"Come Softly to Me:" Ritual in a New Yorker Short Story

“A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence.” So says Wikipedia, adding that rituals are common to all known human societies.

What else? Well, among other things, many cultures have rites associated with death and mourning. And one of the many purposes of ritual is social control – such as keeping a family together when various members may be prone to go off in differing directions or have tensions or conflicts among themselves, one might imagine.

Sticking with Wikipedia, rituals generally involve the recitation of fixed texts, the performance of special music, the manipulation of certain objects and the use of special dresses. They are also typically formal, traditional and invariable. They are often characterized by careful choreography performed by groups.

I mention all of the above because that is what the Oct. 10, 2022 (online edition) New Yorker short story “Come Softly to Me,” by David Gilbert, is all about. In fact, readers will encounter pretty much all of the above in Gilbert’s generally well-drawn tale.

Lots of stories conform to one familiar formula or another. What makes them interesting – absent surprise endings -- is setting, character development and perhaps a subplot or two. In that context, a couple of Gilbert’s characters definitely tend to stick in one’s mind.

But the story, which involves an extended family, has a lot of characters and it can be difficult to follow or understand who is who until well into the piece. And for a fairly long short story, the ending is rather abrupt and unconvincingly mystical, given the participants. But endings are rarely easy: I suppose the hardest part of flying a plane is bringing it in for a satisfactory landing (before the age of computers, that is).