The Tilting Sill
Whenever I misbehaved, my father would take me there. He would lay me down gently and then wrap the pliable stems around my body, watering the plant to the brim. I would spend a cold night more miserable than my torturer and dread the sun in equal proportion to its longing for it. At dawn the leaves would perk, leaning slightly towards the glare. By midday the stalks themselves were constricting, fighting my body to get closer to the window. At what would have normally been my supper time, I was in such agony, and the stems so tightly wound that I could not have been force fed should it have been my desire. As night fell, my father would come, tenderly unwinding the stems so that they wouldn't snap under a sudden movement. He would carry my limp frame to bed, and whisper sweetly that the deep gauges spiraling the length of my body would, for as long as they took to fade, remind me to seek the sun in all I did.
posted by Chad and Sharon at 1:29 PM
1 Comments:
In response to Krista:
I find it curious that you label the story a proverb and then proceed to read everything literally. If one were so inclined, she could make the large mental leap and treat the Sun not as an inanimate object, but a symbol for “Good”.
The plant is indeed torturing the person, but only as the plant itself strives for the sun. Perhaps we could say that seeing someone or something else do whatever is necessary to strive for what is good reminds us that we have done something wrong (like the character in the story) and leaves us with guilt for failing to have done so ourselves. Thus, the story could be giving a physical description of guilt, a torturing of the mind.
The father in the story sets down what is right, or good. The character feels guilt when not following those edicts. Perhaps we should say Father. Perhaps.
But this would be lick deconstructing Dr. Zeuss (although I’m sure someone has a PhD having done just that). This story was written for fun, and what says, “fun” like torture?
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