We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

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We Were the Mulvaneys Summary
Joyce Carol Oates

Everything you need to understand or teach We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates.

We Were the Mulvaneys Summary & Study Guide
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30 We Were the Mulvaneys Lessons
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60 Short Essay Questions
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We Were the Mulvaneys Summary

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates is a novel about the tenuous grasp on happiness of one American family. A young girl is raped by a high school acquaintance in a very small town, and the fallout affects the lives of everyone in her immediate family. It is a snapshot of the darker side of family life in the modern world.

The Mulvaneys are a typical American family living...

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Joyce Carol Oates Biographies (6)

Joyce Carol Oates

4,086 words, approx. 14 pages

One of the United States's most prolific and versatile contemporary writers, Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938) focuses upon the spiritual, sexual, and intellectual decline of modern American society.Oates... Read more

Joyce Carol Oates

5,720 words, approx. 20 pages

"Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific, even prolix writer, with more than fifty novels and short story collections to her name," wrote Ian Thomson in the Spectator. "Yet she writes wonderfully of life's un... Read more

Joyce Carol Oates

6,862 words, approx. 23 pages

Joyce Carol Oates was born in the small town of Lockport, New York, on 16 June 1938 and grew up in a rural setting nearby in Erie County. Together with her brother, Frederic, and sister, Lynn Ann, sh... Read more

Joyce Carol Oates

1,498 words, approx. 5 pages

Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. She completed her B.A. at Syracuse University in 1960, and she was awarded an M.A. by the University of Wisconsin in 1961. On 23 January 1961 she marr... Read more

Joyce Carol Oates

5,845 words, approx. 20 pages

In 1990 Joyce Carol Oates won both the Elmer Holmes Bobst Lifetime Achievement Award in Fiction and the Rea Award for the Short Story, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize that honors living American... Read more

Joyce Carol Oates

15,703 words, approx. 53 pages

[This entry was updated by Sarah Catlin Barnhart (University of South Carolina) from the update by Nancy Barendse (Charleston Southern University) in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biogra... Read more

Essays & Analysis (4)

We Were the Mulvaneys

1,788 words, approx. 6 pages

The Mulvaneys were a family of six that the town knew of and most adored. Each member went about their days like a normal family, kids go off to school, dad works, and the mother stays home, but a tra... Read more

We Were the Mulvaneys

623 words, approx. 3 pages

Death is mysteriously incomprehensible to those who are living; and everyone has a unique perception of life. Some think it moves too fast, while others wish they could "fast forward" the years. In We... Read more

A Family Torn Apart

2,374 words, approx. 8 pages

The novel "We Were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of what happened to a family prior to and following the rape of Marianne, the daughter, by a school acquaintance, Zachary Lu... Read more

Downfall of the Family in We Were the Mulvaneys

1,211 words, approx. 5 pages

In the novel "We Were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates, the act of rape causes the Mulvaney family to become distant and silent. Since no one wants to talk about the violent event except the younge... Read more

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