. Williams’ purpose is very clear. She is actively trying to instill a fighting, questioning spirit in her readers.
The essay is full of descriptive accounts and metaphors. “I watched beautiful women become bald as cytoxan, cisplatin, and adriamycin were injected into their veins. I held their foreheads as they vomited green-black bile and I shot them with morphine when the pain became inhuman. In the end, I witnessed their last peaceful breaths, becoming a midwife to the rebirth of their souls” (Williams, 1989). The pain and strength in these words pulls at the hearts of all the readers, but most especially that selective audience of women, especially by using the title “midwife.” Another choice metaphor is given shortly after this passage: “The fear and inability to question authority that ultimately killed communities in Utah during atmospheric testing of atomic weapons was the same fear I saw being held in my mother’s body. Sheep. Dead sheep” (Williams, 1989). Referencing an earlier statement made about the sheep of the south dying from the nuclear fallout, Williams is counting her mother as victim of the very same event.
Williams tells her readers of another dream she had, of ten women from around the world, dancing around a fire in the desert. They sing a Shishoni song about the destruction of the desert and watch as the desert is bombed. Using personification, Williams ties the women of her dream to the land: “And each time there was another nuclear test, ravens watched the desert heave. Stretch marks appeared. The land was losing its muscle” (Williams, 1989). Here we see a bit of the naturalist within Williams. By depicting this image of Shishoni speaking women dancing around a fire and watching the land break under the strain of the nuclear bombs, the reader is forced to see the side of the people and the land, not just the government demanding the bombs be tested. This new perspective is meant to touch all readers, not just the women.
The dream goes on as the women see the death of the land and see that death causing the death of their children, and react. “Red hot pain beneath the desert promised death only as each bomb became a stillborn” (Williams, 1989). Again, we see the author reaching out to her female readers, invoking the emotions of a losing a child in an effort to spurn them into action.
Aside from the references to Native American culture and ties to the land, Williams provides a summary of many law suits filed against the United States for the medical bills and deaths brought on by the nuclear testing. But, of course, the government appeals any court decisions made against it, and seems to turn its back on the American citizens who have suffered at its hand. “What matters is our government is immune. ‘The King can do no wrong’” (Williams, 1989). Williams strikes a nerve in every American citizen with these words, kindling emotions of oppression and pure American pride. This, perhaps, invokes one of the strongest reactions from the reader. A patriotic spin could get anybody fired up and ready to act.
Throughout the essay, the author makes references to oppression and realizations, showing her readers her own conversion to wanting to seek truth. “It was at this moment I realized the deceit I had been living under . . . In Mormon culture, authority is respected, obedience is revered, and independent thinking is not. I was taught as a young girl not to ‘make waves’ or ‘rock the boat.’ . . . I must question everything” (Williams, 1989). Her entire essay could be summarized in one, spectacular sentence: “Tolerating blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives” (Williams, 1989). This is the fire Williams pushes to ignite and the oppression she wishes to free her readers from.
The essay ends as Williams tells a story of the time she and nine other individuals were caught crossing into the testing site, illegally. As she is frisked, an officer finds a pen and pad of paper. “Weapons” she calls them (Williams, 1989). There is a little irony in the fact that Williams addresses the purpose of her essay so bluntly.
Returning to the mention of Reader-Response Criticism, Williams is clearly seeking a response from her readers, and this work could not be fully appreciated without acknowledging my own response to this piece. From the very beginning I knew this would strike me somewhere deep. Having breast cancer in my own family history and also growing up Mormon, there were times I felt Williams was reaching out to me specifically. She used a colloquial vocabulary that still invoked a sense of pride and passion, and also used beautiful imagery to keep me captivated. Her mildly feminist theme, tied to the naturalist theme found throughout the essay helps to make this piece relatable to all who read it. In the end I feel Williams has achieved her goal. I desire to be educated and think for myself. I do not want to count myself as one of the “sheep” and find myself a helpless victim to events I chose not to have control over. And if every one of Williams’ readers feels this way, she has fulfilled her purpose. Overall, the prominent message to keep from following blindly is strong throughout the work. Williams’ uses a variety of literary elements to sway her readers and command their attention. The language is easy to follow and understand, allowing the reader to ponder the content more than the words themselves. I appreciated the chance to get familiar with a piece I had never read and a local author I had never heard about. Truly, Terry Williams has earned every award and title this piece, and other like it, have brought to her.
Works Cited
"Terry Tempest Williams :: Coyote Clan — Bio." Terry Tempest Williams :: Coyote Clan — Bio. Coyote Clan. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. Williams, Terry Tempest. "The Clan of One-Breasted Women." Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. 1989. 816-22. Print.