Why?
It’s also my thought when I peruse this bit from my
thirteenth year, 1970. This is nothing
but a useless tag-along to the last bit of Poe’s vignette.
I suppose it’s a pretty good imitation (for an
eighth-grader) of Poe’s style. Instead
of hearing the heartbeat exclusively, the narrator’s guilty conscience has
increased the audio hallucinations to include the voice of the old man he
murdered, his benefactor, asking “Why?” a lot.
I assume that this was considered a brilliant idea by the
juvenile writer: Lure the reader with
stream-of-consciousness narration, then cut it off PAST THE POINT at which the
narrator could be communicating with us.
(Unless he merely broke a leg and is continuing his monotonous rambling
while high on morphine from a jail hospital bed.)
Looking back now, I assume that this idea was kyped from elsewhere
(a familiar pattern, yes?). About this time I read a library book, a novel of
strange happenings that the reader wasn’t sure were happening or not (in that
way, similar to John Fowles’ The Magus). It was a first-person narrative (not The
Magus but my barely-remembered library book). This vaguely-recalled tome ended with the
narrator being tied into a chair next to a booby-trapped telephone. When the phone rang, a robotic arm would lift
the receiver. The only problem was, when
the receiver was lifted, that action would detonate a room full of dynamite.
As I said, the narrator tells how he was tied in the
chair. PARAPHRASE: “I was tied fast and could not escape. Then the phone rang, and the mechanism lifted
the receiver.”
THE END! So -- if the
guy is telling something that happened to him, how could he be telling us this,
if he was going to be blown to smithereens?
In the same way, you, Dear Reader, are left to imagine how
it’s possible that the narrator of my little wart-on-the-face-of-a-classic is
able to end his tale thus. I’m sure it’s
more trouble than it’s worth to you.
But it was worthy of a one-day BLOG-O-WEEN entry! see you tomorrow!
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