STITCHESSSSS!!!

There is so much that I love about this book. And I know I talked about silence a lot in my presentation so I’ll try to abstain from talking any more about it…. No I can’t. I have to talk about it. Just a bit more though, I promise. Silence is so appropriate here I can’t get over it, and not only after David’s vocal chords get removed. He never had a voice in that house to begin with. No one did. The significant lack of text made the silence and tension in that family so sentient, their dysfunction so palpable; I don’t know how any of them could stand it. But enough of that now.

On to a few questions I have which I’ll attempt to answer now, but will probably bring them up again in class. First of all, what the hell was that little demon creature??? At first I thought David was just schizophrenic and was seeing beings his disturbed mind had created. But now I have a better theory. I think that creature was just a manifestation of his anger as a child. So much had been suppressed and bottled up, it was only a matter of time before it broke free. And maybe that’s why the creature lost its “demon-ness” towards the end of the book. David had come to terms with his past and was beginning to finally lose the anger he had built up. What about the angry Jesus though? Was that the same thing? Or am I missing something?

I also want to talk about something that was mentioned toward the tail end of my presentation but did not get the full attention that it deserved. And that is Small’s use of aspect-to-aspect transitions. The heavy, disturbed tone of the book is brought on heavily by the use of this transition. Small was able not only to give setting and establish the emotion of the book, but also he was able to slow down the pace of the book and allow the reader to fully dive into David’s world. Most notably, this is found after David’s visit with the psychiatrist (as the White Rabbit which is SO COOL!). David’s emotional breakdown is followed by nine pages of pretty much nothing. Rain. An empty kitchen. A TV no one is watching. More rain. But it was all necessary. I felt David’s hurt in those raindrops; I felt his betrayal, his loneliness. Words could not do that. One picture could not do that. I needed to feel the length and breadth of his sadness.

I also appreciated the use of moment-to-moment transitions. Everything felt deliberate. Every action felt meaningful, even something so simple as putting a yellow towel on his head. But he sure loved that long. Blond. Hair.

Okay well I’m done rambling on for now. I’ll continue in class; there’s still so much more to say.