Theoretics

“The Disappearance” (1995) – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

“Years later, when he was an old man living in a home for seniors (his second wife dead, his daughters moved away to distant towns, his son not on speaking terms with him), he would continue to be dazzled by that brief unguarded joy on her face, would say to himself, again, how much she must have hated me to choose to give that up.

But he had no inkling of any of this yet. So he switched off the trash compactor with a satisfied click, the sense of a job well done and, after taking a shower (long and very hot, the way he liked it, the hard jets of water turning the skin of his chest a dull red), went to bed and fell immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.”

Effortlessly and nonchalantly Divakaruni seems to encompass the entirety of familial folly in her work. After his wife secretly leaves him, how carelessly the misogynist thinks that he can discard her memory. Those are the moments that define our entire existence, the ones that we can never forget, the ones that ring hollowly through our minds until the very end. A quote from Venus seems to sum up this entire short story;

“'For most men a woman's body is the most beautiful thing they will ever see.'

'What's the most beautiful thing a girl sees? Do you know?'

'Her first child.'”

And through this story we see how each gender fights for each “beautiful” thing. With the husband, the audience sees how he marries a woman the same week that he meets her, endangers his marriage with sexual demands, estranges his son by marrying another woman, and practically destroys himself seeking this one thing. With the grandmother we see exactly the same, she pressures her son to marry so that she can attempt to recreate the joy of childbirth through a grandchild, then she happily takes the place of homemaker after her daughter-in-law leaves so that she can be nearer to her son and grandson, then she further meddles in her son's life by getting him to remarry and have more grandchildren. The audience witnesses how both parties attempt to pretend like nothing has happened, and demean the wife's influence and power, by selfishly yearning for their precious desires. This is what makes the wife heroic. She abandons the one thing in her life that makes her most happy; her son. As if to teach him an invaluable lesson, by disappearing she makes a statement to her son that such abusive tendencies on the part of his father are unjustifiable. With her escape, the son eventually breaks away himself from the dust strewn traditions of an uncivil past. The distasteful secrets of married life, childhood, and parenting all come out in this short story, along with the pangs of human life in general. As the husband bitterly finds out that his wife was not abducted, but rather ran away, his pride and anger lead to his ultimate downfall in classic hubris form. Alone and self-betrayed he must face a truth that he has so long hidden.

The author shrewdly leaves quotation punctuation out of her tragic tale. In this way the speaker is separate, yet connected to the thoughts, actions, and dialogue of each character. Using dialogue in such an unlikely way compresses the work, like the inescapable truth and pressure that the main character feels. The perspective also becomes unique, as third person omniscient combines with first person limited. More importantly the dialogue is not stressed in this format, as it generally is with most work. With the separation of dialogue by paragraphs for each character and the obvious quotation marks, the eye is drawn to this emphatic component. Without this structure, the feeling fades from the remarks and becomes almost apathetic or uncaring, thus leaving the audience unsympathetic to the husband's plight; an important aspect of the story. Morphing common practices to the needs of a story is absolutely vital, and should not be avoided. Utilizing imagination and atypical methodology should always be welcomed in the literature community, since these are factors of which it so highly depends upon.