Reading Response to “The Disappeared” by Charles Baxter

           I cannot really tell if I liked this story or not, but I appreciated the language in the piece. Some sentences/phrases struck me as profound and inspired a whole range of thinking, even giving me ideas for a poem I’m working on. I like that we start out with this foreigner who fixates on the smell of America. This was unusual in the best way for me because I do not associate America with a particular smell. I would assume a foreigner to first notice the people. It’s interesting that Anders associates the smell to something “burning” which is brought up again at the end with the images in the church. That instance of circularity made me a little more accepting of the ambiguous ending.

            I’m sorry to say that I did not enjoy Anders’ character because he seemed rather desperate and shallow, but perhaps I wasn’t meant to like him. After all, we are told that his “ambition” is to “sleep with an American woman in an American bed” (110). This is more of a cliché than a problem in my opinion. Even if I didn’t want to be his friend, I loved hearing some of his internal thoughts and revelations. On page 111, Anders talks about the way Americans walk, saying they have “a sort of busyness in their step, as if, having no particular, goal, they still had an unconscious urgency to get somewhere, to seem purposeful.” Ironically, I have been discussing this idea in my Social Psychology. It is true that we are constantly moving on to the next thing without paying attention to the present moment. We have to be going in a direction regardless if it leads to nothing at all. Another line similar to this is when Lauren takes off running and Anders thinks “he was expected to run with he; it was what people did now, instead of holding hands, to get acquainted” (112-113). I found that so powerful because I could imagine the emotional distance as they ran.

            I won’t talk too much about the ending because it left off at a weird place for me and I honestly didn’t know what to think of it. If anyone can interpret the mugging (?) in a reasonable way, I’d love to discuss it. The heart of this story for me came in the night Anders and Lauren spent together and how it affects Anders afterword. Baxter sets up for the scene well with the line “he had no words for it in either his own language or in English” (117). I knew right then and there that I was going to be in that bed with them, near them, being overwhelmed by the same emotions as Anders. What struck me was “he felt it was a wave of color traveling through his body, surging from his forehead down to his stomach.” That beautiful image is exemplified by the fact that Lauren says it is his “soul”. The word “transcendentalism” came to mind because of both the spiritual and natural vibes I got from this portion. It was romantic, to say the least. Even more than that, I love how quickly the colors fade the next morning when Anders is stuck with the grandma who’s telling him everything he doesn’t want to hear. He gets hit with reality and chooses not to accept it because who would? He’s a foreigner and so he’s allowed to dream big. He came to the “wonderful” America for work and a one night stand but ends up falling for someone who becomes a disappeared. Now that’s a good story.