600 Word Revised

It's apparent to me by now that in Mary Karr's The Liars Club, she uses imagery in her writing that have more to them than the actual image itself. There are many examples of this, and because of that fact, I wanted to pick two examples that I believed would be less obvious than others, and hope that I stumbled onto something big. "We all see the same shit, just through different eyes", to quote one of my famous musicians. I would also apply this quote to Mary Karr. What stuck out to me was the theme of white hands in times of tragedy. The owners of these limbs having the life some what metaphorically sucked out of them, for one reason or another. With the life, went the color.

In a memoir, what an author recollects of an experience is key. At a young age, something must really stick out to be remembered in such detail that Karr does. "Then out of all the darkness I see Mother's white hands rising from her lap like they were powered and lit from inside. Like all the light in the world has been poured out to shape those hands. She's reaching for the steering wheel, locking onto it with her knuckles tight. The car jumps to the side and skips up onto the sidewalk. She's trying to take us over the edge" (138). Mary's mom is nothing short of an emotional train wreck. Throughout the book being represented in many occasions with the "Nervousness". How she got to that point is an argument in itself. The fact remains though that she is. With that being said, being mentally unstable doesn't just happen on its own. It's a result of the things we go through in life, and the things that have happened to us. Whatever the case may be in Mary's Mother's life, I believe that each trial and tribulation sucked a little piece out of her at a time. All of these things building up, and hitting a climax(even though worse things happen later) at the point where Mother reaches for the wheel. She wanted to kill herself and her family. In my opinion you must be lifeless on the inside, or void of any good emotion's a normal human being should experience. So Mary describes her hands as being "powered and lit from inside". That's a very white glow. White being colorless. Colorless being lifeless, in a book that uses a vast majority of colors to describe many situations and emotions.

I don't know how much experience the average person has with death. Once you meet get introduced to it however, especially if it's on a blind date, it's capable of taking complete control of your life and ripping out every piece of normal you thought you once knew. "But there was another hand from that time that also got seared into what I can remember. It was the hand of Bugsy Juarez's wife. It was covered in flour one morning she came to our backdoor. She pressed that white hand onto our damp breakfast table while she said to Daddy, please come quick, Bugs shot hisself"(174). I don't know much about Mrs. Juarez's state before this incident. I do know, that if your husband kills himself, and you loved him, you would lose a part of yourself forever. You would also lose your color, in Mary's child mind frame at the time. Let's think of the importance of hands to this particular child. Numerous times throughout the book Mary looks to hands for comfort. A steady hand to hold onto and to guide her through the tremendous struggle she sees as life. However, sadly, hands have also violated her more than once, and have been the reason for some of her psychological disfunction. For a child that finds comfort in 5 fingers and a palm, pale white hands would have lost their warmth and power, and would stick out to her. This would certainly be the case for Mrs. Juarez. It wouldn't be far stretched to assume that the suicide of her husband left her morbid, and to a child that looks to hands for comfort, morbid and emotionless is no better represented than by the extremely white hands that now occupy the place where instruments of warmth and comfort once were.

Mary Karr has seen an abundance of tragedy in her life. In her childhood, she painted pictures with her mind, as a child often does. When using color to describe the things and experiences she encountered, the same color that is used to describe ghost in society can't be good. Coincidentally this color usually being emphasized in terrible situations in Karr's mind. This is why I have chosen to believe that the color white represents tragedy and lifelessness in Mary Karr's mind. Hopefully I have convinced you to believe the same.