This document summarizes and analyzes a short story by Jill McCorkle. It discusses how the story uses flashbacks and slow motion scenes to provide insight into the main character. A key flashback describes the character relating to an early human fossil called Lucy during a school field trip, parallel to how men objectify women at a party. Slow motion scenes observe characters like a man trying to seem above his small town roots and a couple drinking for different reasons during marital issues. The analysis argues these techniques reveal the character's perspectives on women's roles and evolution of gender relations.

1. Brianna Barreto
Presentation on “Hominids” by Jill McCorkle
Chapter 6 of our text covers fictional time, specifically explaining summary, scene,
flashbacks, and slow motion. Flashbacks are actually able to take place in either scene or
summary, and simply transport the reader to the past of the character to inform them of an
important event. Slow motion in the text is explained as a term borrowed from film. It
basically slows down a moment so as to intensify it, increasing attention to detail and
intensity.
In the explanation of flashback, it was stated that flashbacks are overused far too
often when something such as summary can easily take its place. One quote in particular
that caught my attention and was helpful to me in my own process of writing was “Trust
the reader’s experience of life to understand events from attitudes.” I feel as though Jill
McCorkle does an excellent job at this during her short story, never spoon feeding the
reader.
I believe the most important flashback that takes place in this story is when our
main character went to the museum with her son’s third grade class to see Lucy, the first
female human. The way that the children laugh and point at Lucy serves as a parallel to the
real time party at her house where the men are objectifying women’s bodies. I thought it
was a funny and ironic way to open the story, the way our main character proposes
opening a restaurant named Peckers, blatantly making fun of the men and their obsession
with breasts. She gets frustrated with the men because “Maybe this is when the breast went
from a source of nourishment for the young to something for me to pinch and make jokes

2. about.” She lectures them, trying to instill in them to be a little bit more tasteful, or at least
respectful, of breasts being that they are part of the process of nurturing children. When
the flashback occurs, our main character is sort of projecting herself on Lucy; tired and
worn out, occasionally contemplating an easy escape into “an eternal sleep”. The way that
the story ends with the main character recounting the end of her flashback to the women in
the kitchen wraps it up perfectly. “This boy, this future man, was evolution in action.” It
seems that she has faith that her son may grow up to be different than the men sitting in
her living room, more respectful of the sacrifices a woman’s body makes.
The slow motion scenes also allow you to gain more insight about the main
character through the observations that she makes. She notices Dennis, a man from her
town, and how he acts as though he is better than that place. “It is as if he has no memory of
a mother or a childhood or an education here.” She makes the observation that Dennis
would prefer everyone to think that he came out of the womb successful, never having ties
to a small modest town. He also is the man of the group going through a divorce, which is
shown through his actions as he flirted with all the wives, looking at their cleavage with no
shame. Later on, when a drunken Ethan admits to taking Viagra out of nowhere, the main
character pays extra attention to the details of what his wife, Joyce, is doing. We are told
that she has “gone to the bathroom (she said, though I know that she really slipped by the
liquor cabinet to freshen her drink)” and when she walks back into the conversation, she is
horrified. The quote, “Ethan is enjoying his five minutes in the sun as he and Joyce knock
back the liquor for very different reasons” allows us to realize that many of these wives
have become complacent with their submission to their husbands, left to suffer in silence.