Thursday, July 30, 2009

Page 10, Paragraphs 5 and 6; Page 11, Paragraphs 1 and 2; Notes

This passage is a good example of what Neil Gaiman refers to in the introduction as the narrator's "inability to tell dreams from reality".

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Page 10, Paragraph 5:

Now for a time no thoughts come, and then everything becomes strange. I am no longer in the briar cave. I'm beneath some trees, and all is dark except where the white-wood stands bright. I don't understand how it got dark so quickly or how I got here. I'm frightened as I look around and see a shape standing in between the trees. It's my mother. She moves lazily, putting one hand on a tree, and looks at me. [It is that good*] I walk closer to her, and I can now see her leg. It ends in a bloody string with nothing below her ankle. I look from the stump to Mother's face. She looks vexed, as if she's unhappy with me. "Where'd my foot go?", she says.

Paragraph 6:

At this, I scream so big and loud that it throws me up in the sky and out of the dark, and I fall back in the briar-cave, where it's light already. This happens instantly, and I don't understand how. I don't hear the rain as it's gone a ways off, and I stand up stooped over the [entry] hole; that's how I come out of the bush.

Page 11, Paragraph 1:

It's wet everywhere, and there are puddles all around on the ground. The water brings up the smell of the earth and the grass, and it's a good smell, strong and fresh.**

Paragraph 2:

I can't smell my shit. The rain has washed away my shit and I can't smell it. My shit where the tree is; where the foot is.

*I have no idea what this means in this context.

**I liked this so much in the original that I almost hated to change it: Wet rise up sniff of dirt and grass, and sniff of they is good, and strong, and is not old.

2 comments:

  1. Looking around in fright, he sees a shape in the trees. Upon realizing it is his mother, he is relieved and takes steps toward her.

    It is an awkward phrase, one I had to read a few times and I'm still not sure I got it right. I am continually impressed by Moore's ability to create pictures in my head using such a limited and stilted vocabulary, and I think the awkwardness is there to make sure we don't see too clearly - we are often just as confused as the narrator is.

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  2. "Looking around in fright, he sees a shape in the trees. Upon realizing it is his mother, he is relieved and takes steps toward her."

    Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks.

    "I think the awkwardness is there to make sure we don't see too clearly - we are often just as confused as the narrator is."

    Have you read THE SOUND AND THE FURY (William Faulkner) or FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (Daniel Keyes)? Both those books use that "narrator-is-confused-therefore-reader-is-confused" device as well. It's very effective in getting the reader to empathize w/ the narrator if the author can pull it off. I'm also reminded of Hemingway's "iceberg" quote:

    "If a writer of a prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing."

    The difference being that Hemingway wrote almost exclusively about things within his own experience and Moore is writing about something that is not even conceivably within his own experience. The vividness of imagination required to pull this off is astonishing indeed.

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