Stitches: Section IV

Section IV: I Was Fifteen

|| & Question

An interesting metaphorical parallel is that between the white rabbit therapist and the "doors of diminishing size" in David's recurring dream. The decision to include both of these things, along with the "playing Alice" bit is an unmistakable reference to Alice in Wonderland.

At first I was unsure how Alice could truly relate to this non-fiction narrative, but I figured that it helps emphasize the importance of imagination in David's childhood. While he has such an unfortunate reality he has to resort to imagination (and, as is later clarified, art) for his fulfillment.

The scene with the therapist includes a major realization on .David's behalf — that his mother truly did not love him. After David accepts this, the next several pages of the novel are devoted solely to wordless drawings of David's house and neighborhood drenched in rain. The dream on the other hand plays a different and more figurative role in David's story. My question is, how are these two moments related (and the playing Alice scene) in the context of the novel?

Journal: Words

There are many sections within this novel that use almost no dialog at all, and I have found that the author's choice of which scenes to narrate and which to only illustrate really shapes the moment at hand.

To first point out a section where the presence of words is particularly enticing, I will examine the description of David's newfound outcast friends on the pages 298 to 300. David Small is apparently known best for his children's books and I actually got a sense of a picture book style of narration throughout the closing of this section. On page 300, David narrates, "I liked them all. Their circumstances and behavior were, by almost any standard, bizarre, but I felt more normal among them, and less lonely." This narration is coupled with a bleak picture of David's shadow amongst the gloomy Detroit neighborhood. I found the combination of the few lines of text with this more scenic than descriptive picture to be a very eloquent combination: in the image David is depicted as a mere shadow with no one else in view, whereas as Small writes below he had begun to feel less lonely.

The more plot-centric scene that follows is narrated much less. When David arrives at the hospital to visit his dying mother, the process of him getting to the room is drawn out over a couple of pages of pure imagery (without captions). The nurse informs him that his mother is unable to talk due to having a tube down her throat. On page 306 the caption reads, "She couldn't talk and neither could I. I had been screaming for so many hours that I, too, was voiceless." This is followed by a series of images depicting David's last moment with his mother, and there are no other words until the caption "Mother died that night," over a picture of David walking away.

In this scene I feel that the emphasis on imagery over words describes very appropriately the relationship between David and his mother. His mother, once silent by choice, was now physically unable to speak — effectively leveling her with her son for the first and only time. In contrast to the scene where David walks in on his mother with another woman, the "complex feelings" (273) shared by the two of them in their final moment together were more genuine and mutual than before.