Friday, February 26, 2010
Depersonalized
What I've been finding most interesting about the novel so far is how it effectively uses depersonalization to make traumatic events seem more familiar. Strangely, the way Roy uses it doesn't seem cursory or half-hearted, but in my opinion is softens the blow of some really terrifying events. Estha's encounter with the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man for instance -- there isn't a hint of emotion in the pages that detail Estha's ordeal (and I'm trying to figure out if Estha was just really naive or if Roy was implying that Estha knew what was happening but was too terrified to do anything about it). Everything in those few pages are written down with a cold, aloof, logical perspective. I've been reading about how the public reacted to this novel when it first came out in 1996, and this particular scene was the source of a lot of vitriol, it seemed. It makes me wonder -- if Roy had written it in a different way, would the public's reaction have been different? If Estha had fought against the Lemondrink Man, if his emotions throughout the scene were accurately chronicled so that we could empathize with him and we could say "Well, at least Roy was on Estha's side" -- would the reaction have been different? Instead, Roy chose to depersonalize the hell out of that scene, and it made for a very uncomfortable reading experience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that is very interesting, it never occured to me that people might read the assualt scene in a detached manner without being given the interior play by play of Estha's reactions. For my part, though, I feel it works in the sense that it conveys a realistic kind of paralyzed detachment on the part of Estha. Children trust, do what they are told, and often cannot negotiate their sense of fear/or intuition of a wrong situation when confronted with an unknown and/or authority figure. Roy's sympathy for Estha is woven throughout the entire novel, I feel, but this scene is left unfleshed out, so that for the reader it shocks and confounds, immediate, unexplained-and it is the entirety of the novel that will weave Estha's reactions to this throughout his life into a cohesive whole.
ReplyDelete