Killings

by Andre Dubus

Kisah ini disadur dari cerita pendek bertajuk “Killings” karya ANDRE DUBUS, yang diterbitkan pertama kali di tahun 1979. Dua puluh dua tahun kemudian, di tahun 2001, cerita ini diadaptasikan ke dalam bentuk film dengan judul “In The Bedroom” besutan sutradara muda, Todd Field.

Andre Dubus adalah seorang penulis AS yang meninggal di usia 62 tahun di tahun 1999. Beliau dinobatkan sebagai salah satu cerpenis terbaik di abad ke-20.

Genres: Short Stories

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Award-winning author Andre Dubus II (1936–1999) has been hailed as one of the best American short story writers of the twentieth century. Dubus’s collections of short fiction include Separate Flights (1975), Adultery & Other Choices (1977), and Dancing After Hours (1996), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Another collection, Finding a Girl in America, features the story “Killings,” which was adapted into the critically acclaimed film In the Bedroom (2001), starring Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marisa Tomei. His son Andre Dubus III is also a writer.

Reviews

[Shaun Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Killings” addresses various themes, particularly those of vengeance, duty, and morality. Although the author has very obviously made Matt out to be the protagonist, narrating his thought processes and emotional journey throughout the story, I couldn’t help but feel drawn toward Strout’s character and wanting to know more about him. It is very easy to support the protagonist, condone his judgement, and condemn anyone that opposes or crosses him when information about his feelings and backstory is so easily accessible; but what about Strout? Only one side of the story is being told here, we hear Matt’s opinions and no one else’s. I felt compelled to find a way to justify Strout’s reasoning behind his chain of action, to fill in the blanks left by the author. We don’t know how his marriage and family was really like before his wife left him. All we hear are Matt’s speculations, which are probably biased. What then, was Strout’s side of the story?

Through the little hints the author subtly dropped, I began to empathize with Strout much more than I thought I would be able to during the first few pages of the story. After shooting Frank, the author told us that he “went home to wait for the police”. So this man did have a conscience, he knew that what he did was wrong, and he was prepared to accept the consequences of his actions, whatever they might be. He could have skipped town and yet he didn’t. He might not have bought into the lie Matt told him about wanting to help him break bail, but it seemed like what little part of him that did, didn’t agree with it anyway because he knew that he deserved what he already had coming legally. What drove this man to commit a premeditated act of murder without attempting to cover it up, knowing full well that there would be nowhere to hide? We see that Strout tried explaining to Matt that he did it because “He was making it with my wife.” Strout still referred to and thought of Mary Ann as his wife, despite having already separated from her. Could it be that there was some form of miscommunication or lack of closure that led Strout to believe that he still had a chance with Mary Ann when he did not? Did Frank, not knowing how Strout saw the situation at the time, do things to provoke Strout and act in a manner which encouraged a chain of circumstances that ultimately led to his demise?

We see that there are so many ways the situation could have gotten to where it did from the way it was handled very early on. I think that what happened to Strout could happen to any one of us. Push a man (or woman) too far off the edge and he will crack. As civilized as we claim to be, there is a line that, once crossed, pulls us back to humankind’s most primal, survivalist instincts. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

[Tova · Rating 2 out of 5]

Um ... well okay then.

[Deana Ralston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh it was just okay. My daughter had to read it for her English class, so we read it together. It was a story of revenge, but not quite sure what do think about it. It really wasn’t as good as everyone proclaims. Glad it was a “short” story!

[sam t. · Rating 3 out of 5]

dateline but make it gothic short story

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me ha parecido una historia corta de misterio bastante buena. La tensión se palpa desde el primer minuto y aunque puede parecer confuso al comienzo, si sigues leyendo vas atando cabos y todo cobra sentido.

El autor logra que empatices con la situación del protagonista tanto que quizá hasta entiendes sus actos haciéndolos no por ello menos terribles.

Quizá sí la hubiera encontrado en español la habría disfrutado más porque el slang que usaban a veces me parecía complejo.

Pero en general la he disfrutado.

[Kyaw Zayar Lwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

သတ်ဖြတ်မှုများတဲ့။
Literatureနဲ့ပတ်သက်တဲ့ courseတခုမှာပါလို့ ဖတ်ခဲ့ရတယ်။
လက်စားချေမှုကို ဇာတ်လမ်းဆင်ထားတာ။
ဇာတ်အိမ်က ရုပ်လုံးကြွနေသလားဆိုတော့လည်း အဲ့ဒီလောက်မကြွ။
ဇာတ်ကောင်အဖွဲ့ကကော ကောင်းလွန်းသလားဆိုတော့ အဲ့ဒီလောက်မကောင်း။
သို့သော် ဆွဲဆောင်မှုတော့ ရှိသင့်သလောက် ရှိတယ်။
အပိုအလိုရယ်လို့ မရှိ။
သာမန်လူတွေ ဘာကြောင့် မိုက်မဲလှတဲ့ ရာဇဝတ်မှုတွေ ကျုးလွန်းကြရတာလဲ။
ကားထဲမှာ သူ့သားကိုသတ်သူကို သေနတ်နဲ့ချိန်ရင်း ဘေးဝဲယာဆီရောက်သွားတဲ့ အာရုံတွေကို ဖွဲ့ထားတာတော့ လှလှပပရှိလှတယ်။

[Brayan Uribe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I've said it before. Andre Dubus was a master of the short story. Killings doesn't waste a single word and you're completely immersed from beginning to end. I felt the sea of Matt's sorrows and didn't even second-guessed his motives and went and read the story a second time immediately.

[PacingTheFleur · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was unsatisfied with the story, mainly because there was no risk to the plot or actions of the protagonists.

[Danilo DiPietro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tense, tautly written. A feeling of inevitability. Tough read.

[Macy Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for Creative Writing

[Lautaro Lobo · Rating 5 out of 5]

tough read

[Ixcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Expose the human experience of loved ones who seek revenge of those who killed their own family. This story is about a grieving mother and an enraged vengeful father who makes it his mission to kill his son’s murder. Despite him killing his son’s murder the father still feels the same, and realizes that nothing will change the fact that his son is still dead.

[Arin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, I hardly know where to start, such emotional turmoil and intensity.

[grandmother longlegs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emotional turmoil and strain at its finest. The nonlinear way of pacing adds a depth of separation and nostalgia, removal from the present and in turn the actions that take place taking the lives of several individuals, metaphorically and literally. Fantastic read.