“To keep from being afraid, Albert sometimes says to himself, Fascinating! Or, Magnificent! Or, Yet another escapade! Even when he is lost, he is not lost. No one fine day he found himself in a public square. No it seems or it appears or not able to say how he got here. He is, he is, he is. He is here: walking somewhere on the road to Poitiers and Longjumeau, Champigny and Meaux, Provins and Vitry-le-François, Châlons-sur-Marne, Chaumont, Vesoul, Mâcon.” (19)
I felt this passage was very characteristic of Casey’s narration style in The Man Who Walked Away for a number of reasons (though I also feel like anyone can close their eyes, flip through the book, point at a random paragraph, and still get a passage that has much of the style I’m about to discuss). Such qualities include:
- Repetition: Here, there is a repeated affirmation of being present (is, is, is). Casey often uses repetition for effect; I find the effect here to be an emphasis and reassurance of Albert’s being.
- Playing with contradictions: Seen in the remark, “Even when he is lost, he is not lost.” I find a certain lightness to this statement that I also feel is present throughout much of the book. Additionally, I think playing with contradictions/going back-and-forth between conflicting thoughts/being ambivalent is a way for the reader to feel uncertain, which I think the two primary characters thus far (Albert and the Doctor) constantly feel, too. Furthermore, perhaps this is just a reminder there may be uncertainty in everything.
- Swaths of text that create a journey: Sometimes there are long sentences that become so long-winded that they become confusing. But I think Casey writes in such a way to map/track how a certain character progresses on his journey. There’s more than just going from Point A to Point B; there’s all the places/events in between that are also important (if not just as important to the start and end locations).
Michael, I think you picked a good passage to describe the stylistic methods Casey employs in her narration. I actually didn’t pick up on your third point, about the text being confusing and long-winded, until you mentioned it and I looked back at the book. I had previously dogeared a page that seemed long-winded to me because it went from wind to town to bells to people and confused me as to why should would write in such a meandering way.
I definitely saw the repetition though, which I first noticed with the phrase “When he walks.” Her repetition of certain phrases seems to be a way of reigning the narration in after letting it wander for a bit. On the last paragraph of page 21 and on to about halfway down page 22, the phrase “when he walks” is repeated sporadically in an irregular sort of musical refrain as the narrator describes one after another aspect of Albert’s excursions.
I actually found the contradictions to be oddly dissatisfying. They sound almost hackneyed, like when the maid in the prologue comments that “[e]ven when he was right there . . . he was somewhere else” (4). The phrases sound like things you might hear from a monk or a transcendentalist. Basically, I found them somewhat corny.
Michael,
Great post! You made some great points. The repetition is a very clear but the “swaths of texts that create a journey” not so much as Jay pointed out. I did, however, pick up on it. Mainly because of the amount of times that I had to keep going back and rereading the same lines. I found myself asking too many questions out loud.. “wait, what woman?” “was that the doctor?” “who is this guy.. wait is it the same guy?” “who is this woman? where does albert know her from?” – Honestly I still don’t know the answers to some of these questions, so I’m interested to see what the rest of the class has to say !
I agree the repetition and the use of onomatopoeia makes it an interesting, fun read. She reels you in with her writing style. I like how you pointed out that some of the sentences are “long-winded” and confusing which could be done of purpose to map the character’s progress. Also the fact that the use of contradictions could also be a method used by the author to have the reader feel how the character feels, awesome observation!
I thought the repetition was most interesting part of Casey’s writing style. I forget the page number, but she ends almost every paragraph in chapter 2 with words/phrases such as “disappearing” or “never existed at all.” Paired with your quote, “Even when he is lost, he is not lost,” there is this obvious attempt to keep this idea of being lost, or disappearing in the readers view. I found myself in a similar position, being lost but not lost, while reading this. Maybe because I was more focused on trying to make sense of the interesting style rather than the story-line 100%.
The repetition and the onomatopoeia were the first things I noticed about the story. To me, it made it more fun and reminded me of poetry. The story itself is not as interesting to me, but the different poetic styles she incorporates into her writing is what keeps me interested in reading. I absolutly love the contradictions. I know some people hate it, but when she says, “Even when he is lost, he is not lost”, it sounds so beautiful. It is something that, again, is very poetic. It stops and makes you think about the physical and the mental representations she is discussing.