The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

"Looking Back from the Grave": Sensory Perception and the Anticipation of Absence in
Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead"
Author(s): Laura E. Tanner
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Summer, 2007), pp. 227-252
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27563748 .
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LAURA

E. TANNER

"Looking Back from the Grave": Sensory

of Absence
Perception and the Anticipation

inMarilynne Robinson's Gilead

the final weeks

In

_ful

and

embodiment
he

absence;
fully inhabit.

and criti
the elderly
life, John Ames,
Gilead
Robinson's
of Marilynne
(2004),
of
between
the urgent
pain
experience

of his

cally ill protagonist

finds himself
caught

the psychic
of anticipated
negotiation
a world
to
he cannot
experience
increasingly

comes

The novel
takes the form of a journal written
by Ames
to his young
of Ames's
both a narrative
son, a journal that becomes
of images and
inevitable movement
toward absence and a collection
memories
that would
resist such progress
the tempo
by rendering
ral form of narrative

spatial

presence.
representational
imminent
death, Robinson's
the best of our
ing to make

and countering
embodied
absence with
with
the knowledge
Confronted
of his
to
"I'm
his
writes
son,
try
protagonist

is, I'm trying to tell you

to tell you if I had brought
have thought
you
When
and son, in the usual companionable
way
situation.

That

never

Imight
father
up myself,
are
it is hard to remember what
course,
things
taking their ordinary
a
fathers and
matters"
(102). Haunted
past of uncommunicative
by
to
turns
Ames
world
the pen in
from
the
sons,
emotionally
damaged
things

an

to salvage
"what matters"
attempt
reflection,
journal filled with history,

1. Of

course,

Ames's

and

confused

little boy

and knowledge.1

a
through
Even as he

to capture
and preserve
his identity
for his son
attempt
in, rather than releases him from, that lineage of faulty bonds.
not be at all con
"A pure essence which
would
observes,

written

him
ultimately
implicates
If, as Maurice
Merleau-Ponty
taminated

for his

with

the facts

Contemporary Literature XLVIII, 2

? 2007 by the Board of Regents

. . .would

require

a spectator

himself

0010-7484; E-ISSN 1548-9949/07/0002-0227

of the University
of Wisconsin
System

without

228
opposes
forms

of

return

his

CONTEMPORARY

LITERATURE

the process
of "telling" with
the "usual
lived
Ames's
however,
experience,
stream-of-consciousness

companionable"
representations
and again to its

narrative

again
in embodied
sensory perception.
origins
Acknowledging
reviewers
who
read Gilead as a celebration
of the force
in the face of death

consciousness

in its philosophical
details
of
sensory

and

religious

located
vision

power not just

in its immersion
in the

the novel's
but

In highlighting
experience.
moment
of
the
holds
perception

lived

Ames's

that fact,
of human

the way
that
future loss at

heightened
bay, however,
they risk
of
anticipation
"looking

the novel's
into how
the
ignoring
inquiry
back
from the grave"
the
(141) shapes
narra
in
of
the
novel's
the
somatosensory
experience
protagonist
tive present. The cultural
force of Robinson's
text, Iwill argue, stems
not only from its lyrical rendering
of quotidian
but from
experience
its powerful
chological
psychic
which

unveiling

of how

dynamics
struggle with

of human

shapes

and psy
the sensory
Gilead localizes Ames's

perception.
death in acts of perceptual
the novel pushes
thematizes;

his own

it both

concerns

dying

and
depicts
back into the realm

that Ames's

processing
existential

to explore
the way
experience
him
in
the
space
traps
collapsing

of lived

of dying

experience
and representation.
perception
Antonio
Damasio
Neuroscientist

between

articulations
ogy

of current

His

of consciousness.

ception

operates
a
variety

is well

known

scientific

locate

for his cogent

of the neurobiol

understandings
of the process
of how per
descriptions
is constructed
that perspective
the way

not only
the perceptual
of sources,
including
as
or
vision
and
(such
consequent
adjust
apparatus
hearing)
in the muscular
of the perceiver,
but
ments
and vestibular
systems
to a
emotional
from the observer's
also signals derived
responses
through

on the
that emotional
(146). Depending
object,
or
assume
lesser
but it is
may
greater
component
significance,
that there is any "such thing as
the notion
always present,
belying
an
a sensory
a pure
in
of
channel"
(147). Instead,
object
perception
as
in the model
that Damasio
"Consciousness
begins
develops,
...
It is
when we see or hear or touch.
the feeling of what happens

particular

secrets"
secrets

object

(111), Ames's
that he's kept.

narrative

gradually

reveals

the way

inwhich

he

is implicated

in the

229

TANNER
a
that accompanies
feeling
The feeling marks
those
Damasio
what
describes

(322) that we experience

integrated
image"
as well
as humanistic
returns us?in
scientific

and-time
tion

. . .
the making
of any kind of image.
as
down
ours"
(26). Breaking
images
as "the multidimensional,
space

thus

the situatedness

of perspective
of the perceiver.

emotions
In Ames's

not

only

in percep
terms?to

in the body

but

in the

moments
between
of interaction
heightened
the intermingling
of emotion
and perception.
not merely
of such moments
render
images
significance
but in the sensory
of shared experience:
his father
details

father

memory,
son mark

and

Ames's
through

him

an ash-covered

hand, he and his father

an empty
in
his father and
standing
damp
dirty
graveyard,
on the porch side by side. As
silently
shelling walnuts
grandfather
Ames
describes
the first of these childhood
memories?his
father,
in the rain to feed his
hands
and face blackened
with
ash, kneeling
feeding

bread

from

and

son

remains

of bread?the
piece
inextricable
from

spiritual
its emotional

of
significance
and perceptual

the moment

immediacy
father an "old martyr,"
the food he holds "the bread
it to his son an act of
and the process
of conveying

In rendering
of affliction,"

his

Ames's

"communion,"
firmly within

a series

narrative

first-person
of religious

frames

situates

that render

his memory
it symbolically

(102).
than subsuming
the specificity
of embodied
experience
narrative
within
the
simultane
the
however,
realm,
solely
symbolic
to
returns
the
the
of
that con
reader
textured
details
memory
ously

meaningful
Rather

as Damasio
to escape
the text's symbolic
hold. Memory,
not only proceeds from emotion
and sensory perception
but
observes,
remains
from them: "The records we hold of the objects
inextricable
tinue

that we

and events
we made

to obtain

engagement
reactions"
typological
up

against

apprehension

perceived

the perception
we had
reactions

the emotional
memories

once

include

the motor

adjustments
in the first place and also include
. . We
.
then.
tend to reconstruct

a
or a color but also of the
just of
shape
perceptual
the object required and of the accompanying
emotional
In
narrator's
Ames's
the
recollections,
(148).
journalistic

not

of the image's
rendering
the textured
immediacy
of the moment:

significance
of a young

rubs
continually
embodied
boy's

230

-CONTEMPORARY

I remember

ened

of a church

wreck

on his

down

father

my

his hat, feeding me biscuit

LITERATURE
heels

in the

rain, water

him

behind

and

steam

embers, the rain falling in gusts and the women

while

Cross"

they

to the
hymn,
seen

with

saw

hair

undone,

their hair falling down

sad.

Imention

it

things,

In those

almost.

her

to

again

so

moving
days,

but

that

their backs
because

no
day

even

as

to me

if

woman
the grand

like schoolgirls.

it seems

the rain

fell on

singing "The Old Rugged

gently,

grown

that old black

where

rising

from

dripping

from his scorched hand, with

much

they
ever

were

dancing
be

let herself

old women

had

Itwas

so joyful and

of my

life was

com

in that moment.

prehended

(95-96)

What

from Ames's
emerges
repeated
representation
an essence which
the distillation
represents
merely
an emotional
in and through
truth which
emerges
Ames's
recollection
experience:
ficity of embodied
in the feel of rain, the sight of steam
is immersed
the sound of women's
blackened
church,
voices,

is not
of memory
but
of experience
the textured speci
of joy and sadness

the
rising against
and, most
impor
own preserved
in the

on his
tantly, the touch of his father's body
a
transfer of
biscuit blackened
"scorched
by his father's
Ames
the narrator
circles round and round his childhood

hand."

As

memory,
of the experience
he recalls remains
inextricable
from his sensory apprehension
of the moment.
The image's
intelligi
can be traced not only to Ames's
to "comprehend"
its
ability
bility
a different
to
sort
of
but
symbolic meaning
comprehensiveness?the
the emotional

impact

narrative's

strands of intercorporeal
up of multiple
gathering
experi
tomemory's
in the realm of
its testimony
stubborn
situatedness
Even as he pushes
the bread his father feeds
the textured particular.

ence,

it is the body
toward the spiritual realm of the communion
wafer,
that
hands which
the bread
of the symbol?the
communion,
present
Ames
covered with ash, the food offered from his father's side?that
essence
to exchange
for experience
would
leave his son;2 his attempt
which
render "the usual companion
only returns him to moments
him

able way" of father and son rare and holy.

The impact of Gilead stems in part from
Ames's

attempts

2. Edward

S. Casey

quasi-corporealization,

to recuperate
describes
their

of
its poignant
rendering
loss
of anticipated

the enormity

in bodily
their
the particularity
of images
terms, noting
as sensible
concreta
of
embodiment
soul"
(305).
imaginai

231

TANNER

the power
of his perception.
in the afterlife assures him of continuing
spiri
to come
to terms with
tual presence,
his inevitable
he struggles
"I know
from a transitory world
of embodied
expulsion
experience.

the intensity
through
Even as Ames's
faith

this

is all mere

Ames
beauty

of his

and

to what
awaits us,"
compared
apparition
it is only lovelier
is a human
for that. There
we have
I can't believe
all been
that, when

human

observes,
in it. And

"but

and put on
of mortality

changed
condition

focus

onist

we
incorruptibility,
and impermanence"

the

tension

between

our
forget
Robinson's
(57).

will

and

fantastic

protag
sacramental

recognizes
physical
one within
the other. His theological
without
per
subsuming
as revealed
in the novel,
rather than recoils from
embraces
spective,
transcen
the tension between
human
and religious
embodiment

vision

in his own
and through
his invocation
of the
sermons,
dence;3
the
humanistic
of Ludwig
Ames
Feuerbach,
emphasizes
theology
a sermon as "the
in
of
of
what
he
describes
significance
gift
physical
are mediated
and how blessing
and sacrament
particularity
through
to another?and
it" (69).4 Ames's
that death
is a bridge
ulti
belief
at
not
hav
does
his
of
life
better?form
thus
mately
preclude
grief
the novel, Ames
behind. Midway
ing to leave this world
through
I cer
to be old. And
observes
"The fact is, I don't want
explicitly,
want
to
dead"
manifests
itself
don't
be
His
(141).
tainly
spirituality
not in the disavowal
in
but
of worldly
the appropriation
experience
as a treasured dimension
of that experience
of human
life. Although
in a spiritual
to some
belief
existence
after death mitigates,
to
it also contributes
to his tendency
extent, the tragedy of mortality,

Ames's

3. Much
the tensions

remains

in Gilead and about

the significance
of religion
a
on
of
the
and
Christian
world
apprehension
perspective
in relation
to the spirit. Ames's
of greeting
his
imagination

to be said both

a sensory
of the body

between

about

the insignificance
as one means
in the afterlife
the novel explores
functions
through which
family members
in lived experience
the tension
the centrality
and a Christian
between
of embodiment
of the body as "a suit of old clothes
the spirit doesn't want
(13).
understanding
anymore"
4. Ames
as

good

on

defends
the

Feuerbach
aspects

joyful

"he is about
the fact that he is an atheist because
despite
as
and he loves
the world"
of religion
(24).
anybody,
the
his own position
from Feuerbach's
by describing

Ames
distinguishes
view
that "religion
could
philosopher's
as his one
and undisguised"
"significant"

Although

bration
divine.

of the natural

as

significant

and let joy exist pure

just stand out of the way
"wonderful"
cele
error, he affirms Feuerbach's
as an expression
in and of itself and not merely
of the

232

CONTEMPORARY
his

anticipate
existence

the assurance
absence;
form lends form and credence

embodied

in another

tive work
without

LITERATURE

of "looking
back
him in it. Addressing

dear

self

of his

sustained

to the imagina
a world
anticipating

from

the grave,"
"Iwant your
son, Ames
observes,
and to love this dear perishable

his

to live

long
perishable
cannot imagine not missing
I somehow
world, which
(53).
bitterly"
to "the gift of physical
Ames's
attention
almost
sacramental
par
an
to
narrative
attention
texture
lends
his
ticularity"
extraordinary
and

As

detail.

Robinson's
him

enables

experience....
own
edges,
its is-ness."5

Hart

Jeffrey

protagonist
to see, hear,
As existence
sees

reflect, his senses

becomes
conscious

space-and-time
moment"
into

to break

and

integrated
its constitutive

parts

reflects

also

ailing
both

individual

we

"the multidimensional,
this very
experiencing
(Damasio,
Feeling 322). Ames
are

to gesture
long enough
but
its
attendant
body

toward

not

emotions

in part
clearly accounts
sensibility
to the world,
in
that he creates
the journal
the heightened
of an aging,
self-consciousness

attentiveness

Gilead

awareness

whose

consciousness

of Aging,"
Meanings
we realize time has
ourselves
of succeeding

5. Hart

to profound
its
of itself it reaches

down

image

in the space of the image

in the perceiver's
its
just
origins
and its effects. Although
Ames's

dwells

pattern

so alive

about
greater clarity, and wonders
to
the
textured
of
represent
ability
immediacy
as its "somatosensory
Damasio
describes
modal
to inhabit
from his heightened
the per
capacity

ity"?emerges
moment

slow

Review,
of mind
that

with

the world

ceptual

We

the National

a concentration

"achieves

Ames's

experience?what

for his

in

observed

of his

and

imminent

In "Toward

death
More

shapes
Human

perception.
"With age
observe,
Berg and Sally Gadow
. . .
as
as duration.
the dimension
of depth
well
not in their linear
to explore
down
experiences,
Geri

one

another,

but...

to let their possibilities,

to what
from the novel
that highlight
Ames's
examples
sensitivity
"a feeling of the
where Ames
describes
touches,
passages
including
of light" as "a pressing
the damp out of the grass and pressing
the smell of sour
weight
old sap out of the boards on the porch floor" (51), and where
he recounts walking
into the
at dawn:
"I loved the sound of the latch lifting. The
church sanctuary
has settled
building
he sees,

cites

hears,

into itself

several

and

so that when

your weight.
sound"
(70).

the aisle, you can hear it yielding

you walk down
It's a pleasanter
sound
than an echo would
be, an obliging,

to the burden
accommodating

of

233

TANNER

rich density
time, but
emerge. We continue moving
through
in depth
it to expand
into time, allowing
for us
also move
its
Ames's
duration
diminishes"
location
(85-86).
objective
though
at the margin
this world
and the next exaggerates
the
between
of
his
and
the
"rich
of
his
embodied
density"
experience
intensity
their

we

"is
of the pleasures
of these days," Ames
observes,
that I notice
them all, minute
(93).
by minute"
In aging studies,
science's
focus on "the feeling of what happens"
to an awareness
varies
has led recently
of the way
that perception
narrative.

"One

to age,
according
the
ing
heightened

experience,

and state of mind.

Studies

document

and the
for the elderly
of perception
intensity
ill tend to address
and psychic
the physiological
experi
terminally
ence of those close to
as a form of compensation
for
loss.
mortality
in
The well-documented
deterioration
of sight and hearing
capacity
is offset at least to some degree
for example,
aging subjects,
on visual
to
increased
observers'
focus
fields with
ability
that focused
attention
Recent
scientific
studies
conclude

by older
intensity.
accounts

a
level
observers'
ability to perceive
objects at performance
to that of younger
adults. In their study of sensory and atten
in aging and visual masking,
Paul Atchley
and Lesa
factors

for older
similar
tional

that "older observers were probably

using atten
the strength
that was
of a representation
impov
to their younger
in a
relative
counterparts,
resulting
in performance
became
less
when
the attentional
gradient

Hoffman
tion

conclude

to increase

erished
decrease

in perceptual
for a decline
(57). In order to compensate
a
older adults maintain
another
efficiency,
study documents,
higher
activation
level of neural
within
visual
tasks
processing
simple
et
most
that
"the
consistent
(Madden
al.). Acknowledging
changes
focused"

noted
Atkin

in psychophysiologic
and Adam
Atkin

with
processes
that "[i]n some

studies
challenge

Samuel
of aging are temporal,"
of
the idea that the slowing

represents
aging always
situations,
'slowing down'

nervous

system's
information-handling
in a similar vein, Laura L. Carstensen
motional
selectivity
theory to suggest
is limited
awareness
effects

on

has

direct

effects

of immediate
cognitive

on older

surroundings,
The
functioning.

a deficit,
may

arguing

actually

instead

improve

the

(13). Working
capabilities"
use socioe
and her co-authors
that the knowledge
that time
adults,
heightened
including
goal setting, and associated
cognitive

theories

cited

here,

234

to the psychological,
chart the rela
or
and
illness
of percep
age
intensity
the biology
of aging and/or
the knowledge

the physiological
advanced

from

ranging

LITERATURE

-CONTEMPORARY

between

tionship
tion. In all these

cases,

aware
to increased
focus and heightened
as
act
each
of
the
of
ness;
emerges
compensa
intensity
perception
or
to
tion for the diminished
opportunity
perceive.
ability
to unsettle
to the novel's
narrative
time by
power
Testifying
and inhabiting
critics of
the possibilities
of each minute,
"noticing"
time contribute

of limited

to deemphasize
on the compensation

Gilead

tend

focusing
narrative

the novel's

of loss by
anticipation
in the
of an intensified
participation
in his New York
James Wood
argued

present.
"Gradually,"
novel
teaches us how to read it, suggests
review, "Robinson's
at its own processional
to walk
slow down
how we might
pace,
its many
and how we might
learn to coddle
fine details"
(1). In ini
a form of the
tiating the reader into
perception
experi
heightened
Times

Wood
concludes,
by its protagonist,
the force
the threat of death by undoing
reader and protagonist:
"Robinson's
book

to
the novel
responds
of temporality
for both
... as a
man
ends
dying
learns how to prolong
every day?

enced

but also
Paradise
daily pictures
to extend
into a serene
imitation
of eternity:
time, even on earth,
we
over
turn
in
it.
in fact the
is
So
is
constant,
every day
'Light
just
to the
and morning'"
attention
selfsame
(1). In drawing
evening
and
of Ames's
Wood
power
perception,
heightened
in his wake
stress
reinforce
which
cognitive
paradigms
as a form of compensation
of perception
the intensity
for loss.
In Gilead, however,
the intermingling
of perception
and conscious
term "the feeling
would
of what
ness, what Damasio
happens,"
recuperative
other critics

as Ames's
and disrupts
what Wood
describes
"serene"
If
the
Ames's
of
the
of
present.
experience
intensity
perception
to
moment
the
the
forestall
of
the
death,
penetrates
approach
to
of
the
also
accommodate
the
antici
opens
present
expansiveness
unsettles

pation
Ames

of future
lends his

of anticipation
native
terms,
world

without

Ames's
world

soon

future

as he attempts

Even

absence.

to hold

death

at bay,

a process
sensory presence
through
as well
as
itself in perceptual
imagi
Ames
the intense experience
of a
allowing

absence

that manifests
gradually
him in it.

journal
to be

offers

a series

lost to a man

beautiful
of achingly
images of a
awareness
whose
of his impending

235

TANNER

and
the powers
of his perception
heightens
an emotional
and aesthetic
sensation
composition:

his every

renders

death

I saw a bubble float past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening toward
that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst. So I looked down at
and

the yard
cat,

such

there

were,

you
of

barrage

and

you
that

them

mother,

your

the poor

beside

intent

endeavors.

worldly
blue

too

and

dress

the ground
rising,

you

are

to see

cat

the

They

were

the

very

celestial

red

shirt

Soapy between

laughter.

this

Ah,

of your

consequences

Your

lovely.

your

wearing

together with
so much

and

on

herself-Some

even above the trees. You

of the bubbles drifted up through the branches,

two were

at the

bubbles

blowing

was

beast

is wearing

mother

and

you

were

her
on

kneeling

and the effulgence

of bubbles

this world.

life,

(9)
Ames's

at the window

position
liminal

of his

use

6. Robinson's
liminal

marks

recalls

in this scene

of the window

of windows

her

the power
and
condition

both

by his

status.6 Weakened

the limits
and

heart

his

to highlight
in such
Ames's
location
in Housekeeping,
where
the window

space
representations
as a porous
which
both marks
and dissolves
emerges
boundary
and outside,
consciousness
and body, self and other. Robinson's

the space between

inside
interest in staging
issues
to questions
about boundaries

returns her fiction

and presence
continually
the (im)possibility
of transgressing
them: "When one looks from
or looks from above at the lake, one sees the image of oneself
window,
of absence
and

inside

at a lighted
room,

in a lighted

trees and sky?"the

is obvious,
all the
the image of oneself
but flattering
among
deception
same. When
one sees all the differ
one looks from the darkness
into the light, however,
ence between
use of the
here and there, this and that" (Housekeeping
157-58). Robinson's
as a double-edged
window
which
extends
and delimits
the margins
boundary
alternately
in Housekeeping
to uncover
of subjectivity
and in Gilead,
of
both
functions,
dynamics
embodied
with
As
the
of
Robinson's
first
associated
loss.
Ruth,
protagonist
accessibility
mother's
role in sustaining
her deceased
novel,
presence,
struggles with
representation's
the

of memory?figured
often
images
taunting
and other reflective
surfaces?seem
mirrors,
a series
that never materializes.
within
Situated

water,

structs

of windows,
through
representations
to imply access to an embodied
form

the image con

of reflective
surfaces,
into
the
of presence which
reiteration
of
collapses
intangibility:
painful
are the worst
in the dark and watch
of it. Itwould
be terrible to stand outside

an illusion

"The images
a woman
room studying
in a lighted
the glass, and then to watch
shattering

her

face

in a window,

and

to throw

a stone

at her,

itself up again and the bright bits

of lip and throat and hair piece
indiffer
themselves
again into that unknown,
seamlessly
ent woman"
to func
In the context of Ruth's grief, the image that might
(162-63).
appear
tion as consolation
the experience
of loss, just as the "celestial"
merely
aggravates
perspective
unlimited
sion

that Ames
access

claims
world

at the window
his

family

in Housekeeping,
presence
the Borders of Life and Death.

of absent

Inhabiting

to?the

the window

marks

his

exclusion

from?as

much

as his

so casually
below. For a fuller discus
of my book Lost Bodies:
the fourth chapter

inhabits
see

knit

236

-CONTEMPORARY

but not participate

in a scene made
all
age, he can watch
now
virtue
of
his
it.
distance
from
to
the
role
by
Relegated
the narrator
finds compensation
for his exclusion
from

advancing
the lovelier
of observer,

lived experience
that holds

tive

as he claims

the omniscience

the motions

of his wife

frame. As

atemporal
rendering
resentation

LITERATURE

"were" merges
with
flows seamlessly

of their actions
that

steadies

before

the

of a "celestial"

perspec
in an aesthetic,
"are," Ames's
past-tense
into the presence
of a rep

and

child

reader's

the
gaze,
capturing
in an image that penetrates
the motion
of time to inhabit its interstices. Edward
S. Casey
locates the image in
a
time to the space of synchronicity:
shift from diachronic
just such
of color and form

"loveliness"

"Where

diachronic

sizing possibilities
each 'now' takes

to 'disperse subsistence'...
and replacement?think
of decay
the place of its immediate
predecessor,
time tends

latter into oblivion?synchronie

space
in the face of time's dispersal
subsistent
With
the shift from past to present

allows

by empha
of how

only

the
shoving
for the retaining
of the

itself"

(131).
in this passage,
Ames
to
"oblivion"
the
threat
of
the
up
by gathering
responds
multiplicity
to usher it into the space of representation.
of experience
Throughout
his autobiographical
the novel, Ames's way of looking supplements
tense

in the face of embodied

the pres
absence;
identity
goal of preserving
serves as the lens through which
sure of mortality
his vision distills
into the essence
of the image. As
data of experience
the sensory
not all images are made
"There are
conscious:
Damasio
observes,
and too much
images being generated
competition
simply too many
. . .
are
in which
of mind
small window
for the relatively
images
a sense that we are
and
that, as
them,
apprehending
accompanied
by
a consequence,
are properly
attended"
links different
(319). Damasio
states

to different

the feel
of cognitive
processing;
the rapid generation
of multiple
for example,
"permits
ing of elation,
are
associative
is
and
associations
that
the
richer
such
process
images
to a larger variety
in the images
under
made
of cues available
emotional

modes

mor
of his impending
Insofar as the knowledge
(163-64).
mind"
which
the
Ames
"window
of
perceives,
through
shapes

scrutiny"

tality
he "attends"

an unusual
with
he processes
self
images
his anticipation
least in part?to
of embod
consciousness
linked?at
and
ied absence. Combining
approaches
physiological
psychological
to age studies,
that the psychic
Ihsan A. Kapkin
experience
suggests
to the

TANNER

237

of time has

that terminally
for the way
implications
both perceive
and process
information:

subjects

to me

It appears
aged.

alert,

among
and

certain

erly,

when

the

may

is not

I believe
have

in

mastered

"Time"

and

its use

is somewhat

to

While

intellectual

healthy

aging

its data

management

data

memory
the eld
is

reportedly

processor

ability

noticed

among

performance
our

that

short-term

troublesome

aging

in the

is redefined

similar

ill patients.
somewhat

required

that

to its
phenomenal

power

time

of

terminally
are
changes

cognitive
speed

of

concept

valuation

articulate,

...

refined.
brum)

that

new

This

ill and

by

(the
adding

cere
more

capacity.

(128)
In apprehending
the world
Ames
compensates
tality,

mor
the lens of his impending
through
an
for the loss of future
time through

increased
to apprehend
the present. As the
"phenomenal
capacity"
act of representation
backward
into
the
of
very dynamics
pushes
a
the intensity
of Ames's
look affords him
way of hold
perception,
soon

ing what he will

and beyond
his
would

distill

the space
Insofar
would

be unable
on

their

family,
interaction

to touch.

himself
above
Locating
of the window,
Ames
into an image to be pulled back into

the other

side

of representation
he would
occupy.
as Ames's
narrative
to a material
testifies
as

rewrite

it
(dis)location
the reader to the

it returns
imaginative
autonomy,
as the
of
what
describes
impossibility
maintaining
Merleau-Ponty
of
the
the
that
(111). Tracing
way
every
"transparency
imaginary"
"essence"
from "a space of existence,"
emerges
Merleau-Ponty

theories of transcendent
with a reciprocal model
replaces
knowledge
a
as
of embodied
that
he
"chiasm," an intertwining
perception
figures
of the embodied
Because
the human
subject and the world.
subject
always

approaches

the world

through
must
perception

argues,
Merleau-Ponty
inwhich
interactive process
as it is seen
sees

and

touched

the solidity

the locatedness
be understood

of the body,
as a

dynamic,
the subject can see and touch only insofar
world.
The embodied
by the surrounding
not
of things
"from the depths
of nothing

subject
ness," as "a pure object which
shared world:
"What makes

a
soars over," but from within
the weight,
the thickness,
the flesh of
each color, of each sound, of each tactile texture, of the present, and of
the world
is the fact that he who grasps
them feels himself
emerge
the mind

238

CONTEMPORARY

LITERATURE

a sort of
up or redoubling,
by
coiling
fundamentally
with
them" (114). Merleau-Ponty's
focus on the immer
homogenous
sion of the sentient
in the world
observer
the origin of
highlights
sense in the
of extricating
from
body and the impossibility
perception
from

them

the dynamics
of space,
not only observes
viewer
as the viewer's
describes
Ames's

world,
and temporal

"celestial"

time,
but

and texture which

color, sound,
inhabits. Given what Merleau-Ponty

of a

in the "thickness"

chiasmic

implication
must
perspective

return

us

the

to his

spatial
the
location; the open window
through which he views
a porous
world
functions as a permeable
of
percep
margin
boundary,
tual interface that limits but does not preclude
exchange.
as
Merleau-Ponty's
Ames's
vision

Even

framework
phenomenological
usefully
in his ailing,
Gilead
aging body, however,
a
as
revises
the chiasmic model Merleau-Ponty
develops
paradigm
The "space
that Ames
is
for perception.
of existence"
inhabits
locates

not

limitations
of
just by spatial location but by the physical
consciousness
of his own impending
illness and age and the psychic
our human
our status as what Merleau
If
doubleness,
mortality.
defined

as "sensible-sentients"
(116), renders us incapable
Ponty describes
our experience
to do
to essence, Ames's
failed attempt
of reducing
so speaks not only to the way his aesthetic
in the
is located
vision
but to the way his
realm of the corporeal
of mortality.
by the consciousness
The anticipation
of embodied
absence
hension

of the world

and unravels

his

literal perception
both
chiasmic

is shaped

filters Ames's
relationship
that he sees

of the way
the fundamental
altering
dynamics
seen. Insofar as we are "within
life," Merleau-Ponty

appre
to it,
and is

else
argues
are "filled"
and "occu

we

not only possess

but
the visible
as a "palpation with
vision
of
tactile
the
description
pied" by
as
what he describes
the "intimacy"
look" emphasizes
of the looker

where,

it. His

and

the object,
the inscription
looks," Merleau-Ponty
to the world
that he looks

of both

in the same

order

"must not himself

"He who

of being.
be for

observes,
at" (134). Insofar as Ames's
imagina
eign
tive anticipation
of his death belies the stability of his literal location
a
to time
in the world,
consciousness
relation
places him in different
than those
is less immediate.
for whom
and space
mortality
as
"a state of
L.
constitutes
argues,
age,
Joseph
Esposito
Advancing
being-toward-death

different

from

the abstract

being-toward-death

239

TANNER
that all who

are alive must

of
(65). As the abstraction
embodied
shift
may
gains increasing
immediacy,
subjectivity
to accommodate
defined
borders
of
the
self.
Physiological
newly
of illness and advancing
from
limitations
age emerge as inextricable
confront"

death

the psychic pressures

associated
at his
frustration
omy; Ames's

with

corresponding
to negotiate

inability
to a contraction

the stairs

in his

as the
"to constitute
opportunity
one coherent
as
is a body?a
then,
"My body,
myself
organism":
as a source of
and
well
entity?as
sheerly
physical
intentionality
as the
correlations
and orientations"
(224, 227). Even
projects,
an
to
func
limitations
circumscribe
individual's
may
ability
body's

merely

as a means

of world

and

time

far
points
war
seem
to
than his physical
restrictions would
exaggerated
rant. In The Fate of Place, Casey
the intertwining
of human
explores
not
motion
to argue that motion
and the space it animates
functions
home,
more

for example,

loss of auton

to an end but

constraints
such physical
emerge as inseparable
frustrated
desire for psychic
stability and control.7
In Robert Coles's Old and On Their Own, a collection
of interviews
over
one
with adults
interviewee
conducted
the age of seventy-five,
tion independently,
from the subject's

after

another

how

describes
on a

basis.

the imminence
Coles's

of death
document

brackets

lived

the stresses

experience
subjects
daily
not only by loss of physical
and diffi
of a life interrupted
function
movement
but
the
of
the
of
by
height
culty
escaping
impossibility
ened self-consciousness
which
frames every act and thought. Severe
to stand
it impossible
arthritis makes
for one of Coles's
subjects
even with
the help of a specially
unassisted;
chair, the sim
designed
act
As a
of
demands
careful
and
negotiation.
ple
sitting
planning
. . .
on the alert; I'm
"I'm always
result, she observes,
ready to go.
I don't get settled
That
if I do, that's it. I only half-sit!
in, because
I can stand up when
Iwant
to?I never put myself
into this
way,
at the same time, whether
I'll be able to
chair without
thinking,
even her
act, the
get out of it" (9). As consciousness
simplest
engulfs
and identity
breakdown
of the body raises questions
of autonomy
in her dialogue
"I remember
which
she articulates
with Coles:
how
to work,
and that is the standard
[of what
my arms and legs used
so
am
I
I
should be], and
fall further and further short, and
left to
7.

I discuss

this idea at more

length

in chapter

3 of Lost Bodies.

-CONTEMPORARY

240

LITERATURE

am I
housebound
individual
really me, still?" (11). Another
me
in Coles's
is
"You
for
'life'
know,
observes,
being here, in
study
it's every
this chair, in this room, and thinking about leaving! I guess
.
.
.
to myself:
I'll be thinking
you're here now,
day, now, that I do it.
but it's near the end of your being here, and maybe
this is it, the big
and
that
that!"
will be
(56). For this
you stop being here,
day: when

wonder:

a
parallels
psychic
the
into an
locking
speaker
of its loss.
by the inevitability
as
that feel behind
experiences
"thoughts

to negotiate
inability
the world
contracts,

the literal

speaker,

inwhich

experience
endless present

space

pressured
defines
Merleau-Ponty
the weight
the time, the very Being
themselves
of the space,
they
on
the
of
is
think" (115); Ames's
the
other
world,
hand,
perception

that feel ahead of themselves

the weightless
thoughts
from time. If, for the subject Merleau
of space and expulsion
the time of the things are shreds of
describes,
"[t]he space,
Ponty
own
of
his
of his own
himself,
temporalization"
spatialization,
an
enacts
his appre
(114), for Ames,
perception
opposite
dynamic;
framed

by

ness

of the world

hension

and

space

time but

not

functions
to "shred"

his exclusion

his

to confirm

sense

his

of self over

extension

into

and over

again,
of a world
he

from the chiasmic

experience
remains "foreign
only contingently.
Looking, Ames
at"
he looks
134); the fundamental
(Merleau-Ponty
that Merleau-Ponty
of flesh and world
describes

reinforcing
comes to inhabit
to the world

homogeneity
unravels
painfully

act of perception.
Gilead reveals about

in each

as what
As important
of heightened
perception,
of consciousness
weight

the productive
intensity
it calls attention
is
to the
the
then,
way
carried by those who experience
the world
The price we pay for con
and without.
from within
simultaneously
as
not
Damasio
"is
observes,
sciousness,
just the price of risk and dan
It
is
the
of
The
risk, danger, and pain....
ger and pain.
price
knowing
to a question we never asked"
is the answer
of what happens
In
Ames's
rather than resists his
Gilead,
(316).
exaggerates
perception
a
a
in which he gradu
of observing
forced retreat into position
world
feeling

ally
death,

ceases

to exist. As he
sees

inhabits

the boundaries

between

seen

life and

as his
being
by
to assert its claims, Ames's
embodied
increasingly
dying body
scenes
in
the
documents
into
the
he
diminished
presence
collapses
Ames

the world

without

it. Even

comes

role of observer

rather

than participant.

Imaginatively

anticipating

241

TANNER
his own

the full power

Ames
brings
to transcend
he seems unable

disembodiment,
to a material
world

of conscious

or to impact.
a
as
serve
The journal that would
stay against absence both represents
into the margins
of the
that old age propels Ames
and enacts the way

ness

a
him as an observer
or, in his words,
"spy"
positioning
a
and records from a position
of embodied
who watches
invisibility
own
kind of voyeuristic
of
his
loss.
experience
anticipated
as the
of chiasmic
The novel
figures the tensions of dying
collapse
lived world,

a series

into

experience

liminal

that reflect
the
perceptions
in a culture of autonomy.
The antici

of distanced
location

aging subject's
not only heightens
of absence
sensory
pation
perception,
locking
into
diachronic
the
of the image, but ren
experience
synchronicity
ders Ames's
self-conscious.
every act and every
thought
Harking
tensions
back to a youthful
unmarked
of
embod
the
experience
by

the grace and ease of acts performed

or agency. What
of mechanism
he describes
with
itself" (115)
collaboration
of the whole
body

Ames
ied subjectivity,
without
the knowledge
as "that wonderful

recalls

so
to implicate
that the
the subject in the world
thoroughly
as in
awareness
boundaries
of the self and the
of agency disappear,
so young
the line drive Ames
that
recalls that occurs "when you're
functions

(142). "To be young,"

in On Aging,
"is to throw one's body out into a
observes
Jean Am?ry
time that is no time at all, but life, world,
and space" (15). In contrast,
in Am?ry's
and space "withdraw,"
world
terms, from the elderly, as
as the "den
their sense of the future contracts
into what he describes
your

body

almost

doesn't

know

about

effort"

as
"lived time manifest[s]
contends,
sity" of lived time (23). If, Am?ry
itself with amuch
for
the
expe
greater density"
aged, the synchronie
as "slow time" is
rience of what one of Coles's
interviewees
describes
narrative
denouement:
"It's
by the threat of the ultimate
the slow dragging
down of me toward the grave,"
this seventy-five
with
heart disease
"It's slow time?around
and
reports:
year-old

bracketed

around

the hand goes, and suddenly:

boom!"
(89).
as
Even
limit Ames's
the imaginative
age and infirmity
autonomy,
of
he
absence
dissolves
the
"wonderful
collaboration"
anticipation
into a painful unraveling
of his chiasmic
rela
youth
the world,
that Ames
time, and space. The distance
tionship with
to
turns
would
sustain
"celestial"
vision
appropriate
against him at
associates

with

other moments

in the text to reveal

the difficulty

of inhabiting

a gaze

242

CONTEMPORARY

LITERATURE

the world without

him in it. Hart,
like most of
capable of perceiving
Robinson's
locates
the balm of Gilead in the intensity
of
reviewers,
...
Ames's
Rev.
"The
Ames
the
John
perception:
perceives
empirical
so
we
world
that
around
the
of
his
words
hear the
sharply
edges
. . . These

'noises.'.

not

do

resemble

we

terror

the

sense

around

... In Robinson's

hard

prose the pres

Hemingway's
equally
edges.
ences are much more
because
of
the
Ames
way
benign,
apprehends
the world"
vision
is benign, however,
it is also terrible.
(46). IfAmes's
The intensity
of his perception
reflects the workings
of a conscious
ness that infiltrates
the dynamics
of his every sensory
experience,
as well

torment

yielding
context

as compensation.

life lived in the

Describing
awareness
of death, another
this
life
of yours, and it's
got

and an overwhelming
"[Y]ou've
subjects observes,
in danger, and you try to keep going, but you know that something
is
to
hold
So
and
talk
and
breath,
your
you
you
wrong....
try
yourself,
to keep yourself
I'll tell you, it keeps
the day?but,
going,
through
of illness

of Coles's

at
coming back to your mind?
[B]eing old and being sick_You're
never
see
if
do
know
the edge of life; you're
you
hurting;
you'll
another day, so you never do relax and just live, the way other folks
of every moment
do!" (82, 85). The heightened
perception
depends
conventions
of embodied
denaturalization
of
the
upon
experience;
the intensity

familiar

expulsion
and just live," Ames
prolonged
Several

Hart

which
from

present
moments

documents
realms

like Coles's
finds himself,
subject,
inhabiting
consciousness
the
of
loss.
shadowed
by
in Gilead

of finitude

to perceive.

that the psychic

the way
to locate
the dynamics
of perception
one of his final ser
of life." As Ames
preaches
thematize

Ames

looks down

falters

beneath

the acute

from the very world he is

on the
to
below
congregation
him after
he fears will displace

see Jack Boughton,

the younger man
his death, slide into the pew beside his young wife and son; the sight
in an image that haunts
of the three of them together
crystallizes
behind
the lectern in a space
Locked
Ames
of the novel.
for much
to see?a
world without
that yields vision
of all he does not want
in it?Ames
"The truth is, as I stood there in the pulpit,
observes,
on the three of you, you looked tome like a handsome
looking down

him

infiltrates

experience
"at the edge
Ames
words
of manipulating
the power
mons,
a
ness of vision which
reveals his exclusion
forced

the cost of psychic

to "relax
space. Unable

thus bears

of time and

243

TANNER

And I felt as if Iwere

looking back from the grave"
family....
in
immersion
Merleau
the world?what
Ames's
(141).
synesthetic
as the
seer and the seen?
the
between
describes
Ponty
"intimacy"
young

into an experience
in which

collapses
perceive
observe
The

a world
what

unity

combining
anticipated

he will

of intimate
he

is located

soon be unable

as he is forced

detachment

to
to

but denied

participation,
with his touch.

to manipulate

of the

that haunts Ames?the

three individuals
image
to form "a handsome
his
young
family"?documents

dispossession.
Caught
absence
and the conscious

of
the powerlessness
of subjective
presence,
from the grave"?as
subject to

between

projected
Ames
back
images himself?"looking
the painful
of his exclusion
experience

burden

from a world

in which

he

is

to participate
without
leader,
agency. As the congregation's
Ames
to speak parallels
the
his
occupies
pulpit; his authorization
In this
above
and beyond
the group
of bodies
below.
position
turns
Ames's
"celestial"
instance, however,
perspective
against him
to emphasize
that unfolds
his exclusion
from the world
beneath him.
forced

again, his gaze locks on the image and holds

steady; this time,
to a sustained
act
the
of
Ames
however,
perception
subjects
a
can
nor
encounter
with
enter experientially
tableau he
neither
time.
release back into the dispersal
of diachronic

Once

the
records, are realized
sensory
images, as Damasio
through
an
core consciousness
interaction
in a particular
of
individual's
rela
an
with
in
the
consciousness
the
narrative,
tionship
object;
images
Damasio
"flow like shadows
the images of the
explains,
along with
All

an
com
unsolicited
they are providing
unwitting,
In
the
Ames
is
this
from
the
case,
(171).
image
perceives
pulpit
own
In
shadowed
of
his
his
loss.
Damasio's
model
of
by
anticipation

object
ment"

for which

as "the umbrella
term for the
consciousness
functions
perception,
mental
that
the
of you as
confection
strange
phenomena
permit
or
as
owner
observer
knower
of the things observed,
of you
of
on
as
in
formed
the
of
your perspective,
you
agent
potential
thoughts
(127). Insofar as Ames's
his faith in himself
disrupts

the scene"
death

consciousness

as "potential
charts his own absence

the image he processes

The form as well
presence.

as the substance

of his

impending
on the scene,"
as
Boughton's
of Ames's
cognitive

agent
as well

to time constructs
reflects the way his relationship
the image
process
the
narrative
of
before him. His consciousness
dynamics
disrupts

244

-CONTEMPORARY

"that

conventions

which

dictate
typically
in the
results
pattern
"automatically"
the now-salient
of
the
is
in
formed
image
object

cognitive
processing,
undoing
that the formation
of a neural
recognition

LITERATURE

to you, and that you can even act on it"

perspective,
belongs
In
Ames's
of his own
loss of agency
contrast,
(126).
anticipation
a
no
in
results
matter
the agonized
of world which,
how
perception
no
to
he
directs
his
him.
it,
gaze upon
intently
longer belongs
is to throw one's body out into
terms, "To be young
If, in Am?ry's
a time that is no time at all, but life, world,
and space," Ames's

your

retreat

into

language

"throw

to
this scene documents
his inability
during
out into the lived world
he is forced to observe

[his] body"
out into an otherwise
the pulpit.
inaccessible
Sending words
to
Ames
writes
his
of
space,
response
young Boughton's
occupation
an
sermon
at his rival.
his family pew in
directed
extemporaneous
from

to the
fails to answer
efficacy of the sermon, however,
that
details
reverberate
behind
the
of
"hand
the
image
quotidian
some young
that
In
Ames
contrast
to the lyrical
perceives.
family"
and
aesthetic
of
the
heightened
language
quality
bubble-blowing

The

rhetorical

narrative
image, Ames's
from a distance
observes

of the sequence
of actions
he
rendering
in the off
here traces his pain to its origin
and
him inhabit
individuals
beneath
"life, world,

hand

the
way
space": "Then young Boughton
You
have expected.
ing Iwould

came

saw him

ates beneath
quotidian

every
dimension

conscious

ordinariness

and patted
the
and sat with you. Your
and

perspective
he cannot access

from

of this understated

she did not

then

distance

in the earlier

word

noth

and waved

the aisle
pew next to you, and he came down
mother
looked at him to say good morning,
look at him again. Not once" (128). IfAmes's
a
ily lends him
powerful
exclusion
from a world

That was

to the service.

fam

from his
scene,

the pulpit

his

forced

reverber

representation.
motions
and

The

of the series of embodied

simple
son
and
with
in the
he
locates
his
wife,
reports
gestures
Boughton,
a
can
cannot
Ames
observe
of
but
inhabit;
landscape
temporality
not only
look highlights
absence
of a significant
the represented
to the scene before him but the unself
attentiveness
Ames's
anxious
not
mate

the abstraction

glimpse
ily continues

of the way

of mortality
into the casual way
to inhabit a universe

it unfolds

in time and

that torments
in which,
he once

space.
but this

Ames,
after his death, his
them.
shared with

It is
inti
fam

245

TANNER

as
that would
render vision
perspective
representational
to
time
turns
of
here
the
preserve
presence
image
against
onslaught
in the anticipation
of his absence
itself inside out, trapping Ames
as the "immediate
and forcing him to conceive
of himself
predeces
The

sor" of a "now"

in which

dered

In the

obsolete.

locks him

"sensible-sentient"

as he is ren
only insofar
as
status
death, Ames's
the apprehension
of a loss he is

he participates
face of his own

only to imagine
he enters the space

himself
carry
watches

not

into

to perceive;
back from the
"looking
and time of the present
only in imagina
grave,"
tive terms that position
him outside
the realm of corporeal
agency.
the presence
of his increasingly
diminished,
Despite
progressively
scenes he documents,
Ames
overwhelming
figures
body in all of the
forced

as
hauntingly
on around
and

but

in the presence
of others who
as
if he is already
of him
gone; he

disincarnated
in front

a world
that he can no longer seem to
inhabiting
in
faith
of life after death
Ames's
the
continuity
Although
at one level to mitigate
functions
the threat of mortality,
his belief
himself

affect.

that he will

exist

in another

form

after death

of loss associated

psychological
dynamics
a disembodied
of
bility
imagining
tualize

his

future

with

the
exaggerates
The
impossi
dying.

also

to concep
existence
leads Ames
as a form of presence
without
agency; his
life after
of "looking
back from the grave"
figures
status

repeated
image
a
death as a type of conscious
paralysis.
sleepless
night
Describing
"I
to
the
Ames
scene,
observes,
just prior
pulpit
just lay there, help
... I had to endure
a kind of dull
to my anxieties.
lessly subject
To struggle within
paralysis
paralysis.
the face of his illness,
the embodied
tioned

as a source

of self-expression
to immerse Ames

is a strange
subjectivity
and chiasmic

thing" (128). In
that once
func
intercorporeality

in the textured

of
experience
within
the
of
recalls
image
struggling
paralysis
figure
of "hold[ing]
interviewee
used by the elderly
who
your breath"
in detail his failed attempt
to protect himself
"the
described
against
functions

instead

loss. Ames's

knowing,
If Ames

the thinking,
imagines
is powerless

the expecting
the worst."
as
death
continued
sensory

immersion

in a

him reinforce
to penetrate,
those around
he
limits
that experience
the
of his par
of dislocation
by anticipating
am
in the world.
"I feel as if I
left out," Ames
ticipation
being
I'm some straggler
and people
can't quite
"as though
observes,

world

246

to stay back
an anecdote:

for me"

remember
with
This
wanted

me

ishing

the
in

didn't"

the
but

Iwas

to admire.
last

to me

came

you

morning

said,

LITERATURE

-CONTEMPORARY

paragraph,
saddest

kindest,
"He

with

just
so

(142). He

I didn't

look
"He

voice,

sentation?this
sion

from

had

made

of a magazine
up

right

doesn't

that

article,
Your

away.
hear

you."

you
fin

just
mother
Not

"He

doesn't."

than empowering
him, Ames's
time as reader rather

Rather

you

picture

at the end

that observation

follows

rather

than

location

in the space

than writer?marks
of the particulars
his unresponsiveness

transcendence

As Ames's wife extends

participation.
into the universality
frame
of a single moment
specific
ical state, the shift of tense that rendered
experience
scene renders Ames
in the bubble-blowing
present

of repre
his exclu

of sensory
from the
of an ontolog
continuously

prematurely
mor
of negotiating
relates the difficulty
Am?ry
impending
tality to the struggle of the elderly and the ill to "come to terms with
in space and time but, on a certain
the fact that they are now present
.The
nearer and nearer
no longer be there...
day getting
they will
human beings who give themselves
have in any
up to this dismay...
absent.

can remain
a bit
in which
left the space
they
are
to the
and more
strangers
they
becoming
uses
to
others"
The
odd
describe
those
(26).
Am?ry
spatial metaphor
to occupy
is one
who have "already partly left" a space they continue
accounts
taken up not only in Gilead but in numerous
of those close
case

already
partly
. . And
.
more
longer.

to the end of their

World),"
inhabits

Samuel

lives.
Atkin

In "On Being Old

New
(A Psychoanalyst's
describes
the split between
the self that

that observes
and anticipates
its own
It is as
is transpiring.
the task of viewing what
on
as
as
ifmy dying
is
the audience
well
the actor.
stage, with myself
I am in the grip of, yet lost to, the flow and rhythm of surrounding
fish out of water"
life. In yet out of it_The
(14).

absence:

space and
"I set myself

the self

a
to those
of water,"
"stranger"
around him and to the world
he will soon leave, also manifests
itself
scene
and is perceived
in the pivotal
in the way he both perceives
and Jack Boughton
in his presence.
interact
his wife
where
Young
Ames's

status

Boughton
happens
warm
early autumn

as a "fish

along
evening

out

the road
when

in front

Ames

of Ames's

and his wife

house

on a

are curled

up

247

TANNER

in a quilt on the porch swing

in the dark, listening
to the quiet. At
of Ames's
the invitation
wife,
joins them on the porch.
Boughton
a while, Ames
"I
I had nodded
After
believe
reports,
they thought
fair frequency,
off, as I do with
in
"a
lowered
voice,"
Speaking
tion with
Ames's
ence

to talk" (199).
They began
in a conversa
Ames's
wife
engages
Ames
word
for word.
which
reports

man
the younger
belies
objective narration

in the scene
on

to his wife
smell

the smoke

of the cigarette

of dialogue

entirely
"He

he represents;
the porch
swing

said.

. . ." "After

"She

laughed."
this understated

communication
the novel?largely
of Ames's

ness

I know.

the intimacy of his embodied

pres
next
sits
that
the
fact
Ames
despite
and
he

transcription
a moment,

close

enough
the scene

lights,
and straightforward
she

to
to Boughton
consists
almost
description:

. . ." "Another

said.

silence."

Ames

renders
(199-200). Although
laughed"
intimate
extended
yet oddly
dialogue?the
only
in
between
and young Boughton
his wife
reported
aware
acute
without
the
reader's
commentary,

"They

embodied

in the scene

that unfolds

beside,
to any
and around him heightens
the reader's
beneath,
sensitivity
us to listen harder,
to
the
hint of impropriety,
flatness
probe
forcing
or pierce
of the unembellished
the
for signs of inflection
dialogue
to see the telltale gesture
cannot. The content of
darkness
that Ames
presence

the scene

it represents
but in the
thus rests not only in the interaction
as
enacts
of
it
it
situates
Ames
process
representation
uncomfortably
as
narrator
in the space of representation,
status
to its
his
tracing
in the sustained
of embodied
origin
subjectivity.
dynamics
in this scene points
less to
conscious,
objectified
perspective
the impossibility
of objective
constructions
of meaning?what
a pure idea formed out
as
the
Merleau
describes
illusion
of
Ponty
painful
Ames's

side
tion

to the simultaneous

"space of existence"?than
and dispossession
of Ames's

to his

conscious

around

Ames's

Oblivious

talk over

and
Boughton
to the
that renders him fully present
If here, as in the earlier scene where

his wife

presence,
a
body in scene

place
and

materializa

in the world.

of his own absence.

experience
he glimpses
from the pulpit, Ames
joining his family
Boughton
that struggle
is visible only to the reader,
struggles within
paralysis,
as well
as an
it from an extradiegetic
who views
level.
intradiegetic
scene
no
or
the
offers
evidence
of
betrayal,
Although
infidelity
it ends with

an

exchange

where

Ames's

wife

whispers,

in a "very

248

LITERATURE

CONTEMPORARY

and he replies,
tone, "Well, Jack, bless your heart,"
gentle"
"Why,
I thank you for that, Lila" (200). In voicing
the proper name of Ames's
wife
for the first and only time in the novel, Jack speaks to and of her
a
with
that reverberates
the formality
of
youthful
intimacy
against
the reader in a process
of dis
voice,
journalistic
implicating
narrative
which
renders
the
disease
of
Ames's
placement
authority.
to penetrate
Even as the reader struggles
the veneer of representa

Ames's

tion

that

action

access

limits

finds himself
he

to the full

Ames
import of what
develops,
in
midst
the
of
the
unobserved,
very inter
as a
In
status
this
his
case,
anticipated.

immersed,

has

fearfully
to the world

itself not in the dislocation

of dis
expresses
an intimate,
location within
textured
where
he
space
an
to apprehend
with
that
interaction
sensory
immediacy

"stranger"
tance but in his
is forced
assumes

and

his

When
asks Lila
Boughton
nar
to stay away from him, Ames's
in his presence
which
the exchange
unfolds

anticipates
has warned

Ames

whether

absence.

her

rative reports not only

but his own unspoken
response:
She

found

don't

speak

There
imagine,

was

unkindly.
a silence.
Iwas

and

and

hand

my

He

Iwas

about

seemed

to be

almost

her

two warm

hands.

"He

does."

fairly
to show

from this discreditable

myself

it between

took

never

with

uncomfortable
some

situation

signs

of

myself,

stirring,

just

I had put myself

as you

can

to extricate

into, which

spying.

(200)
but not participating,
present
unacknowledged,
a
a
Ames becomes
voyeur granted
"spy,"
pleasureless
by
invisibility
the process
that accompanies
of disincarnation
illness and age. The
ease of
as the
that Ames
effortless
remembers
unconscious,
youth
but

Conscious

whole

body's

being

fragments

occupying
agonizing
longer
himself

space
detail

impact.
as both

its exclusion
In the terms
actor

from a world
formulated

it can apprehend
but no
Ames
experiences
by Atkin,
"in the grip of, yet lost to, the

and audience,
of surrounding
that
life." Even as Ames
concludes
in Being without
the
of
remainder,"
experience
death unsettles
his claim that "No breath, no thought,

flow and rhythm

"We participate
approaching

with
Ames's
itself unravels;
chiasmic
to a physical
into an object body
reduced
entity
and a perceiving
consciousness
forced to absorb in

"collaboration"

TANNER

249

or whisker,
is not as sunk in Being as it could be" (178). Like
ill subject Coles
interviews
life in the
the critically
who describes
woman
an
or
in
context of death as "hold[ing]
your breath,"
elderly
near
the same study who
lives every day, as she puts it, "hovering"

no wart

her death

as above or outside
exis
himself
(19), Ames
experiences
as he is
it. As his wife
takes his hand
caught within
her two warm
hands," Ames
registers
tactility and tem
in
to
that
his own, lend
relation
the
world
surrounds
only

even

tence

"between
perature
ing him

even as it threatens withdrawal.

temporary warmth
him
For Ames,
the anticipation
of his own
absence
renders
in
with
both
of
the
his
ease;
present
incapable
dwelling
position
within
and without
and
undercuts
his
attempts?perceptual
on
As
his
hold
he
steady
experience.
representational?to
propels
forward

into a future

he will

not

also pulls
inhabit, Ames
it dis
the anticipated
of
loss
into
the
where
back
present,
experience
a
com
in
to
with
his
usual
cohabit
world
others
"the
rupts
ability

himself

a grown
in his journal, addressing
way." At one point
panionable
I feel a
"At this very moment
child he will never see, Ames
observes,
I do not know
kind of loving grief for you as you read this, because
and because

you have grown

up fatherless,
you poor child,
on your
now in the sun with
on the small of
lying
belly
Soapy asleep
to
counter
back"
future
absence
(104). Imagination's
your
power
to overwhelm
here rebounds
the present with
loss, ren
anticipated
Ames's
immediate
The
companion.
dering
grief
autobiographical
you,

self

that attends

each moment

Damasio
of consciousness,
argues,
reflects not only "the remodeling
of the lived past that takes place
and
and unconsciously,
but also . . . the laying down
consciously
of
the
future"
Ames's
(224-25).
perception
remodeling
anticipated
an "antici
of the child on the floor beside
him is "remodeled"
by
future" which
renders every detail of sensory particularity?
pated
his son's familiar belly-down
the sleeping
cat, the curve of
posture,
the little boy's back?an
rather than
image of painful
inaccessibility
The reach of imagination,
then, not only
presence.
companionable
extends but contracts
the scope of the body's
of
touch; the intensity
moment
in
the
loss
swell
the
face
of
may
heightened
perception
only

to exclude

Harking
world with

in it.
from participation
a
to
the
of moving
back
memory
youthful
through
his father at his side, Ames
describes
the intermingling
the observer

250

-CONTEMPORARY
with

of sensation
how

though,
him
beside

sense,

us....

around

motion

with

[W]hat
ever
you
thing
might
moment
and stockpiling

strength
a power
actually

"I can't

emotion.

I felt," Ames writes

to his
that night,
that rutted
along
a sweet

world?what

LITERATURE

own

tell you,

son,

"walking
along
that empty
road, through
in him, and in myself,
and all

I felt,
you have
need"

to experience
beyond
In penetrating
(48-49).

any
the

the aging
world,
images of the perceptible
to
and ailing Ames
the seemingly
limitless
attempts
appropriate
an
as
to
within
Even
of
loss.
his
power
economy
experience
height
some compensation
ened perception
for abbreviated
oppor
yields
cannot
the surplus
of Ames's
tunity, however,
intensity
experience
be banked
In
the
inevitable
loss
embodied
trac
of
presence.
against
to
in
its
the
both
of
origins
ing experience
operation
physiological

in the lived
and the psychic
of participation
perception
dynamics
are
that
Gilead
reveals
and
consciousness
world,
perception
nor
neither
The "unneeded"
separable
interchangeable.
intensity
to
the
world
his
of Ames's
power
expe
only heightens
apprehend
rience

of anticipated

loss.

ence beyond

In Gilead,

the "power you have to experi

ever
remains both
actually need"
the novel
that the
acknowledges

you might
anything
and
insufficient;
overwhelming
reach of consciousness
extends
past
of an absence
the intimate experience

of mortality
into
is powerless
the imagination

the borders

to forestall.
to convey
the challenge
of communicating
the
Attempting
one of Coles's
to
of
embodied
others,
aging
psychological
dynamics
a
to describe
both the experi
of dislocation
subjects uses
metaphor
ence of social
of conveying
that
and the difficulty
marginalization
"Years ago," Coles
and others
"she spoke,
observes,
experience.
were
same
as
all
in
'we
she
the
room'"
put it,
poignantly
spoke, and,
and thematizes
the perceptual
(21). As Gilead represents
processes
to
create
the novel
which
its
meaning,
protagonist
struggles
through
vision
but to
Ames's
just to comprehend
not only the porch,
to occupy
the
inhabit his experience
of seeing,
but
and
the
the
of
Given
space
displacement.
psychic
prairie,
pulpit
associ
and psychical
the tremendous
range of physical
experiences
access
to
ated with
of aging and illness,
the processes
imaginative
allows

Ames's
dialogues

the

reader

narrative
about

not

offers
these

only one point of entry

In breaking
issues.
down

to broader
the walls

cultural
between

251

TANNER
our

lie dying,
others
living rooms and the space
just past where
of aging
Gilead not only exposes
the isolating
however,
dynamics
the reader along
but imaginatively
unsettles
them by positioning
as
at the margins
with Ames
of the lived world.
"Before the essence
"all we must do is situate
the fact," Merleau-Ponty
observes,
within
instead of looking at
the being we are dealing with,
...
it from the outside
what we have to do is put it back into the fab

before

ourselves

ric of our

(117-18). As it pulls us into a heightened

experience
us to acknowledge
Gilead also pushes
the interweav

life"

of the present,
ing of life and death
not

tionship
loss situated

as "the

loss
warns

in the fabric

just to its protagonist

us.
within
Defining
inherent

lives, to claim a rela

to the inevitability
of a shared
of that inevitable
the knowledge

of our own
but

of conscious

tragedy

against
perpetuating
simple
"Versions
of
Descartes's
body.

and

the roots of the human

"obscure

mind

Damasio

existence,"

Cartesian

categories
Damasio

error,"
in a biologically
they obscure

of mind

observes,
but
complex

the tragedy
and unique
finite,
organism;
in
and
that
the
of
finiteness,
implicit
unique
knowledge
fragility,
ness. And where
fail to see the inherent
of con
humans
tragedy
fragile,

to do something
they feel far less called upon
it" (Descartes's Error 251). In lending Ames's
voice
about minimizing
a
and
vision
that
Robinson
achieves
texture, dimension,
location,
to
moment
the power
inhabit the
without
the
celebrates
obscuring
in
back
from
the
the
of
implicit
grave."
tragedy
experience
"looking
scious

existence,

in the spaces
of the novel,
situated
imaginatively
a
absence may
lead not only to heightened
appreciation
anticipating
future
of the present but to the ability to move
toward a reimagined
in which
and
individual
cultural
bound
social
attitudes,
spaces,
in
aries mitigate
rather than exaggerate
the burden of consciousness

For

the reader

the face of loss.

Boston College

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