Vikhyat Mundlapudi
Mr. Brandstetter
ENG-3UH
Monday, September 26th, 2011 yThe Ripple in the Pond
Janice Galloway's “this much is constant” is a testament to adults who have let out all their bottled up issues in the form of crime. Through her choice of descriptive words, she hints at the fact that the protagonist may have revisited her childhood home, only to murder her mother.
The protagonist's feelings start to be revealed on the first page when she talks about how fear and wonder are constants, meaning that even though all the fearful and wonderful things that happened to her have long passed, they were still fresh in her mind, staying with her for eternity. The reader discovers that she has the longing to accomplish something as she says, “Determination is never outgrown; only with fear and wonder, adapted, reviewed, refined.” (p169) This can be interpreted as the protagonist had wanted to do something in her childhood, and that desire had never outgrown her, it had just been more refined to a point in her adulthood where she could conceivably execute her plan. She says, “Fear is never outgrown...,” (p169) meaning that even though she now has the plan to go along with her determination, she is still as fearful as the child she used to be. Her fear seems to stem specifically from this home, as she talks about how home is where bones grate against each other, signifying conflict, and as many child psychologists will say, a home with much conflict is the devil's workshop inside a child's mind.
On the second page, there is an interesting juxtaposition in that the formatting of the text is quite unusual. Instead of the usual text where all lines start and end at the same point, Galloway purposely makes each line contain only one or two words where they are lined on top of each other, giving the impression of falling, or more specifically, the protagonist falling deeper and deeper into her
Mundlapudi 2 plot to kill her mother. It seems like she is brought back to reality when there is a normally formatted line that says, “ Mother's red lipstick on a crocheted mat,” (p170). This one line snaps her back to reality as she sees her dead mother's lipstick on the floor, signifying a physical struggle. She stays in the moment only for a short time, only to continue to fall until she remembers the room the is in.
She talks about the room as if it is some contagious disease and she can not touch it. She says, “You need to be careful or you leave marks. Tell-tale marks.” The only circumstance in which someone would not want to leave any marks on a glass window is so they do not leave any fingerprints, and the only reason someone would want to do that is because they have committed some crime and they do not want to be apprehended. The fingerprints, or the so-called, “Tell-tale marks,” (p170) would want to be hidden from any law enforcement that will eventually end up at the house searching for the protagonist's mother.
As she moves through her house, she arrives in her mother's room. She finds makeup, she says, “bits of make-up glimmer as though through murky water. Mother's make-up. Scarlet.” (p170) It can be argued that the mother's make-up had just fallen in some murky water, but the fact that the murky water glimmers and is scarlet,draws the conclusion that it is in fact the mothers blood. The remnants of make-up in the murky water could also be signs of a struggle between the mother and daughter during their fight.
Beside her mother's bed, she relives a nostalgic moment when she rearranges her mother's magazines, just like the times when she was young. She says, “Even after all this practice, it makes you uneasy, putting them back and hoping you haven't left smears on the lenses, a fingerprint.”(p172) The uneasiness she refers to could have stemmed from her youth due to an abusive mother. The fact that she is trying not to leave a fingerprint supports the argument that she has just murdered her mother and she is trying not to leave any evidence to prove it. She is still dazed, confused and is just wandering around her old home, interacting with pieces of her past.
Mundlapudi 3
In the TV room, she looks at the carpet and the 'falling' in Galloway's writing returns as the protagonist says, “Look at the carpet. No-body is down there. There is nobody down there.” (p173) The second sentence in that quotation is rather interesting as the word nobody is separated into no and body, hinting at the fact that she is trying to convince herself that she did not kill her own mother and that there actually might be a dead body beneath the floor. Another reason this makes sense is due to the fact that the word 'body' is contained in the 'falling' type writing, meaning that the body was actually physically put or was thrown into a place underneath the floor. The protagonist continues to talk about how, “You can jump on the floor all night and disturb nothing. No one will tell you to stop.” (p173) This is a reminder that now that her mother is dead, she can do whatever she likes and no one can tell her otherwise. She then looks at the corner of the room and spots her, “sensible straps,” (p173) which is an odd name for her hairnet. In this case though, it makes sense as strands of hair can be used as DNA evidence to identify murder suspects. It would be only 'sensible', for a female assailant to wear one during a murder to prevent hair loss during a struggle, and prevent further condemnation by the law.
She spots a divan big enough that if it was open, it would fill almost the whole room. When she first sees the divan, she calls it a, “red divan,” (p174) but she later says, “There are spots through the redness if you concentrate, different colours: yellow ochre, olive green, steel blue, albino-flesh white, circled with a thin line of grainy black.” (p174) During a murder, the victim can lose a lot of blood, and in this case, the protagonist's mother could have hemorrhaged during her assault, leaving blood all over the sofa, giving it the 'red' look, with the original colours underneath the heavy coat of congealed blood.
She talks about the dead mouse underneath the sink that she discovered when she was a child and she seems repulsed by the sight of the dead rodent with a spike going through it's neck. She says, “don't look now. Don't. For now, it doesn't matter.”(p176) The way she says it makes it seem
Mundlapudi 4 like the mouse symbolizes her dead mother; lifeless, with a possible skewer through her neck, and she is reminded of the gruesome crime she just committed. From looking underneath the sink, she immediately turns to look at the ceiling, it seems, to avert her gaze away from her dead mother.
Again, after looking at the ceiling, she immediately thinks about the floor when she says, “Mother is under the floorboards.”(p176) Her mother would not be under the floorboards if she was alive. The only logical conclusion is that her daughter killed her and then disposed of her under the floorboards, hence the daughter trying to convince herself earlier that there was nobody down there. The biggest clue that the protagonist murdered her mother was the, “Dettol off the stairs” (p176) and the, “Iodine.” (p176) These two chemicals are used to sterilize objects and living tissue. If the daughter in-fact murdered her mother, then it made sense that she was trying to get rid of all biological evidence of her presence. A thorough cleaning with the use of iodine and Dettol can rid any area of any fingerprints, and skin cells contaminated.
After a murder, the best way to get rid of evidence is to get rid of the murder weapon and the victim's body. The protagonist talks about how, “Before it is completely dark, mother's slippers soles will begin dragging like corpses on the stone steps...”(p176) This could be referencing the disposal of the body; at dark, when there are a lot less potential witnesses outside. It seems like she is about to dispose of the body when the 'falling' language starts again, signifying the protagonist's eyes lowering to the dead body. She says, “Through the s-shaped slits, her eyes. Her pupils are black holes. Watching back.”(p177) This is the nail in the coffin. Previously, the protagonist talks about how her mother is underneath the floorboards. Now she is actually looking at her dead mother that she killed through the s-shaped slits.Research has proven that the mannerisms and behaviour of an individual have been finalized by the age of 15. For that reason only, it is why adults have a harder time learning something new than a child. A childhood lived in turmoil can cause a small ripple at the moment, but over time, this ripple grows exponentially to a tidal wave that will destroy anything in its path.