When I have described John Banville's The Sea, I've said that the narration is imbued with a bitterness, resentment, and fear of a narrator recently walloped by an awareness of mortality. The wallop came in the form of his wife's death. In the chapter I just read, close to the end of the book, his inner turmoil finds its reflection in a mighty storm which rages in the beach town from his youth which he has made the sight of a post-mortem pilgrimage. Listen to this passage:
"We have had a storm. It went on all night long and into the middle of the morning, an extraordinary affair, I have never known the like, in these temperate zones, for violence or duration. I enjoyed it outrageously, sitting up in my ornate bed as on a catafalque, if that is the word I want, the room aflicker around me and the sky stamping up and down in a fury, breaking its bones. At last, I thought, at last the elements have achieved a pitch of magnificence to match my inner turmoil! I felt transfigured, I felt like one of Wagner's demi-gods, aloft on a thunder-cloud and directing the great booming chords, the clashes of celestial cymbals."
First of all, a catafalque is the ornate platform upon which a casket rests during a funeral. Later in the passage he goes on to declare his life-long belief that life thus far has been a rehearsal, and at some point he will pass on and the "real drama for which I have ever and with such earnestness been preparing will at last begin". He sees his end as imminent, but he also believes (though he himself admits it is "a common delusion") that the end of this stage is the beginning of a more significant one.
I don't think I believe that. I think this is the drama, and I don't get to prepare forever and earnestly for it. Right now there is snow falling hard outside on 6 already-accumulated inches. This storm does not mirror my inner state, which feels neither tumultuous like the storm in the story, not quietly stifling like the snow. It feels like a bright cloudy morning, with a desire to go out and converse. Luckily I won't have to go very far to converse this evening, when the Literary Classics book club is meeting at the O'Falafel near my house to discuss another stormy book, The Tempest.
The Sea's example of pathetic fallacy (when nature's events mirror the events or emotions of the story) is the second of this 24 hours. Yesterday, on the beach inhabited by the nascent savages of The Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Jack approached each other, words flying like thunder bolts, while real thunder bolts interrupted their aggressions from the sky. The climax of this human storm is Piggy's fall to his death on the wavy rocks below the cliff, at which point a thunderclap of great intensity seems to summon the waves
...ok I have to stop. I just made that storm up. Isn't that funny. I went back to the text after writing "waves" and realize there was no storm going on. Ha! It was my own inner turmoil at the intensity of the scene which generated the storm in my head! Anyway, here is the troubling paragraph in which the storm abates for a moment, but only like those storms in Maine that would become gentle enough to give me hope they were over, then return with great booms and gales, made more dramatic by the brief respite that preceded them. The hunt is about to get more intense, as Jack and his hunters seek out Ralph to finish off the outlaws. Here's Piggy's end:
"The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, traveled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone."
Lois Lowry wrote this article for the occasion of TLOTF's 60th anniversary. She points to the character Simon, who is the only one on the island who intuitively knows that the "beast" that haunts them is really inside them. "Maybe it's only us," he says timidly, and no one takes him seriously.
I sometimes feel the sense in the classroom that the students who make the most incisive analysis of the world are the least listened to among their peers. They speak less, and more quietly, and with more hesitation. It seems to be my job to bring their comments out into the open and build on them with others. I hope that hearing their ideas highlighted will make them more confident in a world where no teacher will ask them to repeat what they said, louder, or paraphrase it for their peers.
We do have storms inside us. To ignore them is to invite violent outbursts. Yesterday I went to a documentary film workshop for teachers, and saw trailers for two films about the consequences of unaddressed internal pain. One was Bully, a trailer I couldn't even watch in its entirety because it was so distressing. The other was The Mask You Live In, made by the creators of MissRepresentation, this one about how American masculinity is codified and then shoved down boys throats, at great cost to everyone, especially the young men.
"We have had a storm. It went on all night long and into the middle of the morning, an extraordinary affair, I have never known the like, in these temperate zones, for violence or duration. I enjoyed it outrageously, sitting up in my ornate bed as on a catafalque, if that is the word I want, the room aflicker around me and the sky stamping up and down in a fury, breaking its bones. At last, I thought, at last the elements have achieved a pitch of magnificence to match my inner turmoil! I felt transfigured, I felt like one of Wagner's demi-gods, aloft on a thunder-cloud and directing the great booming chords, the clashes of celestial cymbals."
First of all, a catafalque is the ornate platform upon which a casket rests during a funeral. Later in the passage he goes on to declare his life-long belief that life thus far has been a rehearsal, and at some point he will pass on and the "real drama for which I have ever and with such earnestness been preparing will at last begin". He sees his end as imminent, but he also believes (though he himself admits it is "a common delusion") that the end of this stage is the beginning of a more significant one.
The Sea's example of pathetic fallacy (when nature's events mirror the events or emotions of the story) is the second of this 24 hours. Yesterday, on the beach inhabited by the nascent savages of The Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Jack approached each other, words flying like thunder bolts, while real thunder bolts interrupted their aggressions from the sky. The climax of this human storm is Piggy's fall to his death on the wavy rocks below the cliff, at which point a thunderclap of great intensity seems to summon the waves
...ok I have to stop. I just made that storm up. Isn't that funny. I went back to the text after writing "waves" and realize there was no storm going on. Ha! It was my own inner turmoil at the intensity of the scene which generated the storm in my head! Anyway, here is the troubling paragraph in which the storm abates for a moment, but only like those storms in Maine that would become gentle enough to give me hope they were over, then return with great booms and gales, made more dramatic by the brief respite that preceded them. The hunt is about to get more intense, as Jack and his hunters seek out Ralph to finish off the outlaws. Here's Piggy's end: "The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, traveled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone."
Lois Lowry wrote this article for the occasion of TLOTF's 60th anniversary. She points to the character Simon, who is the only one on the island who intuitively knows that the "beast" that haunts them is really inside them. "Maybe it's only us," he says timidly, and no one takes him seriously.
I sometimes feel the sense in the classroom that the students who make the most incisive analysis of the world are the least listened to among their peers. They speak less, and more quietly, and with more hesitation. It seems to be my job to bring their comments out into the open and build on them with others. I hope that hearing their ideas highlighted will make them more confident in a world where no teacher will ask them to repeat what they said, louder, or paraphrase it for their peers.
We do have storms inside us. To ignore them is to invite violent outbursts. Yesterday I went to a documentary film workshop for teachers, and saw trailers for two films about the consequences of unaddressed internal pain. One was Bully, a trailer I couldn't even watch in its entirety because it was so distressing. The other was The Mask You Live In, made by the creators of MissRepresentation, this one about how American masculinity is codified and then shoved down boys throats, at great cost to everyone, especially the young men.
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