Pastoralia

Pastoralia is a 2000 collection of short stories by American writer George Saunders. Five of the collection’s six stories won the O. Henry Prize. One of these, the title novella, “Pastoralia,” is about a man who works in an entertainment complex portraying a caveman and also lives in his “cave.”

The unnamed protagonist of “Pastoralia” portrays a caveman as part of a cave exhibit within a larger entertainment park. His co-worker, Janet, plays a cavewoman. Few patrons visit the cave exhibit, but the caveman and Janet are forbidden from breaking character even when they are alone. Nevertheless, Janet frequently does, sometimes even addressing the patrons in English. The caveman never breaks these rules himself, but he does refrain from mentioning Janet’s breaches in his daily co-worker evaluations.

Janet and the caveman also live at the exhibit, in a small room adjoining the cave. The caveman has a wife and children who live outside the complex, and he communicates with them via fax. The caveman’s son, Nelson, has a debilitating and mysterious illness. His treatment is contributing to the family’s serious financial difficulties. Janet, too, has a sick relative, an elderly mother. She relies on a neighbor to care for her mother while she is living at work.



An executive at the complex, Greg Nordstrom, takes the caveman to brunch. He explains that the company will soon be firing people. He implies that Janet is in his crosshairs and that he wants the caveman to honestly report on her poor performance. The caveman tells Janet about this, and Janet promises to work harder. The caveman reports this conversation to Nordstrom, who is angry, explaining that he wants a reason to fire Janet.

For two days, Janet’s work is impeccable, but on the third day, her son Bradley comes to the exhibit. He is a drug addict, and he begs Janet for money. She breaches the rules to talk to him and give him $20. However, the caveman doesn’t report this breach.

Shortly afterward, Janet learns via fax that Bradley has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Distraught, she gets into an argument with a patron, who reports her directly to a manager. The caveman feels he has no choice but to mention this incident in his co-worker assessment.



Janet is fired. Soon afterward, a memo implies there will be still more firings. Janet is replaced by a new cavewoman, Linda, who has had a cavewoman brow surgically implanted. The caveman wonders if he is working hard enough.

The protagonist of “Winky,” Neil Yaniky, is at a self-help seminar. The seminar’s leader, Tom Rodgers, tells the attendees that the key to success is to cut ties with anyone who asks for favors, even favors that are necessary to their wellbeing. Neil thinks of his eccentric sister, Winky, who lives with him. As he pictures her doing chores around the apartment, it becomes clear that she is selfless, generous, and joyful. Neil is convinced that her presence is the only thing preventing him from achieving professional and romantic success. After receiving personal instruction from Tom, Neil goes home, fantasizing about the wealth that will be his as soon as he evicts Winky, but when he arrives home, his courage fails and he settles into quiet resentment of his sister.

In “Sea Oak,” another unnamed protagonist lives in a dingy apartment complex, called Sea Oak, with his sister Min, his cousin Jade and his aunt Bernie. Min and Jade are both unemployed single mothers, so the household relies on the money the protagonist makes as a stripper and waiter, and the money Bernie makes working at a drugstore. One day Bernie dies, and they bury her nearby. Shortly afterward, they find her grave open and the body missing; Bernie appears at the apartment. Easygoing in life, Bernie has become angry and greedy. She says she has returned from the dead to live a life of extravagance, and she orders the family to start making more money. However, her body is decomposing, and eventually, she dies for good. The protagonist keeps making as much money as he can, though, in the hope of moving his family to a better area.



At the beginning of “The End of FIRPO in the World,” a boy named Cody is riding his bicycle along a neighborhood road. His mind seethes with the mistreatment he receives from his mother, his mother’s boyfriend, and his neighbors. He is planning to vandalize the home of the Dalmeyers, a neighbor family whose children recently taunted Cody, but before he can carry out his plan, he is hit by a car. As he dies, he pictures himself apologizing to his mother for disappointing her.

The unnamed protagonist of “The Barber’s Unhappiness” is barber who lives with his mother. He is single, and as he reflects on his dating history, it becomes clear that part of the reason is that he holds shallow and misogynistic views about women. In his driver’s ed class, he finds himself attracted to a fellow student, Gabby. When she stands up, he is disappointed to find that she is overweight, but he asks her on a date anyway. They are happy together until the barber’s mother begins making scathing remarks about Gabby’s weight. Finally, the barber resolves that he will demand that Gabby lose weight.

In “The Falls,” we are privy to the internal monologues of two men who cross paths without speaking. Morse is single and lives with his mother: his family is in a precarious financial situation and depends on his income. Cummings’s head is full of the fame he will one day win as a writer and public intellectual. Both men witness a canoe floating past them on the river. Its occupants, two girls, have no oars, and when the canoe goes over the falls, it splits and begins to sink. Both men panic, but it is Morse who jumps in to try to rescue the girls.



Consistently rated as one of the most influential story collections of recent decades, Pastoralia offers dystopian satires of contemporary life, focusing particularly on the way economic pressures distort human values.