Geometry and Music: Rita Dove's 'Fifth Sunday'

The eight short stories in the collection are considered as a short story sequence or ensemble. They are linked with Joyce's "Dubliners" in terms of epiphany and naturalistic motifs in an analysis of the effect of socially prescriptive worlds upon the African-American protagonists. The relationships of ideology and form through the symbolic functions of geometry and music as organizing principles are discussed. 'The Vibraphone' is compared with Joyce's 'The Dead' on the theme of belatedness, and, in enacting the conflicts between verbal narrative and musical expression, is read as metafiction.