The
memoir Stitches is tale full of grim
insight into David Small’s life. The opening scenes describe a family where
each member has their own unique language, His mother had her cough, his dad
had his punching bag, his brother had his drums, and he had “getting sick”.
Throughout the story there are several parallels that run through the
storylines. Both David and his mother express themselves in silence; the
silence of course is forced on David by his parents through their lack of
medical urgency. However do you believe that David mother’s silence may have
been forced on her as well by her own upbringing by Grandma Murphy?
I
also thought there was an interesting tension between David being teased as
being a homosexual early on in the memoir by the other children for pretending
to be Alice from Alice in Wonderland and his mother’s own silenced homosexuality.
Additionally Dr. White Rabbit being the person who tells him many truths, one
of which being “your mother doesn’t love you”. Is there significance to these things
being veiled in the “magical” world of Alice and Wonderland?
And
lastly, did anyone read the information about David Smalls mother at the end of
the book? Did this change your perspective of his mother at all?
Coming from Grandma Murphy... I would say it is a little bit of both. Her silence also has a lot do with the time period. In the 1950's most women didn't have a voice in the household, they were there for only a handful of tasks and were not to step over the boundaries. It was almost as if women didn't have a sense of opinion or moral compass.
ReplyDeleteEven though this book made many comparisons to Alice in Wonderland, I have yet to actually experience the films.. so there is not too much I can say here.
I think you’re right to suggest that Grandma Murphy bears some blame for the way David’s mother treats him. Grandma Murphy is revealed to be a sort of backwards crazy person. The language of swinging cabinet doors and clanging plates is removed and David’s mother becomes a translator for Grandma Murphy (I’m thinking of the scene with the beans). That these two women speak the same language, and that one of these women attempts murder because of illness, certainly implicates David’s mother in a discussion about mental illness. But the memoir suggests that there is a choice, David decides not to follow in his grandmother’s steps (this is the dream in which he avoids the hospital). When David invokes “crazy” his mother shuts down the conversation, she refuses to talk about it, and that lack of communication seems to be the thing that facilitates the slippery slide into a rocky home life.
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