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Allusions
Troubled About My Soul
Explanation and Analysis—How Did You Feel:
On their "first date," Tish and Fonny go to church with Fonny's family. The congregation worships raucously, singing and shouting. While telling the story of this "first date" in a flashback, Tish recalls what was to become of Rose, one of the congregants:
[...] The moment he sat down, another sister, her name was Rose and not much later she was going to disappear from the church and have a baby—and I still remember the last time I saw her, when I was about fourteen, walking the streets in the snow with her face all marked and her hands all swollen and a rag around her head and her stockings falling down, singing to herself—stoop up and started singing, How did you feel when you come out of the wilderness, leaning on the Lord?
After a "young man with reddish hair" finishes testifying, a woman named Rose, who is pregnant, stands and sings the African American spiritual, "Come Out the Wilderness." Then, Tish remembers what happened to Rose. This is, of course, forward in time from the "first date," but still is a flashback from the time of Tish's pregnancy and Fonny's imprisonment, which is when Tish narrates the novel. Tish remembers Rose walking the streets in the snow, seemingly homeless and in some distress, injured and singing to herself.
The flashback shows how clearly Rose has stuck in Tish's mind, even several years later. Perhaps it is anxiety over her own pregnancy and possible estrangement from Fonny that makes Tish remember Rose so distinctly. Later, Tish notes that she and Fonny never talk about this visit to the church. The one time she does think of this "first date" is when she visits Fonny in prison to tell him she is pregnant. This flashback shows how Tish remembers Rose fearfully—she models what could happen if her attempts to free Fonny and live a peaceful life ultimately fail.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Music Is––"Live":
Late in the novel, in Puerto Rico, Sharon searches for Victoria Rogers in order to convince her to recant her accusation that Fonny raped her. When Sharon arrives on the island, she goes to a nightclub, where Pietro, Rogers's husband, works. When she arrives, Sharon has a flashback to her young adulthood, as a singer in Birmingham:
This is a nightclub, and so the music is—"live." Sharon's days with the drummer come back to her. Her days as a singer come back to her. They do not, as she is to make very vivid to me, much later, come back with the rind of regret. She and the drummer lost each other—that was that; she was not equipped to be a singer, and that was that.
In a novel filled with Tish's flashbacks to her and Fonny's love story, this one is different. Here Tish uses stories that she has heard from her mother in order to show what her mother would have remembered while visiting this night club. Thinking back, Sharon does not have any "rind of regret" for this period of her life. Moreover, Sharon seems to fondly think of the freedom and independence she had at that time; just after the passage above, Tish notes, "This is the first time Sharon has been alone in a very long time."
But this flashback also shows Sharon that she likes her more mature, domestic life. She remarks that she hopes that the "undernourished rock singer, whipping himself into an electronic orgasm" can achieve the happier family life that she has found and get out of the life of music, which is full of "despair" and exaggerated emotions. The emotional nuance presented in this flashback is powerful and based on Sharon's long experience: "Despair, whether or not it can be taken home and placed on the family table, must always be respected. [...] Sharon claps for them, because she prays for them." This unusual flashback incorporates Sharon's perspective into the novel for the first time. Her maturity and sympathy add emotional complexity to the novel's unexpected trip to Puerto Rico.
Related Themes:
