Monday, March 9, 2015

Text Explorations

Leads from Formula to Explore:
·      “Troubling details” – what about these details makes them troubling? What do they have in common with each other? What about them makes it strange that I missed them?
·      “Flirts with the fairytale genre” – in what ways does Aimee Bender do this? What elements about The Healer make it not a fairytale?
·      “Too complicated and problematic” – what about Lisa makes her so problematic, more so than the fire girl and the ice girl?
·      “Details of her personal life” – what details do we get? What details don’t we get? Any guesses why?

Passage 1 – page 28
At this point in the text Lisa is taking a break from the action of the story to tell us about J. and her thoughts on him.

I chose this passage because it’s one of the times in the text where Lisa turns the focus on her instead of on the events of the story. By exploring this passage I hope to capture what about Lisa makes her so complicated and 3D that I had to simplify her while I was reading.


Passage:
“Today we focus on Lisa, J.’s voice would sail[1] out, Lisa[2] with the two flesh hands[3]. This is generally where I’d stop[4]I wasn’t sure what to add[5].”



1: Word Definition/Wording/Figurative Language/Connection: The OED defines “sail” in a few particularly interesting ways, the most interesting being simply “To dance.” This idea of J.’s voice dancing out has this sort of calm musicality to it. For Lisa, these strange daydreams seem to calm and relax her. They seem to engulf her and lull her to sleep like the red poppy field in The Wizard of Oz. She loses touch completely with reality, another example of this being when she says “I was busy for a second renaming myself Atlanta when I looked over and saw how nervous and scared she was” (Bender 32). She spaces out often, but this in a way humanizes her – it’s something we can relate to. Which is part of the problem. We’re not supposed to relate to the narrator – we’re instead supposed to feel a connection with the characters of the story. She’s not a reliable narrator – she recounts information only being “pretty sure” it’s what actually happened. Her train of thought jumps around like that of Victor in Sherman Alexie’s short story. She is too much of a blend between a protagonist and a 3rd-party narrator. I had to categorize her as one or the other.

2: Wording/Syntax/Connection: The repetition of Lisa’s name in this sentence seems pointed. It’s like she wants to make sure we know that it’s about her. There’s something strangely self-centered about her in some parts of the story, like her desperate need for the fire girl and the ice girl to know her name (Bender 30). She craves being a part of the two girls’ stories instead of just a bystander. Ah, I’ve come across something! Instead of being a neutral spectator as a narrator is supposed to be, Lisa involves herself in the events that take place. She wants to be more than a narrator.

3: Wording: Lisa feels it necessary to describe herself in relation to others. Fire girl and ice girl have their elemental hands while she only has flesh hands. Interesting, because usually when people compare themselves to others, they look for special things they have that the other person doesn’t. With Lisa it’s the other way around. By holding her flesh hands next to the ice and fire hands, we can’t help but see her as not special, as boring, as normal. That seems to be how she sees herself too.

4: Wording: It says this is “generally” where she stops, implying that she has done this multiple times. It seems to be a common pastime for her. But wouldn’t it get boring after a while, when all she really does is compare herself to the fire girl and the ice girl? If the part about “flesh hands” is fairly regular, wouldn’t it get tiresome?

5: Wording: It says that Lisa “wasn’t sure what to add.” She can say nothing about herself, be it good or bad, unless it is relation to someone else. She actually identifies herself by a comparison to fire girl and ice girl. Lisa doesn’t tell us the story of the fire girl and the ice girl for our benefit because it’s a nice story with a good moral. She tells it for her own benefit because she believes it defines her as a person. She cannot live without them. It’s the highest level of dependency and there’s something almost pitiful about it. Is it possible that, being as wrapped up in herself as she is and yet so insecure, she tells this on purpose to gain our pity?



Passage 2 – page 28
At this point in the text Lisa is gearing up to tell us about the fire girl’s relationship with Roy.

I chose this passage because it exhibits Lisa’s strange narrating style that makes her an unreliable narrator and not the kind ideal for a fairytale. By exploring this passage I hope to deepen my understanding of Lisa’s unusual narration – I think right now I only have a superficial idea of it.

Passage:
“I found[1] them first[2], and it was accidental, and[3] I told no one, so it[4] wasn’t my fault[5].”




1: Word Definition/Connection: The OED defines “find” as “To come upon by chance or in the course of events” and “To discover the whereabouts of (something hidden or not previously observed).” Both these definitions display the idea of Lisa discovering something new – in this case Roy and the fire girl. Lisa claims that finding them together was “accidental,” much like how she tells us she “wandered into the boys’ bathroom” (Bender 29). She rarely takes responsibility for her actions, insisting that many of these experiences were merely coincidental. It seems unlikely that she just happened to come across Roy and the fire girl together, considering she obsessively stalks the fire girl throughout the course of the book. So she deliberately tries to mislead us.

2: Wording: By saying that she came across fire girl and Roy first, Lisa is not-so-subtly implying that others will come across them later on. She’s foreshadowing… not even that… alluding to a later part of the story, something you rarely see happen in fairytales. If we notice it, it draws us in. Lisa is dangling the information in front of us. Also, when Lisa insists that she found them first, it’s almost like she’s staking a claim. She seems to think we’ll applaud her for it or give her some sort of reward. In this aspect there’s definitely a childish nature to her.

3: Syntax/Connection: The repetition of “and” here not only makes the sentence a run-on, but gives it this sort of uneducated feel. Lisa seems to have a very limited vocabulary – as we said in class discussions, she speaks in choppy sentences. Not something you’d expect from a narrator. It’s one of the many things that makes us wary to trust her story, in addition to her telling us that she only thinks some things happened (Bender 27) and her frequent hallucinations. Narrators, especially of fairytales and fables, are supposed to be trustworthy, because their whole purpose is to convey the message. But as I said before, Lisa doesn’t seem interested in passing along any moral to us at all. Therefore, she feels no obligation to tell the story in a straightforward manner.

4: Wording: Lisa tells us that she is not to blame for “it,” but we the readers have absolutely no idea what it is. She’s being very selective in the information she’s giving us. The main purpose of this sentence for her is to tell us that she’s not at fault, not about what she’s not at fault for. It’s hard to know whether she’s intentionally vague or not, but it sure makes it a bumpy ride for us.

5: Wording: This is pretty much a disclaimer. Lisa wants us to know straight away that she had nothing to do with whatever harm befell her precious fire girl. Telling us that it wasn’t her fault, in her mind, takes priority over recounting the actual information. A fairytale narrator never does this. In fact, when reading fairytales I seriously doubt that people ever suspect the narrator of being guilty of anything. So again, Lisa wants to bend her position as narrator a little. She still has the free will of a protagonist, yet she is tasked with telling the story. Interesting that Bender combines two fairytale “characters,” if you will, into one. But in addition, Lisa telling us that it wasn’t her fault seems to suggest that she assumes we’d have cause to suspect her. So she understands that she’s not a reliable narrator?

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