Storyteller
The narrator, Alison, liked to tell stories. She was telling them to her sisters, catching their like they caught butterflies, capturing their attention and making them believe that all that she said was truth even if it was far from it. When there were not listeners, she didn’t care, she didn’t need them. The girl was walking somewhere, telling stories to herself “when I walked, I talked—story-talked, out loud assuming identities I made up. Sometimes I was myself arguing loudly as I could never do at home. Sometimes I became people I had seen on television or read about in books”. The imagery represents a unique character of a girl, her passion to tell stories which influenced her future path.
But where am I in the stories I tell?
Really, what is Allison’s place in her stories? Is she just the narrator, or the main character of her narration? She says that she is not a storyteller but “the woman in story, the woman who believes in story” and she makes other people believe in her stories, she remakes the world into stories. It is a gift and she uses it to feel better and somehow protected from the damages of the real world. Making up the stories was the way to survive for her. In this imagery the reader can follow the role of Allison in her stories and what they mean for her.
Smell of Greenville
Greenville, South Carolina, was the place where Alison was born and grew up. The most unique thing about this place for the girl is how its smells: “Cut wet grass, split green apples, baby shit and beer bottles.; cheap makeup and motor oil. Everything was ripe, everything was rotting”. The smell wasn’t like anything in the world and the place itself was also different from other she has ever seen. But her attitude to it was not clear even for her. She both loved and hated it, it was both the most beautiful and disgusting place in the whole world: “. Beautiful and terrible. It is the country of my dreams and the country of my nightmares: a pure pink and blue sky, red dirt, white clay, and all that endless green—willows and dogwood and firs going on for miles”. The imagery depicts the place where the girl was born and her bipolar attitude toward it.
What is theatre?
Allison was wondering what is theatre of true life, not the one with the stage and decorations but the real theatre, where all people play every day. We all are actors and spectators simultaneously, playing our roles and watching people playing theirs. “Theater is standing up terrified and convincing people you know what you're doing—eating oysters with a smile when the only fish you've known has been canned tuna or catfish fried in cornmeal… Theater is talking about sex with enormous enthusiasm when nobody's ever let you in their pants.”. theater is everywhere, in each our movement and word, it is a mask we wear every day is pretending you know what you're doing when you don't know anything for certain and what you do know seems to be changing all the time. The imagery shows the ugliness of artificial world which turns out to be a theatre.
