Power and Dominance

Through his short story Victory Lap, George Saunders manages to capture the imaginations out of our very bodies and place us directly into the minds of several different dynamic characters. He carefully creates several images and examples of different dominance complexes, happily building off the other work in class on philosophers Jessica Benjamin and Vladimir Nabokov.

The first complex he develops in seen through Alison Pope, as she paints her fantasy across her staircase walls. She depicts herself as a ballroom princess, judging suitors left and right, deciding whether they've earned her favor. "What about this guy, behind Mr. Small Package, standing near the home entertainment center? What a thick neck.."  (1). Here Saunders develops his first binary, the BEAUTY/beast. That is, Alison's princess status that reigns above her lowly suitors.

Secondly, Saunders establishes the PARENT/child binary through Kyle. Kyle is hardly allowed to be his own person in life, as he's strictly controlled by his parents rule system. He is so limited by his parents 'directives' that he even considered not doing ANYTHING about Alison's kidnapping, even calling the police, lest the outside world think him strange, lest he violates too many directives. Luckily in the end he is driven to overcome these constraints, but all the same, this binary nearly cost a girl her life.

This ties into the third binary produced, KIDNAPPER/captive, an obviously negative complex by nature. A rapist, pedophilic murderer nearly captures and kills Alison, and would have been successful had Kyle not intervened.

All of these point to a greater truth that Saunders's story conveys, that truly Victory Lap is about the struggle for POWER/dominance, as seen through Alison's need to put herself above her subjects, Kyle's parent's need to control their son and his need to find his own person, and the rapists need to control his victims. Saunders paints these binaries all in negative lights, from Alison fanciful whims forcing her to be polite and invite the murderer into her home despite her instincts, Kyle's much needed reaction that might have remained dormant had his instincts not overridden his rules, and there's definitely no good way to look at a rapist.

In the end, Saunders is able to pull ideas together and solidify an underlying opinion of the negative effects of dominance complexes through carefully constructed streams of consciousness running parallel throughout a gripping short story. He can enchant and perplex the reader, thus inspiring them to seek out complicated thought and find inner meaning in all he writes and all he does, this past example to name one of a few.

He's pretty awesome, this Saunders guy.