Image Study

"Seigl, to whom nostalgia meant little, like a brilliant autumn foilage to the color-blind, tried to think of a consoling reply, but could not."



At this point in the story, Seigl has just picked up his sister, Jet, from the airport, and is having a conversation about their childhood. Jet recalls how happy she had been living in Carmel Heights, where she is visiting Seigl, and Seigl searches for a reply but is not successful. In this quote, Oates uses a distinct visual image of a vibrant fall forest setting that has been transformed into black and white to give the reader a better understanding of Joshua Seigl's situation.


"Dmitri stood over her and saw with interest that the girl's forearms and the backs of her hands were fiercely marked as with calligraphy, or embroidery; where her hair parted to reveal a portion of the milky nape of her neck, there was a filigree of magenta and dull red. The marks on the girl's hands, across her knuckles, looked like the wispy remains of lace gloves. If these were tattoos, they weren't very vivid or emphatic; they looked more like a miniature language. The needle tracks of a junkie mainlining heroin, morphine, Demerol?"



In this scene, the cafe waiter, Dmitri, is studying the appearance of the Tattooed Girl, Alma. She is introduced as very mysterious, he doesn't know where she came from or who she was; but she has these blemish-looking tattoos scattered on her body. In this visual discription, Oates describes the appearance of these mysterious tattoos, and how unusual and poorly done they appeared.


"Mount Carmel Hill above the river was a glacier hill, a drumlin, so steep that paths and roadways zigzagged from side to side like frantic snakes. The landscape was rock ledges, gulches, chasms, and thin trickling streams that in flood time became raging creeks flowing into the Tuscarora Ricer two hundred feet below. The old Catholic cemetary through which Seigl ran-or, in frigid weather, hiked-on an almost daily basis was a place of beauty and neglect; of wind-ravaged oakes and juniper pines amid a necropolis of grave markers, tombstones, rotted-looking crosses and shabby yet fierce-eyed angels, family vaults in neo-classic design with columns, fluted porticos, solemly carved names, dates, exhorations from a simpler era."



Oates went to great detail in describing the location and atmosphere of the cemetary where Seigl frequently ran and hiked in, and when I first read this passage I wasn't sure why. But now I think that by providing detail of a place Seigl often spends solitary time in, Oates was trying to describe something about Seigl's personality. Using the vivid details of the trees, grave markers, and tombs, Oates seems to be hinting at a sense of "beauty and neglect" in Joshua Seigl's life, as well, that draws him to this unusual spot of solitary enjoyment.


"Adulthood was itself a kind of beard, a shield held up before him. And here was his sister plucking and pulling at it, threatening to expose him."



Joshua Seigl is definitely a person who likes to keep to himself. He doesn't enjoy attention, and desperately tries to hide his life from others, by keeping social conversation light, and even going as far as to not tell anyone about his neurological illness. In this quote, Oates is referring to Seigl's adulthood as a beard that he hides behind. His sister is trying to lower this shield, and it is making him defensive and nervous. In the picture above, the man with the beard is hinding his eyes, his identity. I thought the image well suits the sense of hiding that Seigl also shares with his life.