A stone throw away

Chaco: No. He was no good, Doris. He had no values. He didn't fit in here. ('Our Town')

Thinking back to the textual view of a person, we can see three sources of influence that create pressure and confusion.

As texts produced by others, there is the pressure to conform to what was originally intended for us. The author (our parents) hold sway over our formation and inculcate us with values and expectations that will sometimes align with and sometimes conflict with who we later become.

Upon our being set free, to be buffeted by a free play of interactions, there is added the pressure to tell the story others want to hear, to conform to society's needs and values.

Amidst this storm which tosses us first one way and then another, we must find a way to tell the story that we read in ourselves.

These are the choices we face, this is the balance we must strike. Tell the story our author intended, provide the meaning that our readers seek, while producing our own story; one that others may not want to read.

Popular fiction, those that appear successful and little tormented by the vicissitudes of life, are those who are pleasing to the first two, foregoing any need to tell their own story.

'Our Town' is full of these people, conformists who will do whatever is necessary to fit into the dominant schema.

Having recently moved to Dudley, Arkansas, the Kearns must feel keenly the need to fit in. It is only natural to want a life of least resistance. Doris is able to meet the requirements of the community, but only because she lacks the strength and courage and will to give her own story meaning. For Doris, life is about what others, the community, wants and expects. Her husband, George, isn't quite so malleable and has a sense that there are other stories waiting to be discovered and told.

We are not just told that George has no values, we witness his lack in the teaser. Doris reiterates his weak sense of value when she informs Mulder and Scully, "George left me a long time ago. Right around the time I turned 40. Leaving town was just a formality." George is not an uncommon type; he knows enough to not feel the need to be constrained by the reading others would seek to impose, but he doesn't know enough to develop his own story. As a consequence, as Chaco says, he lacks values.

George Kearns' life is like those piles of stones (cf. cairns) one finds dotted around the landscape, they look meaningful, but probably aren't. There may be a message contained within, or a body, even, or they may just mark the way, but they remain little but a pile of stone. Almost meaningful. George Kearns' life is an all too common human tragedy; almost somebody, but not quite!

Not having the strength of his own conviction, nor the sense or desire to succumb to the imposition of meaning, George Kearns is consumed - society nourishes itself upon him, then discards his bones like so much trash.

The story his life was meant to be is never told. He amounts to little more than a minor character in a story told by others.