Can I say, first, that the frequent use of quotations was really strange to me (as I'm sure it was to many people)? When I opened the book, I wasn't sure how I was supposed to read. I first paused at every break, every new "quotatious" phrase. It would have been as if I were taking a breath every few words: "'One day, I awoke' *breathe* '& found myself on' *breathe* 'a subway, endlessly' *breathe* 'I didn't know' *breathe*. . ." (3) On and on and on. I rarely get headaches, but the onslaught of quotations was starting to hurt my head.
Once we get past the strange use of punctuations, an even stranger story unfolds. All through this book, I thought, 'What would this be like as a novel?' Easier to read, I guess. Still not easy to understand. The story certainly would not translate in the same way, and would not even more so in movie form. None the less, I also thought about what a Descent of Alette movie would be like. An independent film. Rated R (NC-17? X? Unrated?). Gosh, would they really cover the floor of the train in blood (or, you know, fake blood) (27)? Show people removing their sex organs (57)? A headless woman with blood flowing out of her neck (89)?
I would like to touch upon the animals in this book, specifically the owl and the snake--the two that appear the most. I think the animals are so important because they were created by nature and not the tyrant, who rules over all of humanity and man-made things. The animals were made by something over which the tyrant (the big bad guy) has no control.
The owl is Alette's aid. He is the one who prepares Alette to face the tyrant. He kills her, gives her a part of himself, and turns her into a product of nature--an owl. Only in this way can Alette defeat the tyrant: "'When the time comes,' 'think like me, he said' 'Not like' 'a human woman' 'but like an owl'" (115). If the owl had been a different animal, would it have turned Alette into that animal?
Owls are usually associated with wisdom in our modern culture, but in some ancient cultures (Aztec, Maya, Kikuyu of Kenya) the owl was a sign of death and evil. The death part works--Alette kills the tyrant as an owl--but evil? I suppose, from the tyrant's view, the owl is evil. Ha ha.
The snake makes a little more sense, I think. She used to be the subway train, seems to be the the first mother but no longer human: "'Extended' 'a black tongue' '& said in' 'a woman's whisper:' 'When I was' 'the train,' 'when I was' 'the train,' 'flesh & blood' 'flesh & blood' 'took you to your' 'destination' 'to your life'" (36). Alette first meets her in the subway and ends up walking inside her at one point.
. . . OK, so maybe that part doesn't make much sense. But the symbolism in the next sentences will make sense! Snakes were not always associated with evil. The ancient Greeks thought of snakes as a earthbound symbol, a child of Gaia, the titan associated with earth. The snake is an animal, and in Descent of Alette, animals are free of the tyrant's power because nature created them. Earth, nature. . . get it? And guess what else? In India, snakes are a symbol of fertility. Fertility + first mother = connection!
Of course, I only looked these things up on Wikipedia.
Anyway--really cool, really weird, REALLY confusing. But I liked that it read as a story. And that it had a happy ending.
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