"The Moon in Her Doorway" RESPONSE

How Joy Kennedy-O'Neill creates character development in her piece "The Moon in Her Doorway" found at: https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/magic-realism/joy-kennedy-o-neill/the-moon-in-her-doorway

Fighting evil by moonlight/ Winning love by daylight... The Moon Queen herself, everyone. She is the one named Sailor Moon.

"The Moon in Her Doorway" by Joy Kennedy-O'Neill is a story about a woman who gets the Moon stuck, you guessed it, in her doorway. And if there's one thing we can learn from Sailor Moon it's that some pretty amazing things happen when the Moon is involved... which means that we (the reader/watcher/super-fan) get some pretty amazing character development to go with it.

From Doormat to Dreamgirl

DISCLAIMER: I will be purposefully referring to the Moon with a capital M because in my (limited and in no way credible) experience, sketch things seem to happen around a full-moon, and I don't wanna piss anyone (or anything?) off by being disrespectful. Just rather be safe than sorry.

So, the story starts with this girl walking home at night when the Moon falls out of the freaking sky and follows her home, only to lodge itself in her doorway and trap her inside. Which immediately stands out as a major metaphor for this whole story but I'll come back to that later. Anyway, the Moon traps her inside her house and we immediately discover a little something about this woman. The author writes, "She was a practical woman, neither beautiful nor brilliant. Calm." The author is immediately shitting on this woman, or maybe this is meant to be the woman's perception of herself, but either way we get that she's just... meh. But she's not stupid so that's something to work with. She tries to get out the back door and through the windows but they're either locked or jammed.

The next thing we know is that the landlord is refusing to cut the burglar bars on the windows in order to get this poor woman out of her house and this is the main character's reaction:

"'I'm sorry,' she said, from inside where she was trapped." Let me repeat that in case you didn't get it- where she was trapped. This woman is apologizing to her landlord for asking him to please get her a way to get out of her house. As if that wasn't enough, this woman's lover comes and basically blames her for the Moon falling out of the sky, and you know what she says again? "I'm sorry."

Like, girl.

Basically, the author is really trying to get us to understand that this woman is too nice. She's the epitome of niceness. She takes people at face-value and likes to believe that people mean what they say, which is nice and all... until someone takes advantage of you. I mean, this poor woman ate everything in her pantry just so the landlord wouldn't have to cut the burglar bars to let her out. I'm just thinking of all the sour tuna fish and boxes of cereal three years past their expiration date in my pantry. I would've rather gotten hangry and threatened to sue someone and started breaking crap until they got me out of there than eat that stuff. But this woman just continues to apologize to everyone.

However, little things start to happen throughout the story that slowly change the main character's perception of those around her. First, she starts to realize that her lover ain't shit. In Week 1 of being trapped in her house, her lover doesn't seem all that concerned at the fact that she's literally trapped in her house, and the Moon's light reveals that the bracelet he gave her is nothing but cheap brass. Then in Week 2, her lover is still unconcerned. By Week 3, she's begging her neighbors for food which obviously means her lover's not bringing her any, and by Week 4 she states that he hardly visits her at all anymore. He's too busy doing interviews. By this time she throws his bracelet in the garbage disposal. Good for you, girl.

No one seems to care about this girl, at all. Her neighbors don't bring her food because they're too entranced by the Moon, and her boss fires her because she can't make it to work. You know, because she's trapped in her house. We learn that she used to be pregnant but the father left her as soon as he found out. The baby died... The main character starts to have serious doubts. The author writes, "She cried and couldn't understand why this was happening to her. She was kind to animals and children. But what good is kindness?"

Ok, now this girl is starting to get it. The rest happens fairly quickly.

She did what?

"She ate the moon. She dug her hands into it [...] The more she ate the heavier she felt. And lighter. After years of waxing and waning in the brightness of other people, in the gravities of others' choices, she understood now."

Okay, this lady ate the moon, y'all. She just ate it. And if that doesn't seem like character development then I don't know what does.

After suffering for 5 weeks due to other people's inconsistencies and selfishness and down right fakeness (that's definitely a word), this woman freaking eats the Moon to get out of her house by herself. And as she eats it, she becomes powerful. The Moon is described as "food for the gods." When she emerges from her house, her eyes flash like stars and "the whites of her nails were crescent moons" and "her legs were strong and lean with moonlight." I'm just gonna quote the rest of it as well because it's beautiful.

"She left a path of beautiful destruction behind her, and did not apologize. The tides had finally turned."

This is character development at its most basic and fundamental level, without all the bells and whistles. This story is simple and short, yet it tells the story of a lesson we've all lived and learned (or are going to). Kindness is great, but people will take advantage of kindness, even the people we love the most, even the people who say they love us in return. By being trapped in her house, the main character is forced to confront all of the injustices that have been done to her and she realizes that she needs to take back her power and do what is right for her. She saves herself. She eats her way out of her predicament and not in a bad-coping-mechanism-way like I do.

So, what about the Moon?

So, remember when I said that the Moon lodging itself in the main character's doorway was a metaphor. Let's get to that. Actually, there's a few metaphors I can find with the Moon in this story.

Metaphor 1-

The Moon trapping the woman in her house stands as a metaphor for being forced to face your problems.

This woman has got some serious issues she needs to figure out. In fact, if the Moon had never lodged itself in her doorway and trapped her, she could have gone her whole life giving to others and never demanding anything in return. But by being trapped in her house, she is forced to come to terms with her lack of power, since she becomes reliant on other people and expects them to come to her aid for once. When they don't she realizes that they never really cared about her to begin with.

Metaphor 2-

The Moon stands as a metaphor for shedding light on or coming to terms with one's problems.

When people slowly begin to turn their backs on the main character in Week 1, everything seems calm and normal at first. But in her first week the main character starts developing doubts about the people she thought cared about her. Although the Moon was lodged in her doorway, "The Earth's axis had not tilted. The season had not changed. Seas were calm." But because the Moon had lodged itself in her doorway in order to force her to come to terms with her lack of power, she already began to feel its effects on her. The author writes, "But she felt strange penumbras and perigees tugging at her."

The Moon's light then reveals that the bracelet from the main character's lover is made of cheap brass, revealing his lack of devotion to her. The lover even gives us a clue to the Moon's purpose in changing the main character's perception of those around her when he says, "They say it was your perception..." that made the Moon fall from the sky.

The Moon also acts as a minor metaphor for distraction, when the neighbors forget to bring the main character food because they are too busy looking at the Moon. The Moon is shedding light on the fake people in the main character's life, who are more concerned with the distractions of their life than with helping out someone in need.

The Moon also takes on the image of a breast and a pregnant belly with stretch marks and scars, in order to make the main character remember her lost baby and her baby daddy who left her. The Moon remains a constant reminder of the injustices done to the main character until the moment the main character decides to eat the moon and take her control back.

Metaphor 3-

Eating the Moon stands as a Metaphor for taking your power back by learning from your mistakes.

The main character definitely learns from her mistakes by the end of this story. She realizes that she has been giving too much and not taking enough, not demanding respect for herself. And by learning from her mistakes, she gains power. By tackling her problems head on, by solving it herself instead of relying on others as she had earlier in the story, the main character was able to take back her freedom and find renewed strength. The same is true for all of us. We all have made mistakes, but by learning from them we becomes stronger. We only grow by failing, because then we know the next step to take. If you can't get people to help you get out of the house you are trapped in because the Moon is lodged in your doorway, just eat it. If people are letting you down and taking advantage of you, learn to solve your own problems and do your own thing. Be unapologetic. Be a freaking Moon Goddess like Sailor Moon or the protagonist of "The Moon in Her Doorway."

In Conclusion

Girls who deal with the Moon are notoriously bad-ass, but it's important to know that what makes them bad-ass is good character development. Serena didn't become Soldier of Love and Justice, Neo-Queen Serenity, Savior of the Universe in just one day. She had to have totally terrible grades, bad work ethic and be a complete cry-baby first.

Similarly, the woman in "The Moon in Her Doorway," wouldn't be bad-ass if she just decided to eat the Moon right away. She's bad-ass because she didn't always believe that she could eat the Moon. And going from a push-over begging for food from your crappy neighbors to just eating the freaking Moon seems like pretty good character development to me.