Stoner

William Stoner is presented as the average everyman, which paradoxically makes him the hero of the novel. In his ordinariness, he is a hero because he represents the way most people live small but meaningful lives. In Chapter 1, John Williams characterizes Stoner post-mortem as unmemorable. Colleagues and students forget about him. In beginning his novel about Stoner this way, Williams uses his book to memorialize Stoner and celebrate the ordinary man he was. Stoner’s colleagues and students may not remember him when he’s gone, but Williams’s narrative is a testament to the value of Stoner’s life as a forgettable person. Thus, Williams positions William Stoner as a heroic figure worthy of having his story told even while acknowledging and emphasizing how average and ordinary Stoner’s life was. Most people are not spectacularly influential or even notable. Stoner’s everyman persona makes him a relatable character because most people are like Stoner; most people are average but still worthy of claiming their story. This focus on what an author perceives as ordinariness is a key factor in literary realism. This introduces the theme of The Typical Life as Meaningful. Even though Stoner’s life is typical, this typical story deserves to be told, in Williams’s view; it deserves its own novel.

Stoner also learns to develop his passion as an academic in these chapters. As a young man, William Stoner is the type who doesn’t resist the flow of life much. He follows his parents’ instructions because he has no other stimulus in his life. He farms because they need him to, and he goes away to college because they want him to. He doesn’t reflect or think twice about his life. This speaks to Stoner’s humble and honorable beginnings. As the son of farmers trying to survive on meager earnings, the pursuit of happiness and emotional fulfillment is not on his priority list. Stoner internalizes this and is dutiful in his work. Happiness is not the goal in the Stoner family, but learning and hard work are. William Stoner is inspired to leave these internalized duties behind for the pursuit of his passion. This speaks to the power of literature as a vehicle for moving people and making them feel alive. Once William finds his passion, it’s impossible to return to his family’s farm. This introduces the theme of The Life of Literature Versus the Tedium of Academia. Although in these chapters Stoner has yet to deal with the tedium of academia, of the workplace world surrounding literature, he starts to develop his love of literature and understand the vitality in it. In contrast to much of the tedium in his world is the life inside literature, and he is drawn to this as it provides him with meaning.

Archer Sloane also pushes William Stoner to pursue his passion, to discover this vitality, which is a crucial undoing of how Stoner was raised and shapes Stoner’s identity. Archer Sloane uses Shakespeare to activate Stoner’s passion, and then he recognizes that passion. Sloane reaches out to Stoner to pursue his graduate studies and become a teacher because he recognizes what Stoner is yet to fully acknowledge: Stoner has fallen in love with the written word and with storytelling. The novel continues to speak to The Life of Literature Versus the Tedium of Academia.

As William Stoner grows older and more experienced, Williams switches between referencing him as “William” and as “Stoner” to draw attention to his growing identity. Stoner is used to refer to William Stoner in the narrative in professional spaces, such as when Stoner is working on his PhD. The name “William” is used in more intimate spaces, such as with Edith. By switching between these two names, Williams emphasizes the personalities all humans necessarily switch between. William Stoner is a work in progress, a man who is figuring out what he wants and who he is with each passing year. He is finding meaning in his typical, sometimes tedious, life, and he is doing so in part through his love of literature.

The background context of World War I is important in developing William Stoner’s characterization as an average but meaningful character. The inhumanity of war poses a juxtaposition to the humanity inherent in the work of literature. Stoner’s identity is therefore challenged by the option to sign on to go to war, because his work is based on preserving and celebrating humanity while war tears humanity apart. That Stoner decides to choose humanity over inhumanity emphasizes his role as the everyman hero. Despite the judgment he receives for not going to war, Stoner is confident in his decision. But the juxtaposition between war and literature is also a challenge to literature. While people die for their countries, Stoner works on a dissertation about literature. In times of worldwide strife and struggle, what role does literature play? Stoner and Sloane know that literature keeps humans human, but the truth is also that Stoner’s work in academia doesn’t serve any public or higher purpose besides his own intellectual stimulation. This further emphasizes the theme of The Typical Life as Meaningful. Stoner does not die in war, and the text suggests there is a disconnect between people studying literature and there being real-world problems across the globe. Williams suggests there is still value in Stoner’s approach, in this typical tedious life of focusing on banal and perhaps bourgeois or middle-class issues.

Stoner transitions into yet another new chapter in his life when he marries Edith, and this brings in the theme of The Social Banalities of Marriage as Oppositional to Love. Stoner and Edith’s rapid courtship and marriage represents the uncertainty of the time. Edith doesn’t want to wait to get married because as a woman she has been raised to believe that her role is to be a wife. Edith has been well-educated, but society gives her no recourse to employ her education. Rushing into marriage helps Edith develop a sense of self separate from her parents. Far from being freed and empowered through marriage, Edith trades one boring life for another. In her life with William, she doesn’t have any stimulation and realizes quickly that she was too hasty in marrying him. Her wealthy and privileged background is, true to her father’s prediction, a loss to her when she marries Stoner. As opposed to feelings of love, the couple is overwhelmed by the social banalities of marriage, of social expectations and tedium.

On the first night of their honeymoon, Edith falls ill, which is a symbolic foreshadowing that their marriage won’t be a happy one and shows this marriage will be hollow. Edith again tries to rely on social expectations to inform her happiness by getting pregnant but is swallowed up by the same banalities. When Grace is born, Edith won’t hold the baby, signaling her discontent with the life expected of her. William is left to pick up the pieces of his home, but Edith’s emotional and physical distance from him only gets worse. Their unhappy marriage is yet another source of evidence that William is an average person. While the average life brings Stoner joy and opportunity, as he explores professional and meaningful growth outside of the home, Edith by contrast is constrained by the same status quo to a life of discontent; the typical life of the status quo treats men and women differently, a sentiment harkening back to the roots of literary realism in Madame Bovary.