“Come on, let’s go, quick, get in Blaine, quick, get a move on,” urged a frantic woman who couldn’t believe the incident that happened before her very eyes. Time froze. One car collided with the other, and suddenly only dead bodies and wrecked car pieces remained. In the wake of a tragic accident, Lara instinctively loses her sense of compassion and mirrors the reaction of her husband, Blaine. After the fact, Lara feels a sense of responsibility over the tragedy, which only widens the chasm between her and her husband in their troubled marriage. Although Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin centers around the the 1974 tightrope walk, McCann includes characters such as Lara and Blaine to unfold the real-life emotional journeys of ‘broken’ individuals seeking to escape their mistakes.
The more Lara replays the accident in her head, the more responsibility she feels for “the moment,” although she wasn’t behind the wheels. Life is comprised of “moments” that either become savory memories or painful traumas that are difficult to revisit. As Lara thinks about the tragic accident that cost the life of Corrigan and …show more content…
After the accident, Blaine wishes to carry on with his life as if nothing ever happened, but Lara can’t move on. Throughout Let the Great World Spin, characters must learn to “move on” as a survival mechanism, to forget their wrongdoings, mistakes, regrets, etc. However, because Lara was unable to “move on” from her responsibility in the accident, her marriage with Blaine crashed, just like the cars. Lara and Blaine could be represented by two crashing cars, clashing in beliefs, values, and morals. Blaine would much rather forget about that night than confront the truth about the consequences of his actions, while Lara seeks redemption and hits the jackpot along the