Francesca Baldini
EN 385
They Who Did Not
Grieve: The Power of Naming
Throughout
Sia Figiel’s They Who Did Not Grieve,
the author highlights the importance of names and naming. The protagonist,
Malu, constantly reminds readers what her name means or what other words mean.
For instance, in the beginning of the novel she explains, “Malu means
‘shelter’, ‘protection’, like a fa’amalu, an umbrella that protects one from
the rain. It also means to protect from or to shelter from bad spirits” (Figiel
6). The emphasis on meaning of names runs throughout the novel and suggests
that in naming something, we are distancing our selves from its immediacy. This
reminding me of Calvino’s Invisible
Cities, where Marco Polo encounters this problem. In both accounts, the
authors suggest an issue with language, in which language becomes inadequate in
describing the actual experience.
Our
protagonist, Malu, explains this issue further when describing her role as a storyteller.
Her grandmother tells her, “Don’t Write
Anything Down! It’s the easiest (and surest) way to forget things. Writing
things down does that, Malu, you know? And you don’t wanna do that, girl” (Figiel
5). The suggestion that writing something down is the best way to forget things
recalls the problem with retelling one’s experience, particularly with travel.
When documenting one’s encounters with travel in a written form, the author
often loses the ability to describe her encounters in their truest form. Also,
like Malu’s grandmother, once something is recorded, it is easier to forget
what else occurred. However, the verbal form of story telling allows the teller
to alter the story in a more authentic way. Instead of documenting an
experience in a formal and fixed way, the teller can change their story each
time, making it more authentic.
These
descriptions of naming and the power of naming also remind me of my own experiences
with travel. When retelling my personal experiences with travel, I often need
to rely on the other person’s imagination in order for them to understand me.
However, in naming things rather than describing them, something is lost for
the readers. Instead of describing the city in detail or the way a certain
building looks, I rely on different vocabulary to articulate what I mean, but
in doing that I take the imaginative process away from my listener. In a
similar way, when listening to stories versus reading the written story,
readers can tap into that imaginative process more easily. In this way, when
someone finally encounters the city or place I’ve described, it is often not
how they pictured it, mainly because I depended on words that impede true
understanding of the thing. In agreement with Figiel, by naming something we
not only avoid encountering it in its immediacy, but we also limit what it can
be. Just as Malu is limited by the meaning of her name at different points in
the novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment