“Doldrums” is an account of the experience of loss, survivor’s guilt and general post-traumatic stress accompanied with the death of those taken for granted in our lives. The narrative focalizes around Emily Gunther and Mandy Ronan, two girls whose lives are rocked by catastrophic incidences in their schools. Emily loses her younger sister, Eliza, the one person she never imagined she would have to live without; the child she was meant to protect from all that can harm her in the world. In giving a limited view of her life as all she feels begins to slip through the chasms, we see that Emily really cannot manage to cope with the fatality of her younger sister and best friend. For the most part, the excerpts are very personal and are meant to show that the world she lives in is both emotionally detached and disconnected from the world in general. Mandy attempts to deal with her “unreal” reality by rewriting it in a way she deems as easier to swallow, but eventually strikes both as redundant; the outcome is unalterable. A lack of closure and vague descriptions of daily life are juxtaposed by vivid memories and the importance of an olfactory memory in bringing floods of emotion to the main characters.
In taking notes from Foer’s inclusion of mixed media, I found the insertion of photographs that either describe a particular affect of the character or of the scene to be a very personal way to connect with an otherwise inaccessible character.
Disjointed narratives from multiple points of view help achieve the sense that this narrative is both extraordinarily intimate in the minds of Emily and Mandy, but also that because of the nature of the incident it is more of a study of them from afar — they will let no one in. This I attribute to both Vonnegut and Morrison as they grapple with the idea of a narrator as both a caring presence overseeing from a distance and as a voice with deep insight into the rich emotions of those he/she speaks of.
Guide For an Unconventional Discourse:
…or lessons I have learned from our semester of experiential expressionism:
1. Be Real and Be Sensory– Save the “this feels like” and “it was as if” comparisons for explaining the difference between a metaphor and simile to your younger sibling (or illiterate friend). In writing of experience that truly moves and shakes a person, there is no way to fake how it makes you feel. It becomes an insult to assume and place stereotypical feelings in for a cookie-cutter character, because there is nothing uniform about reality. Generalizations do not explain, they simply offer a worn-out look at what readers already expect.
The smell of salted hot chocolate brings Emily back to that day. The feel of an icy windowpane gives her the image of Eliza wanting to stay home with her in the snow.
2. Leave Gaps – In writing of particular events, the truth is incomplete and muddled. Holes are meant to be unfilled, just as “closure” is generally unnecessary. Every small action is not needed to know the truly important details of what the character is going through, and an ending can leave the mind of the reader to interpret from what they know in which direction the character is moving.
We never know whether Mandy publishes her story of the Wisteria Heights HS shooting, or of its alternative actions. The reader is unsure if Emily begins to move in a healthy direction in dealing with the loss of her sister, or if she has left behind any trace of the guilt she carries with her.
3. Allow for Intuition – The purpose of photographs and mixed media in the mode of Foer is meant to allow the reader to make the jumps through their own making of what the art means for the larger work. An explanation deducts from that, hindering the act of any personal interpretation. Leave it simply up to them.
Using dandelions, snow, clouds, and geese probably seems mildly confusing. Make no mistake, there is a significantly interconnected reason for each of them. Oh yes, they belong.
doldrums 