The Element of Silence in The Secret Life of Words

The unspoken is a very important element in The Secret Life of Words. Hanna has suffered too much in her life to ever convey properly through words. Her silence, and the voice that only exists within her head are more powerful in that they do not diminish the horrors of her past by trying to portray them with words. Even Hannah’s confession of her past to Josef is considerably short in length, however the human response which it evokes lasts longer and makes the speech so much more significant in that it is so emotionally charged. Additionally, the silence Hanna maintains concerning her past despite being barraged with questions by Josef makes they few times she does speak extremely significant because the audience senses that she has so much to say but doesn’t know how. This is evidenced particularly when she calls her therapist early on in the movie and cannot find any words to say, yet the woman on the other line instinctively knows her identity because of the burden she carries which She has likely often found too heavy for words. Hanna’s frequent refusal to utilize her hearing aid represents the lack of value she places in words. Actions however, as cliche as it sounds, Josef’s sobs following her monologue and even evidence of past actions such as the scars are held with a much grater value than words in this film. The first time this becomes apparent is when Hanna brutishly begins to devour the remnants of Josef’s dinner. This can be marked as the beginning of her awakening or her coming back to the world. Thus, in Secret Life of Words, I believe that silence is more telling and evocative than words because it intimates the horrors of the truth better than words ever could. The prime instance of this is Josef’s decision not to watch Hanna’s tape of her therapy sessions.

An Analysis of Goodness and Flourishing in The Secret Life of Words

At the beginning of The Secret Life of Words, the audience is presented with a main character, Hannah, who seems to have nothing in her life but a factory job, chicken, rice and apples for every meal, and and obsessive compulsive relationship with soap. She doesn’t know how to be flourish it seems, although she is desperately trying to be good and continue with life, trying to forget the horrors she has witnessed in her past. 

Hannah turns off her hearing aid as a method of detaching herself from the world and the sorrows which she associates with it, by maintaining this detachment from the world,  she tries to hide from the memories of the horrors it has committed against her. Although, the voice within her head will never truly let her forget. The movie’s heroine can’t even take a vacation willingly because it removes all distractions between her the world from which she is so desperately hiding herself. A vacation would leave her alone with nothing but herself and the world which has wronged her so and because “[she] is afraid that one day...[she] may begin to cry and cry so very much that nothing or nobody can stop me and the tears will fill the room and [she] won't be able to breath” (Coixet).

Furthermore, the oil rig symbolic as a setting in many ways. It houses many, like Hanna, who wish to separate themselves from society and be “alone.” It embodies pain and suffering due to the explosion. And for Josef,  it represents the ending of a marriage the suicide of his best friend. Josef trying to save his friend and nearly killing himself is his struggle for goodness despite the past badness in his life. Hannah too faces this struggle in perhaps this explains the mutual understanding they reach; both are dealing with the fact that they are alive despite the deaths of others and how they can move on and flourish from this place. In order to overcome the badness in their pasts, it seems both must share their pasts with each other which is why as Josef says later in the film they need each other. This occurs in almost an exchange of information and brings out an immediate and visible catharsis in the other. In this sense, each character has to let go of the past by allowing it to be known by another to be able to move on and to flourish. While both characters can be considered “good” at the beginning of the film as they are attempting to live with the badness of their pasts, they can never flourish until they move on and let go of the badness by achieving intimacy with another whom can take the burden from them. Josef and Hannah find this in each other and the epilogue scene, showing them with two sons and a cottage shows that they have indeed come to flourish. However, the child’s voice within Hannah’s head still remains when she is alone which makes the story believable and makes her flourishing more real because there remains the reminder of all she has had to suffer to get to that point.

Flourishing and Goodness in The School Among the Ruins and Lark & Termite

The teacher as a model of goodness in The School Among the Ruins establishes the idea of giving care to innocent characters when not obligated to do so as a benchmark for goodness and flourishing. Along with this, the teacher put the needs of the students before his own, filtering out his negative thoughts for himself to provide them with only hope while “all night pitiless pilotless things go shrieking... [but] maybe tomorrow the bakers can fix their ovens” (Rich).  He “loves his school students” and upon the crisis he automatically assumes responsibility for them without question as reflected by his use of the subject “we” as he searches for food and water (Rich). While reading this poem, these associations with the meaning of goodness and flourishing struck me as very familiar to the definitions of these ideas in Lark and Termite (as described in my earlier blog post). The language in which the teacher uses specifically to address the students and to encourage the values associated with a typical school experience such as curiosity (“don’t stop asking me why”), nurturing and observation (“let’s pay attention to our cat”) demonstrates his understanding of the students and how to speak to them (Rich).  Lark also demonstrates this deep understanding of Termite and how to interpret his needs such as the bell ringing system on Termite’s chair and the way Lark knows that “things sound more like music in [Termite’s] version. Sounds instead of words” (Phillips 85).

In particular, the relationship between Lark and Termite endures to major catastrophes in which Lark’s behavior closely mirrors that of the teacher and as consequence of the actions of these caretakers the readers in both cases are left with a sense of goodness and hope. In Lark & Termite, the two main characters are nearly separated while boarding the train to Florida and Lark “would have shot [them] both if [she’d] thought they could be separated” (Phillips 246).

In the train incident the fact that Lark tries to shelter Termite from the near separation is similar to the teacher encouraging normal classroom behavior amongst the students despite his own knowledge of the “ruins” surrounding them. This encompasses the self-sacrificing quality of these relationships because the teacher and Lark are willing to take on the burden of knowing what is happening or “almost happened” (in the case of Lark & Termite’s near separation) in order to spare those they care for (Phillips 246).

It is important to note that in The School Among the Ruins and in Lark & Termite, the students and Termite, respectively, have mysteriously lost their biological parents and are left completely helpless creating the need for the care taking role to be assumed by another. The thought of what could become of them without this role assumed is what most appeals to the pathos of the reader. Especially, in The School among the Ruins, Rich’s suggestion of the cat teaching the children intimates the possibility of the children becoming wild, feral children without a caretaker to guide them into their roles in society. Whereas Termite is “so-called disabled” and it is suggested that he may not have a long life (Phillips 94). By the conclusion of the novel, without Lark he would likely be taken in by Social  Services while Nonie under suspicion for Gladdy’s death.

The Human Condition in Jean Valentine's Poems

Throughout her poems Valentine focuses on the human condition through biblical allusions as well as the body, soul, and human suffering making up this condition.

Valentine begins invoking the human condition by focusing equally on the body and soul and their relationship, that is: how the “soul [becomes] flesh” (3). Valentine focuses on specific bodily attributes including the eyes, hands (see I heard my left hand and Do flies remember us), skin (see Occurrence of White), “charcoal skull” and bones (17). With this she continues to distinguish the body and soul, or her “crayon bones” and her “heart shutting down” (11). She also incorporates sexuality with the body “[wanting] breasts, bellies, hair... nipples, foreskin, heart” (5). She uses imagery of the body in a biblical sense as well “the pelvis thinning out to God” (3).

Coming largely from the Catholic tradition, Valentine depicts a human condition that is categorized by suffering, just as Jesus Christ suffered as the human God. This suffering though, following the Bible, has almost a redemptive quality. In the poem The Hawthorn Robin Mends with Thorns, the very title suggests a redemptive quality resulting from human suffering. The fact that this poem is in the form of a conversation with “Mary” invokes biblical imagery of the maternal figure of the Virgin Mary suggesting that Valentine may even be involved in the act of prayer during this poem. Again invoking images of the body, Valentine describes her “older breast” and “thinner rib” as well as imagery of the piercing of a heart (7). This piercing of the body imagery again invoke biblical allusions, in this case to the crucifixion and ultimate human suffering of Jesus Christ.

In line with the human sufferings of Jesus, Valentine also carries a theme of abandonment, betrayal,  “emptiness” and loss throughout many of her poems (19). Her lover and her family are the most common subjects, beginning the section entitled “New Poems”  with Valentine’s accounts of abandonment as a young girl. This appears most vividly in The Girl as “the mother and son are gone happy, the father to work, the sister to marriage, [while] the girl is still spilling” (4). In concurrence with this theme is the idea of the “Visiting Area” in either a hospital or the Avenal prison in which one is forced to be confined and isolated, “dying day by day” in human suffering (32). 

Valentine offers a fully developed portrait of the relationship between the body and the soul as in the aforementioned Annunciation the body and soul are seen as working in unity, the exact opposite is shown in Eighteen. In this poem, Valentine as an adolescent is experiencing the pulls of the desires if her body for sexual pursuits and experiences in contrast with her “soul in the corner” (5). Her spiritual self in this imagery is clearly taking a stance geographically (in its corner) and certainly idealogically different than the physical desires of the author (5).

The Key to Happiness in Lark & Termite: Understanding Relationships

In Lark & Termite, happiness rests in the hands of others. That is characters with fulfilling relationships with others in the novel are able to flourish, be happy, and live well. A relationship, to provide for this happiness, must have the characteristic of complete understanding between the characters.

Lark & Termite are the most fitting example of a relationship with this understanding. Lark know that “Termite does things another way... He remembers the cadences of songs and rhymes, he recognizes sounds, not words” (39). Lark also knows what Termite wants and needs, “the bell on his chai was [her] idea... he presses it twice if he has to go to the bathroom, or a lot if something is wrong” (35). Additionally, Termite spends his days observing Lark he knows her routines and the most secret parts of her life, including her relationship with Solly. Termite knows that Lark “knows he can see if she’s very close but he doesn’t look [if] he doesn’t want her to stay” (60). Termite’s chapters includes anaphora, or the repetition of beginning sentence structures, in that many of his sentences start with what Lark does (59). This relationship, giving the novel its name is certainly the most obvious and the most complex understanding relationship of the novel but it is far from the only relationship of this category in the novel. Lola shares a similar understanding of Termite knowing that he was constantly thinking and “moves his fingers... when he is agitated” (251). She also understands Lark enough to give her something that could be hers, even though many people would view Termite as a burden, Lola rightfully knew that to Lark he would be a gift.

Lola and Leavitt satisfy this quality as well, they have almost a clairvoyant connection as Robert continually senses her presence in Korea and “feels [Termite] turn in the salt and blood” as he falls prey to death (220). “Lola knew, almost by instinct, who he was” (218). Finally by the conclusion of the novel before Lola ends her own life she still senses Robert’s presence and feels that he “would forgive her” (252).

Nonie and Charlie have one of the most peculiar relationships in a novel filled with peculiar relationships. Although the reader rarely sees them in a romantic context, they do in essence share a child (Lark) that Lola intended for them and we know that they are comfortable together and Nonie “loves him still after thirty years” (56). One of the main sources of their mutual understanding lies in the years that they have been together since “when the grass was high enough to hide [them] in Polish Town” (102). Only Charlie and Nonie (and Lola, deceased) can understand the secrets of the past, which serve as an additional bond of shared secrets only they understand. They also seem to be united through Lola who understood them both. Nonie, even comes to understand and forgive Lola by the conclusion of the novel, “surely that’s why [she still cries,] quietly, the way Lola cried” (208).

In an unforeseen romantic relationship, Solly and Lark have one of the strangest understandings that is likened to that between a brother and a sister. “[Solly] is like [her] brother...except he can talk to [her]. [He] can touch [her] back” (182). This, combined with their ongoing sexual understanding, “like [Lark] owns his body, like he would own [hers] if he ever got inside” (185). The same pattern, “the old game,” in which these sexual encounters usual occur allows them to have a rather off kilter and unforeseen romance (184). Nevertheless, they both understand Termite, Solly telling Termite “you’re my boy” (215).  “Termite lost Solly too” (180). This shared understanding of Termite, relates Solly and Lark them to the primary understanding relationship of the book: that of Lark & Termite.

Transcendentalism in Lark & Termite

          Transcendentalism is a new way of acquiring knowledge and wisdom arriving at such knowledge “not just through the senses, but through intuition and contemplation of the internal spirit” (http://www.online-literature.com/periods/transcendentalism.php). Similar to the Janie’s childhood tree in Their Eyes Were Watching God and the meticulous way she watched the tree and pondered its tiniest details, ultimately bringing her to her womanhood and sexual awakening. Lark and Termite show an inclination towards this form of enlightenment. Lark remarks “in the quiet, I can hear” reflecting these values of of arriving at knowledge through intuition and self-reflection jut like Termite. Termite doesn’t need to talk to know what is happening. In fact, by remaining in his own little world he is almost an all-knowing figure, portrayed in his narrative as wise beyond his age as he often gives away secrets and has an innate knowing of certain things such as his reveal of Lark & Solly’s relationship and his automatic connection with Stamble. The majority of the narrative doesn’t occur in dialogue form illustrating this focus on knowledge coming from self-reflection. It is later revealed in Leavitt’s account that this inward focus away from words is passed down from father to son instead of stemming from transcendentalism, although this idealogy can certainly still be argued. Stamble willed his son to “look inside... where you really are [and] stay still [and] listen” (Phillips 220).