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."