Author: nomournersnofunerals

As it is a recurring motif in both Autobiography of Red and Cereus Blooms at Night, I wanted to explore the significance of flight in relation to dehumanization and eventual liberation within the stories of Geryon and Mala Ramchandin. Both characters are a sort of social outcast, but the way in which they are “othered” by society has contrasting manifestations and results, representing the different ways in which those that live outside the norms of society internalize and embrace their queerness.

Mala is ostracized by the town of Paradise as a result of a combination of factors, including the childhood abuse she suffered from her father, her social class and race, and her perceived insanity. Along with this isolation, the townspeople enforce Mala’s separation from humanity by tormenting her and referring to her as “The Bird.” This dehumanization has two sides, since it is both impressed upon Mala as a social punishment, yet she also embraces it as a means of escape. Throughout the story, many allusions are made to birds in relation to Mala, such as when she is described as “[l]ike a crane pondering flight” (Mootoo 147). She even develops the skill of imitating any birdcall she hears. Despite all these avian comparisons, Mala remains physically human and incapable of flight.

In stark contrast to Mala’s predicament, Geryon has wings, and yet his own self-hatred keeps him from using them. In this way, Geryon’s dehumanization is entirely internal. Though he is described as a red-winged monster, for most of the story it is unclear if this is actually his true appearance. His self-disgust is revealed by the fact that he keeps his wings concealed and strapped down, as displayed in the section entitled “Pair:” “His wings were struggling. They tore against each other on his shoulders / like the little mindless red animals they were. / With a piece of wooden plank he’d found in the basement Geryon made a back brace / and lashed the wings tight” (Carson 53). The likening of his wings to “animals” contributes to Geryon’s self-dehumanization, and it also implies his attempt to separate this monstrosity from his own body. In this particular passage, Geryon’s wings are illustrated as their own entities, since they are described as “struggling” and “[tearing] against each other” as if they are beyond his control. Rather than embracing his nature, Geryon attempts to hide and restrain the parts of himself he views as monstrous.

This changes, at last, in the conclusion of the story, specifically after Geryon’s relationship with Ancash provides a new perspective on his nature. After Ancash tells Geryon of the mythology of the Yazcamac, Geryon begins to dissolve his own self-loathing. The final step in his liberation is achieved in the section entitled “Photographs: #1748,” in which he takes flight at last: “bolts of wind like slaps of wood and the bitter red drumming of wing muscle on air – / he flicks Record. / This is for Ancash, he calls to the earth diminishing below. This is a memory of our / beauty” (Carson 145). Most significant in this passage is Geryon’s mention of “beauty,” a term which he has never used to describe himself before. His flight is both a means of physical freedom, since he is literally leaving the earth as well as people like Herakles who have only contributed to his self-hatred, but it is also a symbol of mental liberation as he is finally embracing the parts of himself which he had previously rejected as monstrous.

Though Mala remains wingless throughout the novel, there is a surprisingly similar passage toward the end of her story in which she achieves a comparable freedom through her imagined “rescue” of her younger self, Pohpoh. She tells Pohpoh, “I, Mala Ramchandin, will set you, Pohpoh Ramchandin, free, free, free, like a bird!” (Mootoo 173), once again invoking the bird motif. This returns in the final moment of the section: “She practiced making perfect, broad circles, like a frigate bird splayed out across the sky in an elegant V. Down below, her island was soon lost among others, all as shapeless as specks of dust adrift on a vast turquoise sea” (Mootoo 186). Finally, the symbol of the bird finds use as Mala imagines her abused, childhood self at last flying to freedom. Though Mala’s physical form remains on the island, she achieves an emotional, psychological liberation from the traumas of her past.

Works Cited:

Carson, Anne. Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse. Vintage Books, 1998.

Mootoo, Shani. Cereus Blooms at Night. Grove Press, 1996.

Eli Clare’s “Stones in My Pockets, Stones in My Heart” discusses his experiences with childhood sexual abuse and the trauma associated with that. I wanted to explore the intersection between Clare’s story and the experiences of the character Inej Ghafa in Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. Specifically, I was interested in the similarities between how both Clare and Inej found ways to cope with their experiences, and how those experiences impacted them later in life.

Clare frames his father’s sexual abuse of him as a way that his body was “stolen.” He explains that he “lived by splitting body from mind, body from consciousness, body from physical sensation” (Clare 153). His body was taken from him through his father’s abuse, and yet he also removed himself from his body as a coping mechanism for the trauma. This practice is mirrored in Crooked Kingdom. Inej, one of the main characters of the young adult fantasy novel (the second in a duology), also experienced repeated childhood sexual abuse, though hers was not familial. Inej was kidnapped at age fourteen and sold into slavery. She eventually ended up at a brothel, the Menagerie, where she was raped by strangers every night for one year. As a result, she enacted a similar coping mechanism to Clare: “As the nights at the Menagerie had strung together, she had become better at numbing herself, vanishing so completely that she almost didn’t care what was done to the body she left behind” (Bardugo 274). By separating herself from her physical body, Inej could pretend none of it was happening to her. This was further influenced by the fact that none of her assaulters knew her, which contrasts with Clare, since his experiences included the factor of incest. Inej was able to fade into anonymity, both with her assaulters and with herself. The importance of this is emphasized when Inej describes a particularly excruciating night when she was unable to remove herself from her body because a man recognized her (Bardugo 275).

Another similarity between Clare and Inej is found in the effects of trauma later on in their lives, as they both struggle with physical intimacy. Clare describes feeling a lack of desire or interest in sex. He writes that for him, “Sex meant rape – that simple, that complicated” (Clare 154). This resulted in the fact that, as an adult, Clare had no concept of the feeling of sexual desire. When describing his experiences with sexual partners, he explains that “all too often, sex was a bodiless, mechanical act for me as I repeatedly fled my body” (Clare 156). Though Clare is able to engage in sex, something Inej is nowhere close to, the experience remains completely unexciting and unenjoyable to him. He mentions again the concept of leaving his body, since although this kind of sex was not abusive, his trauma maintained that link. Inej has a similar aversion, though hers may be even more severe. Of course, Inej is still seventeen in the present-day events of the novel, so she hasn’t made it as far as Clare yet. However, she describes feeling uncomfortable with any sort of physical touch. In a scene in which she and her love interest (who has his own share of physical and emotional trauma) launch an attempt at physical intimacy, she explains, “Even now, a boy will smile at me on the street, or Jesper will put his arm around my waist, and I feel like I’m going to vanish” (Bardugo 362). Although Jesper is a close friend of hers, Inej cannot put away the effects of trauma because they are written so deeply into her skin. The word “vanish” is repeated from the passage I quoted earlier, which was part of the coping mechanism she used. Here, it seems the practice of removing herself from her body was both positive and negative, since now she can’t seem to control when it happens.

Overall, the experiences of Clare and Inej fall along similar lines, as they both abandoned their bodies to escape sexual abuse. It is important to note, however, that Inej’s story is fictional, while Clare’s is a real autobiographical account. Still, the similarities and differences between these stories intertwine to illustrate a complicated, multi-faceted representation of the experience and effects of childhood sexual abuse.

“This frustration knows no neat theoretical divide between disability and impairment. Neither does disappointment nor embarrassment. On good days, I can separate the anger I turn inward at my body from the anger that needs to be turned outward, directed at the daily ableist shit, but there is nothing simple or neat about kindling the latter while transforming the former. I decided that Oliver’s model of disability makes theoretical and political sense but misses important emotional realities” (Clare 8).

This passage in Eli Clare’s “The Mountain” comes directly after his exploration of Michael Oliver’s definitions of impairment and disability and how they interact with Clare’s life. He describes his own experience with these concepts, illustrating disability with the unfair restrictions the school system places on test-taking and impairment with his body’s physical inability to climb Mount Adams. Earlier in the essay, Clare writes that “the first failure [his struggles with test-taking] centers on a socially constructed limitation [strict timing], the second [failing to climb Mount Adams] on a physical one [the slippery, steep rocks]” (Clare 7). Although Clare understands the difference Oliver suggested and is able to apply it to his own life, in the end it makes no difference in the pain and anger he feels. His awareness of the fact that the test issue is society’s fault and the mountain is merely nature does not weaken the blow of either failure. This is what begins the passage I selected to focus on. Clare writes, “This frustration [felt as a result of the struggles with both the test and the mountain] knows no neat theoretical divide between disability and impairment” (Clare 8). Although his brain can distinguish between the two phenomena according to Oliver’s theory, it makes no difference in his heart and the emotions he suffers. Another way to illustrate this is with the concept of being hit by a car. Being able to tell if the driver hit you by accident or if they were trying to hurt you may change your interpretation of the situation in your head, but it won’t have any effect on the pain you are experiencing. Essentially, Clare uses this moment to show that theory can only do so much. It is helpful to investigate, dissect, and theorize about how issues happen, such as disability and systematic oppression, but that intellectual process does not serve to fix or lessen the real physical and emotional pain felt by the affected people on a daily basis. Clare finishes this passage with, “I decided that Oliver’s model of disability makes theoretical and political sense but misses important emotional realities” (Clare 8). There is nothing wrong with theory, but sometimes this intellectualization becomes so far removed from the real-life experiences of humans that it is nothing more than words on a page. This feeds into the mental health concept of intellectualizing feelings and how this becomes an issue when it separates a person from actually feeling those feelings. Theorizing your emotions and discerning why they are happening don’t allow you to fully experience them and thus heal from them. This points to Clare’s broader argument about how queer theory and disability theory and every sort of intellectual work that relates to his life separate the mind from the body, disallowing the human as a whole to grow.

“In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun. This place will warm me, feed me and care for me. I will hold on to this pulse against other rhythms. The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm” (Winterson 51).

In this passage, the power of the narrator’s devotion to Louise is illustrated through a binary between nature and body. These two themes are prominent throughout the entirety of the story, but in this passage they are positioned in a contrast which signifies the narrator’s obsessed love for Louise. The body, which is linked with warmth and intimacy, is indicated by words like “hand,” (which is used twice), “pulse,” and palm.” The contrasting symbol of nature represents everything distant and outside their love, and is shown through words like “sun,” “world,” “tide,” and “day.”

In every sentence of this passage, the symbol of the body is positioned opposite the symbol of nature. “This is the campfire that mocks the sun” is the first thought the narrator has. The campfire is a manmade thing, which in this instance symbolizes the love of the narrator and Louise, and by “mocking the sun” it is implied that this feeling makes everything else seem inadequate. The narrator is so overpowered by their emotion they have no need for anything else, even things that have kept them alive their entire life, since the sun is obviously essential for the existence of living things. This metaphor also implies a sort of self-awareness of the narrator, since when you are close to a campfire it may seem like the greatest heat source imaginable, but of course you know the sun is a million times stronger. This hints that the narrator knows deep down that the relationship is not truly this all-powerful force, but they will cling tightly to it nonetheless.

The second sentence, “This place will warm me, feed me and care for me,” positions Louise’s love not only as a thing but as a place, which has swallowed the narrator whole. The repetitive structure of this sentence implies that the narrator is drilling these things in their mind, trying to convince themself of their truth. “I will hold on to this pulse against other rhythms” returns to the body/nature divide, with “this pulse” being the heartbeat (of themself or of Louise) and “other rhythms” referring to everything beyond their bodies. “Rhythms” is such a vague word, and yet nature is full of repeated sounds: the rushing of a stream, the blowing of the wind, birdcalls, even the tides, which is referenced again in the last sentence. The rhythm of their bodies (heartbeats and perhaps the rhythm of physical contact as well) is all the narrator needs to survive. The passage ends with “The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm,” rounding out the message with explicit symbolism: the outside world (referenced by name) with its rhythms and structures (“the tide of a day”) is separated completely from the body and the narrator’s relationship with Louise, suggesting the narrator has no desire for any aspect of life beyond their love.