As I progress through the novel I began to find myself asking that very question more and more. We are told that Gould is sent to the worst prison in the entire British Empire's penal system. We are made aware of the atrocities that take place in Sarah Island. At this point in the book it seems if you are not getting your penis cut off or forced to do participate in some purposeless torture on any given day, it is in fact quite a victory. Gould has luckily avoided most of these situations, but his survival is still questionable.
Assuming Sarah Island is not clean or sanitary and lacking the basic first aid materials, Gould's good health is surprising. First of all, he lives in a cell that floods multiple times during the day. Living in a damp environment in a prison in which he leaves dead fish in can not be good for ones' health. Moreover, Gould finds a dead body that he then buries in feces. Generally speaking those two things are not regarded as being clean. Then, in this past reading, we find out that Gould comes across another dead body and chooses to put it in his OWN CELL and float around with a dead, bloated, and decaying body. How has he not developed some type of disease? His immune system must be weak as he already has the clap and syphilis. The fact he has not contracted some deadly illness is simply miraculous.
I think that one of the things that we have to keep in mind when reading this novel is the time period. I think that if we were going through what Gould was going through we might get a disease because our bodies are weaker and not used to that type of environment. since the over hygiene of that time period was not very high his body had probably built up a lot of immunity to lots of bacteria.
ReplyDeleteThen another term to remember when reading fiction is suspension of disbelief (google it). Some things you just have to ignore and just take it as it is. That kind of goes along with the idea that he may be watching people that he is talking about, even though it may be a stretch to think about.
This blog post reminds me exactly of what we were talking about today. Clearly, Gould's account is questionable and we as readers find trouble accepting many of the things he says. Towards the end of the book Gould even says not to ask him how he knows so many things and just accept it. Maybe we shouldn't ask rational questions such as how is Gould not extremely sick. Rather, we should think about all the contradictions and uncertainties in this novel. What is Flanagan/Gould trying to tell us by these? Could he be trying to explain how literature and words are totally unacceptable for defining a truth since the world is always changing? If we think about the broader implications of the novel, the book may not appear quite as confusing.
ReplyDelete