A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Part 4 - Extreme Unction

Reading Land Under the Wave through the lens of its title was so successful last week, that I used the same approach for Extreme Unction.

So, I had to start by finding out what 'extreme unction' actually is. A quick google/wiki search yields the info that Extreme Unction is an archaic term referring to the anointing of the sick: one of the seven Catholic sacraments, more specifically, one of the three Last Rites administered to a Catholic who is likely to soon die from old age or disease. The goal of this rite - somewhat surprisingly to me - is not primarily to impart divine healing, but to instill comfort, serenity, courage, and in some cases absolution of sin. The term 'extreme unction' could be stated in more familiar terms as 'final anointing', thus, extreme unction serves as a sort of mirror image to the first anointing in Catholic tradition: baptism. I find this connection very interesting given the heavy usage of water/bog-based imagery in Part 3, as well as - albeit to a lesser extent - in other sections.

The imminence of death, the prerequisite of extreme unction, becomes established pretty early on, when, in the first paragraph of chapter 2 the mother says "I think. I think. Your brother's going to die." It turns out that the brother's cancer has reawakened, causing memory lapses, nosebleeds, and a fall resulting in a hit to the head. An interesting allusion to religious last rites occurs in chapter 4 with the local protestant fellowship. The brother says "They're here all the time... Saying prayers you know and lay on hands. I don't. Yes. I don't like that much. Sometimes. Too much I get. I get. Scared. Of die of dying of go to hell." Here, the literal religious approach to extreme unction has proven a complete failure, instead of inspiring comfort, serenity, and courage, it effects the opposite: fear. This failure of religion is supported by depictions of the mother's feverish prayers, which are suggested to be from a place of naivete. This recognition of religion's failure by the girl is precipitated by even her attempts at religiosity failing: "In the chapel. Down on my knees. Oh god Jesus. I beg you. I am pleading. See. I plead. But stones in my mouth. Lead on my tongue." This schism from the religious traditions of her family, and society, cause the girl to seek a meaningful relationship in place of one with God. She turns to her brother.

The Girl's relationship to her brother is given distinction in her life by its unique placement among the water/bog-based imagery in this section. Girl's relationship with the Uncle continues to be described with diction suggesting drowning, burying, suffocation. "Stinking smothered by life by. Encased where there's no need to breathe to think... Where the air is. Where is the air?", "I feel his body now like weights under water. Drag me down.", "When he kisses. I am. Strangle. And he pushes me down. Something flooding.", "I'm lost. In the deep sea. In as the saying goes over my head with what." Her relationship with her roommate and college social circle is stated in similar terms: "Fuck her everyone. Fuck them all for I'm being buried right here on my own." Her return home is also framed within themes of suffocation in the bog: "What's before what's before. Me. Spreading out like muck like shite." Unlike all of this drowning imagery - a continuation from section 3 - instances of water in connection with the brother take a new light. At the opening of chapter 3, seeking a moment of reverie, the Girl goes to the beach and thinks of escape: "I'd be free or. Looking from very far back to this beach. I baptize. Baptize me. That I take. For I can't complain it's wrong. Free me clean me and save me from, Mt brother from this. I have to. I still have to go home." Here Girl connects thoughts of her brother with baptism, suggesting that this relationship with her brother is the one where she will find meaning, not the relationships of drowning and suffocation with her uncle, her friend, or her society. This idea is again repeated in a scene in chapter 5. In the middle of an internal dialogue about longing to help her brother, the Girls says: "Of the rain give me the rain and all that. Wash oh yes that's it wash away. My. Sin. Do you see. I can do what I can and that is that's what I can do... Let me. Pick you up. In some way. Just a little? These are my bits... Held. Out to you. You need. I see that. You have fallen down. My brother. My brother and my love. For you're the first one that I ever had." Here it is made very clear that Girl has come to understand how important her brother is to her, and it is described in the midst of a sort of baptism in the rain.

This discovered latent love for her brother, and the importance that the relationship holds for the Girl is shown in an interesting way near the end of the section: in religious terms, circling back around to the allusion to Rites in the title: "Do you love me? Can you love me even after that? Even now. I won't ask and I won't say that inside myself or ever out again. Forgive me brother. I know not what I do. Forgive me brother for I have sinned." In this passage Girl takes two extremely important prayers from Christendom - Jesus' prayer on the cross for his executioners "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do." and the Catholic Confessionals prayer - and replaced the word "Father" in them with "Brother" This powerfully suggests that Girl has been able to overcome the feeling from lacking a father by connecting instead with her brother. At the very end of the section, this connection and compassion will culminate in a pleading with the brother to comfort him, and possibly encourage him to live, a sort of non-religious extreme unction: "What did I ever do for you. I'll do something that you want once. What. You're off. Escaping all these things. Go away a little bit now. Now and more but still and still. I'd like to say. Don't. Stay here. Please. If you will. I won't. I swear. Leave you alone."

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Part 3: Land Under the Wave

One of the things that really stuck out to me in this whole section was the themes and imagery of drowning at home, and choking in the city. Throughout the whole section, and really the novel at large now that I think about it, seems to be constantly put in terms of the Girl's ability to breathe - both physically and metaphorically. Thinking back to the first sexual encounter with the uncle, she describes it something like all the air being forced out of her, the bus has a stifling pubescent smog to it, and so on. This thread of breathing and air is picked up in part 3.

In the first two sections, the Girl's home is a place of drowning - she in fact almost literally drowns at one point in a lake near her house. When the Girl leaves home in ch1 pt3, she thinks "Pulling off pulling off for the city. Leaving that. Go back. All you behind. Put breath back in my body." She clearly hopes that college will afford her an escape from the smothering and stagnation of home.

She escapes her bog-like home only to find that the city is like "black in my lungs. In my nose. Like I am smoking", her talkative new-found friend is similar "with all that smoke she is blowing up my nose" the social scene features "Music hurting on the innards. Door. Lungs." She picks up smoking and initially reacts with "That Jesus rips the tender throat out." Just as the smoking causes her to have a "whirling head... spin the brain away from here" we begin to see a return to the more difficult language from the first part Lambs (compared to the somewhat more straightforward second part A Girl Is a Half-formed thing). The narration reverts to "Strings of words. Strings of words." The dialogue - both internal and external - picks up a more frantic, frenzied quality: one of breathlessness.

In the third chapter the trend continues. Both times she returns home, the episode is located within terms of drowning, and the bog. At home for Christmas break "there's so much. Dredge up so much muck. I'd drown in that much shit." The language is even more explicit on the second return home: "Those fields. Going through them just like them. Drowned over. Filled up with rain. Even cows drown here. Even sheep. Even people if they're lucky. Children falling under every year. ... The world's submerged in raining. And feel old lady rosaries crossing over me. Like music's going in my brain. Against me. I would. Push. Away. Get off this shore." By connecting herself to the rain-flooded fields in the opening of the paragraph, she sets it up as a mirror image. The fields are flooded in rain, the Girl is flooded in memories from the past, hanging over her head, acting as an incessant music driving her insane. Just as cows, sheep, even people apparently, drown in those fields, the Girl seems to be concerned with drowning in the cacophony of her own psyche, doomed for self destruction: "It's a cesspit. A suck pool. Where all dead go. Am I. Will I. End up like them. Live and drown here. Filling my lungs. There's no escape. Get out for likes of me. Gurgle liquid up. Hold my nose. Fall in."

This nagging fear of self-destruction also manifests with the Girl's life in the city. When she briefly turns retrospective, she says: "I met a man. Should have turned on my heel. I thought. I didn't know to think. I didn't even know to speak. ...Sorry for that now. I don't really know what I was up to."

Finally, the second encounter with the uncle heavily features breath, suffocation, and drowning. "Quiet quiet in the car. All I hear is breath.", "Give my eyes back. Let me. See. My. Choke. Stop. Don't stop he says.", "But still. The ocean comes. I'll put my hands in. I'll baptize." "Put the air in my lungs. The fright out."