eight

"You live your life forward and remember only backward. Nothing is relived, only just remembered and that incompletely. And life isn't simple like a movie story, there is too much to remember. And all that you you forget, it's gone as if it has never been. Instead of crying you might as well laugh."

Hazel Jones said that. Hazel Jones, formerly known as Rebecca Schwart. Given her background, fairly uneducated and raised by parents who certainly didn't encourage deep thought, it seems crazy that she could say something so wise. Perhaps not in the most eloquent language, no big words or poetry feeling, but it elicits the reaction that I think she was intending. In fact, in the story, the person she is speaking to is astounded. From this feminine, beautiful woman comes a truth so dark and despairing that it seems to come from a different person entirely. And yet we know that this is Rebecca's life experiences coming through Hazel Jones' personality. At this point it seems safe to say that they are two completely different people, not as in split personality disorder, but more emotionally different. She had to reinvent herself to save her life, and her child's life. Hazel Jones never cries, or gets angry. She is teasing, and loving, but emotionally detached from men. ' As people so often exclaim in movies, books, or real life, 'I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.' Hazel Jones would always say laugh. Whereas Rebecca wouldn't really know what to say, she would just stare at you with a sad expression on her face. Hazel has also had to forget and remember to survive. She has to forget all the weakness she learned from being so dependent on first her father and then Tignor, but remember those experiences because they teach her why she must be strong. Like so much in this book, the words that Hazel utters above are purely sad. There doesn't seem to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, just making your own artificial light and hoping that the tunnel will end soon.