The first love is hard to get over especially when the love is
not reciprocated. Alice Munro’s “An Ounce of Cure” describes a teenager’s reaction to being
dumped by her first boyfriend. How the main character handles her problem is the crux of the
story.
Setting
The
setting of the story is a small town in the 1960s. This town is conservative and does not
promote alcohol. The two primary setting are the main character’s home and the home in which
she baby sits—the
Berrymans.
Narration
The
narration is first person point of view. The narrator is the protagonist of the story: an unnamed
teenage girl. The story is told primarily as a flashback from the adult narrator. As a result,
the narrator can tell her story with playfulness, self-deprecation, detachment, and even
fondness. While the incident caused her genuine pain at the time, she has long since come to
terms with it.
Summary
The
protagonist has been dumped by Martin. She is forced to see him with his new girlfriend which
adds to the pain that she is already experiencing. Crying all the time, she decides to commit
suicide; however, she stops after taking six aspirins.
Her mother
does not help. Noticing that something is wrong with her daughter, the girl tells her what is
wrong and the mother responds that it is a good thing that the broke
up.
The girl has to baby sit at the Berryman’s. When they leave
her, she feels such pain and loneliness. The Berrymans are new to town, and they do drink. After
putting on some moody, sad music, she decides to fix herself something to drink to kill the pain.
She drinks a full glass of rye with an ounce of scotch. In the beginning, she feels a little
better. Then, she becomes drunk and starts vomiting all over the bathroom, herself, and the new
rug.
Realizing that she needs help, she calls her friend to come
over and help her. Her friend brings another girl and two guys with her. The girls clean her up
and place a blanket around her until her clothes dry. The Berrymans come home early and discover
the situation. The narrator tells the Berrymans everything including the suicide attempt. They
fire the narrator immediately.
Oh, no, Mr. Berryman I beg of you, my mother is a
terribly nervous person I don't know what the shock might do to her. I will go down on my knees
to you if you like but you must not phone my
mother...
Mr. Berryman drives her home
and tells her that she has to tell her mother or he will.
When she
walks in the door, she falls to her knees. Finally, she tells her mother everything that has
happened. After her initial shock and “cry of pure amazement,” the mother handles the situation
rather coolly. She seems to accept some of the responsibility, perhaps believing she has been
too absent from a daughter’s life—she only heard about all the events the night of the
drunkenness, and she believes that she had made “a great mistake” letting her daughter
date.
Everyone in school knows about the incident; the narrator
now is ostracized by everyone for a while until another student does something stupid. The
episode is one of those revealing and embarrassing moments in teenage life when the person is
forced to confront how unsophisticated and how self-absorbed he
is.
The last incident in the story occurs when the narrator comes
back after college, marriage, and children. She returns home for a funeral. Martin is the
undertaker. They exchange knowing looks.
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