I’m interested in writing about how while
I was reading The Healer by Aimee
Bender, there were creepy, disturbing, and extremely troubling details such as
those about Roy’s cutting that completely went over my head and that I didn’t
even process until we talked about some of them in class. This makes me want to
understand why these details, especially since Bender sets them up in a way
that would make them seem important, were so easy to skim over. One way to
consider this is that because Bender starts the story out as though it were a
fairytale, I subconsciously was trying while I was reading to rearrange the
rest of the story so it could fit into those fairytale archetypes. In order to
do this, my thought processing had to emit details, like those about Roy, that
disturbed the fairytale aspect.
So I guess my basic status quo is that
troubling details should stick out to a reader, and yet while I was reading The Healer I didn’t pick up on many
them. So I should start by exploring these details. Well the main ones that
first popped into my head and made me want to pursue this topic are the ones in
the scene where we first hear about Roy’s cutting on page 29. It didn’t trouble
me that Lisa just happened to wander into the boys’ bathroom. Well it did, but
not to the degree it should have. Does that make sense? Alright I’ll continue
to peruse that paragraph for the details I overlooked… ah, okay, how Lisa
touches the scars on Roy’s body, particularly the ones on Roy’s leg! As we were
discussing in class a while back, she couldn’t just have walked into the
bathroom and touched his leg. He would’ve had to roll up his pants. So there’s
more to their relationship than she’s telling. Yet when I read The Healer before our class discussion I
never even noticed this!
And there’s others in that paragraph too…
little troubling, unsettling details. The fact that she just walks straight
home, doesn’t tell anyone. And that the letters still feel like skin?! It’s so
bizarre! There’s other places in the text with problematic details I skimmed
over, but this paragraph seems the most shocking, so it’s probably a good
example to work with.
So I said in my proposal that it’s
surprising I missed these details like the ones about Roy and Lisa in this paragraph
because of the way Bender “sets them up.” What I mean is that in this paragraph
there is obvious missing information – why Lisa wandered into the boys’
bathroom, the true nature of her relationship with Roy, etc. – which would make
me think that the information Bender is giving
us is of specific importance, not the kind to be skimmed over. And yet I didn’t
pick up on these things!
So my claim about fairytale archetypes…
well something that occurred to me is that some problematic, disturbing,
troubling details went under my radar while I picked up on others. I didn’t
read The Healer, for example, without
stopping for a minute and staring blankly at the page when I realized that J.
and Roy literally came into the story briefly and then disappeared. So I’ve
been considering these past few days why some details stuck and others didn’t.
Well, the thing about characters leaving randomly as that it is not totally
uncharacteristic of fairytales. In fairytales characters come and go so long as
they help the protagonist on their quest, guiding them closer to the moral of
the story. Take Cinderella’s godmother for instance. She literally comes into
the story, does her thing, and leaves. And that’s okay! We think nothing of it
because she served her purpose.
But what purpose do J. and Roy serve? I
think this is getting a bit off-topic but it’s an interesting point. If, as a
reader who theoretically felt the need to make this story fit into fairytale
archetypes, I was fine with J. and Roy coming and going, what purposes did they
serve that made them not contradictory to fairytales?
Let me step back a minute. What about
Aimee Bender’s writing style would make me feel that I’d have to read her
slip-stream story as a fairytale?
Well there’s obviously the beginning,
that starts out like a fairytale in the descriptions of the girls and their
powers. And the simple writing style. But what else?
Okay, characters coming and going. We can
say, for now, that that’s characteristic of fairytales. What about the girls’
magic? While I was reading, nothing (I think) escaped me about the
extraordinary fire and ice hands of the two girls. Well, this magical realism
concept is common in fairytales. Going back to the Cinderella example, her
world is normal and realistic except for the fairy godmother. Their world is
normal and realistic except for the fire and ice hands.
And Lisa, the unseen, unknown
narrator. That’s not uncommon in fairytales, is it? They start with “Once upon
a time.” They are told by someone who is recounting the story, they already
know what happens. So outright Lisa’s role isn’t troubling.
She doesn’t belong. She feels “out
of her league.” She sits in the middle of the class between ice girl and fire
girl. She wants to be someone,
something. But she isn’t. Not in her mind.
So she lives vicariously through
fire girl and ice girl? Well I guess that’s not unlike fairytale narrators if
you think about it.
But we usually don’t know anything about our fairytale narrators.
And we do get some little tidbits about Lisa, however cryptic.
Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Follows around
fire girl and ice girl to pass the time. Wants to be a speaker like J. or the
“runner girl.” And – this is something I didn’t pick up the first time – is a
senior, yet is in the same science class as fire girl and ice girl who are both
sixteen. So did she get held back?
And how does Lisa know that “the
mothers in particular spent hours on the phone describing over and over the
shock of delivery day.” Did she honestly just sit there for hours listening to their conversations?
We never think about how creepy the
narrators in fairytales or anything else for that matter are. How do they know
all these things? Why do they know all these things? We never ask those
questions.
When you read a fairytale you’re not
supposed to have ideas or questions about the narrator. Your focus should be
entirely centered on the main character(s), on the events of the story.
And yet Lisa is so complicated. She is not a 1D, even 2D,
narrator. She has all these troubling problems and issues. Narrators are not
supposed to have problems and issues. They’re distracting.
Distracting! Ah, I see. So did I not
pay attention to these troubling details about Lisa because they’re troubling? Because I wanted simplicity?
These are all interesting points. I’ll
have to take them into consideration.
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