Conflict in Dubus

The defining characteristic of a story is that it contains a conflict and a resolution--otherwise it would merely be a documentary of facts. This is a law Dubus observes in his writing. However resolution is not defined by closure. Dubus often plays with this little freedom in his short stories because they are meant to be thought provoking. The best way to incur thought in a person is to hide information. Curiosity does not occur out of thin air; it is something that happens when a piece of information is at our disposal but not yet in our grasp. Readers of Dubus want to believe that they have curiosity; we would love to believe that a final existence is in our grasp and that somehow conclusions and closure can be found in the ink and paper in front of us. We seek out details in the story that would somehow explain the future of his fictional (and all too real) world. This problem presents itself in only certain of his stories. In a story like If They Knew Yvonne, we know that Harry comes to terms with himself, his sin, and the reality of his existence. In The Fat Girl, happiness is finally reached despite it's being at the cost of a skin and bones figure. However Miranda Over the Valley, similar to Rose, has a sense of resolution without any closure about the story. We fully understand the conversion in Miranda even if we are not satisfied by it. The story of Rose is a similar one. If there is a moment of grace for her it is not between her and any other character, but between her and the reader. There is a realization of her strength in the author/narrator and reader... but not in Rose herself. This creates for an interesting dynamic in the ending of the story. Normally at "cliffhanger" endings one finds a big drop. But Rose's is the tip of an iceberg (one just needs to read it like twelve times and look over the ending about five more before they can formulate their thoughts on the subject... I mean common). Anyway, Rose is a perfect ending to understanding the reality of Andre Dubus and how he uses sin. Where, in turn, a complete understanding of this technique is rather required to fully articulate the ending of the story, in which not much happens... but a great amount is said.