By Tauri Hagemann
“I might tease a bit, telling them that, actually, I am married to the Goat Man, which makes me Mrs. Goat Man, I suppose, though, honestly, no one has ever seemed that interested in hunting me down.”
Location grounds us in narrative. Whether it be a fantasy location wherein a world needs building or a nonfiction piece where events are taking place in a physical space that actually exists, that sense of location is vital to being able to visualize how and when the events of your story are taking place. Kathleen Driskell’s essay “The Church of the Goat Man” (24.2) centers on a family’s experience with judgment and aggression, particularly centered around their home in the shell of a former church. Throughout the essay, the setting–both the town and the building itself–play an integral part in the events as they unfold and the reason for why things happen as they do. In this way, the setting becomes more than just physical location, but almost a character in and of itself.
Within the first page of her essay, Driskell starts immersing her readers into a small-town dynamic and the mythos of the Goat Man. She describes the area where she lives in rural Kentucky, and explains the gossip and conversational culture surrounding her home and the stories around it:
“They may have even heard that the Goat Man has taken up residency with his wife and kids nearby in the old, abandoned Devil Church. If so, I might tease a bit, telling them that, actually, I am married to the Goat Man, which makes me Mrs. Goat Man, I suppose, though, honestly, no one has ever seemed that interested in hunting me down.”
While she hasn’t given us a description of the physical space, describing what we will soon come to find out is her home as the “old, abandoned Devil Church” and herself as “Mrs. Goat Man” does an immense amount of work in establishing the kind of place that this narrative is centered in. It also establishes early on the negative connotations that others will come to make between her and her home, as seen through the strong language that’s already being used in these descriptions.
These vivid descriptions, as well as negative connotations, continue the further we read and the more we learn about the church building and the area. Driskell describes the building as:
“the church that hadn’t a kitchen nor a proper bathroom, only two tiny restrooms, one with a cheap chalky pink paint, the other bright pastel blue. Each had a wobbling toilet and a tiny wall sink with a rusted ring around the drain. It occurred to me these were the kind of restrooms I might stumble into, then quickly back out of, deciding better to chance it, hold it, hope to make it to the next gas station.”
These descriptions are very effective in communicating to the reader the way in which the town views this building–old, run-down, decrepit–and the way that Driskell is perceived for purchasing and moving into the building in spite of this. We see the place serving a character purpose, driving conversations and centering conflicts, despite it not actually being sentient.
Driskell also establishes for us a more positive aspect of the location as well–despite aggression, judgment, and social ostracization, Driskell still feels that her family belongs in this building and that they’ve made the right choice:
“I feel more than lucky—I feel as if my family was meant to live here, in this church. That I was part of a rescue squad sent with my husband to save the beautiful old post and beam structure, its lumber harvested from nearby woods a hundred and forty years earlier, meant to save what had become a sad sack of a building by the time my husband and I stumbled upon it for sale in 1994.”
This serves to further characterize and personify this church for us, though not in the way the larger public sees it–instead, in the way Driskell sees it, the way that she was drawn to it in the first place. This is not an old, dilapidated lost cause–instead, this is a soul worth saving, a spirit that just needs a leg up and a hand in restoration to live new and start over again. Throughout all of the hardships that come upon Driskell and her family for this choice, they stand by it, and are able to breathe that new life into something that everyone else had given up hope on. And in that, this building becomes so much more than just a setting–it becomes a character, and a metaphor for how no matter what happens or how run-down someone becomes, they are always worthy of that second chance.
Writing Exercise:
Starting with your childhood home, sketch out the area you grew up in. This does not have to be a detailed rendition–just lines, shapes; signifiers of the locations and space. This can be the interior of your home, mapping out rooms and items; or it can be the exterior, mapping the roads and landmarks in the neighborhood or the landscape. As you do this, think about the memories you have that took place in these spaces.
As you finish mapping, jot down a short list of the memories that came to mind, and choose one of these memories or moments to write into an essay. Focus on the physical space–make it significant, make it impactful, make it a character and an influence instead of just a physical setting. To accomplish this: What are the people like? What is the physical space like? Is there a significant story or a history associated with the land, either for the larger public or for the narrator?
Tauri Hagemann is a creative writer, educator, and Ball State graduate. In their creative work, they specialize in short-form creative nonfiction and are currently working on their first book, a memoir-in-essays. They’ve been published in The Digital Literature Review and The Broken Plate blog.
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
