In the aftermath of violent atrocities
such as war, the need to expunge one’s painful memories propels one’s actions. In Chang-Rae Lee’s The Surrendered, the narrator demonstrates how immediacy becomes
the method of escape. Silvia, a seemingly
standoffish adolescent surviving her own “lamentable family tragedy” (225) lives
in constant fear of losing her free and safe existence. Thus, she seeks refuge in clandestine
relations and illicit drug use. For her
“the
recent past was a well-rutted road, still the only way she knew to get back and
forth to the present, and as she went to her classes at the college, attended
church with Aunt Lizzie, a part of her couldn’t help but wish to run to Jim and
the pitch-black room at the factory, drink in the potion and transmogrify, be
anything but her mortal self” (225).
In the “pitch-black”
hideaway Silvia and Jim create a safe zone where their drug and sex- induced highs
create an imminent release from their pain and fear. The opiate syrup “hotly fus[es] her to
herself in a manner that made her feel whole again” (223) and the sexual act a “lesson
in how experience only mattered if one let it” (225). For Silvia these relations made her feel
alive and complete, not the damaged remains of her tragic past. This was her escape. The reference to Silvia’s “mortal self”
substantiates her present fears that are soon relegated to oblivion in the
immediacy of her actions.
No comments:
Post a Comment