This is a response to Dionne Irving's piece Florida Lives...
When we talked about strategies in class, I loved the strategy of how the landscape embodies the internal turmoil of the characters. It reminded me immediately of when my AP English class in high school studied Fall of the House of Usher and my teacher was talking about how the house was the soul and the windows were the eyes to that soul. This is that same idea. The couple puts up curtains and creates a "luxurious" feel to hide the true decrepit nature of the house. This mirrors the idea of their relationship falling apart but them trying to put up a front for the Fletchers and other people. This strategy melts into the other strategy that she uses about euphemisms. This shows the narrators inability to say that she wants out of the relationship, or inability to discuss what she really feels. They cannot grasp the reality of what they want from each other and are too afraid to say what they really feel because they don't know what will become of them in societies eyes. Euphemisms are sometimes related to the area that you are in...and therefore societies roles and expectations change...so they could be feeling some pressure to stay a certain way.
These strategies are intriguing to me. I would love to be able to create the complexity in the characters the way Irving does...how you start out thinking one way about the narrator and her husband-they are relatively normal but were having issues with their relationship- but then they meet their neighbors and you begin to wonder about their complexity and what exactly they hate about these people and why they are hating so badly. This creation of a slowly complex character is something that I want to work on...I don't think my characters are one dimensional, but it would be interesting to have these kinds of characters.
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