That being said, Groff's use of Florida across her stories is so important to the reader'e experience of each story. In both "Ghosts and Empties" and "Above and Below," while the characters felt like they were important, they also felt less important than the aspects of the setting that they were revealing to us through their experiences.
Also, I've been pretty sick since last night & my brain isn't wanting to do the things, so I'm gonna do some bullet points and thoughts and then burrow back into my bed:
"Ghosts and Empties":
- We get a lot of changing of seasons through MC's nightly walks and the changes she sees in the neighbors - "I look at him closely for the first time in a long time, my dear flabby friend whom I took for granted" (11); "It is a sticky night [...] time will leap forward and the night will grow more and more reluctant to descend [...] I will no longer have my dangerous dark streets to myself" (11)
- We also get a lot of the setting and how it works as this thing that overshadows and guides the MC - "But the tree has never before announced itself fully as the colossus that it is, with its branches that are so heavy they grow toward the ground then touch and grow upward again; and thus, elbowing itself up, it brings to mind a woman at the kitchen table, knuckling her chin and dreaming" (13). This quote is actually really great and reflects the longing that MC seems to have when it comes to her husband and her life in some ways - what do you guys think?
- Another moment that I loved where the setting reflects things is "my husband and I will look at each other crouching under the weight of all that we wouldn't or couldn't yell, as well as all those hours outside walking together, my body, my shadow, and the moon" (14) - this sentence in particular I love because it starts out with MC and her husband but ends with the "we" being MC and her nightly walks accompanied by the setting.
- THE SWANS THOUGH. "The swam parents floated for months inconsolable. Perhaps this is a projection: as they are both black swans and parents, they are already pre-feathered in mourning" (8). Like damn, also the otters that came and ate the cygnets with this moment being so underplayed with how the otter "ate it in small bites, floating serenely" (8). Both these moments really reflect the whole idea of the food chain being indiscriminate to how we might try to humanize animals but then we also have the swans being black and how that reflects the fear that many African-American parents fear for their children because of how others perceive them based on their skin - what do you guys think? I'm not sure I have all the words especially right now to articulate all of these thoughts and ideas that came up with my reading.
Moving on to "Above and Below" now because so many thoughts:
- Did anyone else think of the movie "As Above, So Below" while reading this which instantly turned up the potential creep factor?
- While reading I also had a lot of thoughts which kept bringing me back to Gaiman's "Neverwhere" and the people who slip thorough the cracks and are usually only seen if they interact with "Florida Above" first such as when MC is looking at her colleagues through the window "a knot pulled tight in her gut, but when he looked past her to a sleek young woman gliding by on a bicycle, the knot frayed and broke apart" (188). I notice this several times and how the setting functioned to absorb MC in a way so that people from above wouldn't see her but those in "Florida Below" saw her and recognized her as one of them.
- Also colors - those who are "below" are dark while those who are "above" she sees as pink such as with the friends in the cafe - "how fat they looked, how pink" (188). There's very much this calling back to a lot of cultures where being pale is a sign that you're in the upper class because you're not dark from being outside, yet there's also this envy from the above that "all she needed to be pretty was laziness and some mild starvation" (173) which also lends to the setting in that MC interacts with it so much because she is now a part of the background and being a part of "Florida Below." I'm very much liking this idea of "florida above" and "florida below" and how that impacts how we experience the setting and what it says to us as a result.
I'm gonna leave this here for now, but what do you guys think?
I love your points about skin tone/the black swans. I also have to wonder if there was any reference or subconscious influence from Swan Lake in terms of having the swans be black swans (probably not, but it is something to consider). In Swan Lake the black swan Odile is used as a symbol of the strong, sexual woman, and the dangers that lurk beneath her surface, lust, deception, mortal and spiritual peril, etc. etc. Which seems to also pair with the segment about the calm waters being disturbed by something sinister underneath. Perhaps the black swans versus the "cute" otter are meant to be a commentary of the viciousness of the White upper classes, who like to pass themselves off as civilized and neat, towards people of color or other differences? Or perhaps how the viciousness towards independent women, like Odile (even if Odlie was supposed to be created by Rothbart the magician)?
ReplyDeleteSorry you're sick, Mo. Hope you feel better. I believe that there's a lot of creep factors in these stories by the way. e
ReplyDeleteHoly buckets, I didn't think about how a collection of short stories set in the same location would mean that ALL the pieces would create a larger canvas of setting than one story alone. My weird brain likes to think of invisible partitions between pieces so that things like voice, setting and characters don't bleed into territory that doesn't belong to them. But I think this collection is doing exactly what you're describing: "the sense of place is built little by little across each character's experience (while also being able to have characters from one story show up as tertiary characters in another)."
ReplyDeleteAs I read your post, I thought about how themes carry over from piece to piece. I latched onto bodies and Groff's acute and troubled relationship with food intake, weight, etc. in the three pieces we read this week. Kari also mentioned the A.C. showing up in multiple pieces. I think that you're exploding my mind a little, and I'm happy about it, when you talk about tertiary characters and setting developing bit by bit. What, then, are we developing across the whole collection?
I didn't actually think about the fact that all three stories being connected by place. I mean, I know from the title, but each terrain seemed so drastically different from the next, but I suppose that's excellence on Groff's end because now that I think about it, there were small connectors (air conditioners, weather, etc) connecting them.
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