So it's the boys' point of view, but at the very end of page 36 the narrator says, "Though she had spoken only rarely and had no real friends, everybody possessed his own vivid memories of Cecilia. Some of us had held her for five minutes as a baby while Mrs. Lisbon ran back into the house to get her purse."
Why is it that "everybody possessed HIS own vivid memories"?
and who is "some of us"? Because these boys that are narrating seem to be too young to have been there, holding Cecilia, when she was a baby.
I had the same problem with this. I would assume that they were only slightly older than her, perhaps a year or two. Following it goes onto say that "Some of [them] had played in the sandbox with her, fighting over a shovel, or had exposed [themselves] to her behind the mulberry tree that grew like deformed flesh" (37). I suspect that they are only slightly older than her, which leads to another point: Why is there a connection between them? Just like the boys I'm assuming, but I just feel that in younger years of age, it feels like there is some sort of detachment between those of different ages; this is even stranger when the main narrator continues to say that "a few of [them] had fallen in love with her" (37). However, this whole problem could be remedied with the thought that the boys are an assimilation of different ages; how they attained a connection is still a question but still. I know there was a consensus of the boys being stalker-like, which I don't discount; however, I feel like the boys are, whether they even recognize it themselves, the most caring about the death. I don't mean to say that most others have no heart, but they simply are in a situation that's alien to them; they have no idea how they should act. Although the boys are just dissecting Cecilia's past life, they aren't ignoring the death. As I type this, I feel like that might have something to do with them being in a group, but maybe not. There really only are two decently sized groups, not including couples of course, being the girls and the boys. These groups seem to each have a better capacity for understanding or just handling situations, aside from suicide. Of course suicide isn't an answer, but having been told the story only from the boys' perspective, we're surely missing some thought in the mind of Cecilia; the same thought that made her say "Obviously, Doctor,...you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl" (5).
ReplyDeleteI can't create a new post so I guess I'll make one here. First off, I agree with Jessica and AJ. I was convinced that the narrators were the same age as the girls, but as AJ said, they may be just a couple of years older than Cecilia. Also, the idea that they all have their own vivid memories relates back to the topic we were talking about in class today. Maybe each of the boys have their own assumptions, or what they call "vivid memories" and believe is real. As readers, we are now struggling with the main question: What is the truth?
ReplyDeleteNow, since I can't create a new post, I'll write here about what I found interesting in the reading tonight. I observed (and found interesting) that the boys were so infatuated with Trip. Maybe, they're obsessed because he's a womanizer or because they want to figure out his connection with Lux. What do you guys think? Does Trip possess truthful knowledge?
Second, I noticed the narrator using words like: "reliable" and sentences like: "we imagined" when talking about what they "knew" about Trip. Do you guys think the boys are creating a whole new story, full of hypotheses? Is any information here valuable?