Carol Reid writes about...

“From a Distance”

from Challenge 255

How does Michelle Reale depict the narrator’s feelings in “From a Distance”? What does numbering the sections — not the paragraphs — add to the story? Mentally remove the numbers: what seems to be missing?

The author focuses on the narrator’s struggle to mask her distress by instructing herself to display representations opposite to her true feelings. I’m reminded of Hamlet’s line to his mother: “Seems, madam? I know not ‘seems’” but in this story, the narrator must “seem,” above all else, to be normal, content and balanced.

Numbering the paragraphs emphasizes the fragility of her self-control and her absolute need to maintain power over her behavior and circumstances. Without the numbers, a certain pathetic urgency is lost.

Thank you, Carol... very insightful. Those section numbers do call attention to themselves, don’t they? Take them out, and the reader thinks, “This account seems disjointed, somehow...”

And that’s precisely the point: the story consists of disjointed scenes united by the common theme you describe. The numbers call attention to the fact, as though the woman’s existence were a “paint by numbers” kit.

More accurately, perhaps, the numbers serve the same purpose as the scenes in a play. And “From a Distance” is a drama without dialogue, one that is both visual and interior at the same time.

Don