I looked up “convalescing” before
I began reading because I assumed it would play a role in the story. When I
found the definition, the first thing that came to mind was an illness because
that’s what I associate “recovering” with. I was impressed and shocked to come
to find out that it was something even more complicated than that. I like that
the beginning of the story is awkward because we have no idea what’s going on.
There’s this random girl that David describes in comparison to his wife and we
learn that he is answering her questions the way he thinks he should. I took
this to mean that he wanted to appear to be normal because he was dying, but
now that I understand the severity of his condition, I appreciate how Oates set
us up for different possibilities before sending us in a distinct direction.
Ambiguity reins the first couple of pages, especially when David displays
emotional distance from Eunice: “He loved her but could not truly believe in
this love” (1115). Is he distant because of his condition? Because he is just a
bad father? We are eased into discovering his memory has been comprised instead
of it being given to us all at once, which I enjoyed.
The
complexity of emotions that comes from losing one’s memory is carried out in
the most intricate, beautiful way possible. Some phrases/sentences had be
dumfounded to say the least. One passage in particular that struck me was “He
was being drawn back into life like a minor thread, drawn into a complicated
tapestry of vivid, major colors, a tapestry that would tolerate him” (1115). We
get both the image of a thread that already tells us how far he is for reality,
but the tapestry coupled with it encompasses his situation well. This image of
the thread and tapestry is repeated, grounding me in some of the confusion he
has with his own accident. Another line that hit me hard was “But David had not
died and had lain bleeding for twenty minutes in the hot searing metal of his
car, among the expensive smashed gadgets and ripped upholstery, while traffic
went on by. Yet he did not truly remember those twenty minutes” (1118). I found
this contradicting and powerful in the sense that he is constant battling
between what he really remembers and what he is only learning throughout the
whole piece. There is a constant tug and push that I almost found frustrating
every time he got into a conversation with someone. For example, with Taylor he
claimed he knew him, and then later asks who him and his wife are. I wanted to
remember as much as he did even if I never knew them at all. I aligned myself
with David because we both enter this story with beginner’s mind. It also
scared me to even think about the possibility that I might not be myself.
The
wife’s affair completely took me by surprise. How terrible to remember the one
thing you don’t want to remember? Although, the ending caught my interest,
particularly: “Perhaps his wife had not committed adultery, perhaps he had
imagined everything? He was still a convalescent and people must treat him with
gentleness” (1126). I was wondering what the class made of this statement. Do
you think he made up this situation? I can see it going either way because it’s
odd and unrealistic for him to remember the one terrible thing that could
happen. It’s even more suspicious that he makes the comment about his wife
going to the parking garage alone because “it isn’t always just a woman’s purse
they want” (1117). We get this dialogue before learning about the supposed
affair so maybe David is just paranoid? But it could be that he wants to deny
the affair completely and wants to blame his memory loss. He says people “need”
to treat him nice, is that to say he is going to milk this fact in order to
guilt trip his wife? But I also wonder why Oates ends with the mention of the
affair. Maybe someone has a different interpretation of this ending.
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