The Waves by Virginia Woolf
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
Critics of Robbe Grillet point out that his mode of storytelling fixates on the listing of things seen, in an objective, non-allegorical, “definitive interrogation of the object”. Barthe describes his Grillet's style as “man’s direct experience of what surrounds him without his being able to shield himself with a psychology, a metaphysic, or a psychoanalytic method in his combat with the objective world he discovers”. Bruce Morrisette explained that there was an “absence of any psychological analysis”, “a rejection of introspection, interior monologues or thoughts”. While this is true in the strictest sense, Grillet does a marvelous job of positioning the reader behind the narrator’s eyes. By explaining what the narrator is looking at, whether in real time or in memory, Grillet allows the reader to fill in any blanks psychologically for the character. As the reader looks at what the narrator looks at, he can’t help himself but ask why is the narrator looking at that? What is the purpose of describing that object? Is what the narrator describing even real? By answering the questions that are raised, the reader is able to deduce the thoughts, actions, and emotional state of the narrator.
For example, the narrator starts out by describing his house and the movements of A (presumably his wife). She has something in her hands, but the narrator isn’t sure what it is but infers that it is “probably…a sheet of paper”. He is only able to surmise that it is probably a sheet of paper because he notices a sheet of paper later in the narration that gives him suspicion. So we can tell that this narration is not “Now” as is indicated in the beginning paragraph, but a recreation in his memory.
Later having drinks with Franck, the neighbor, A... leans over to listen to Franck, but the narrator can’t distinguish what is said and decides that Franck is “probably thanking her”. It is as if the narrator is simply trying to come up with the most plausible, most benign exchange he can think of. There are a number of instances where the narrator is clearly trying to rebuild scenes, thinking through details which might give him clues about…something. “Memory succeeds…in reconstituting several movements of her right hand and her lips…which might be considered significant…which, on reflection, does not prove beyond a doubt that she tasted the soup today. Now the boy clears away the plates. It then becomes impossible to check again the stain in A…’s plate--or their absence, if she has not served herself.”
This passage not only points out the inconsistencies and ambiguities of memory, but also brings up the motif of stains that are presented throughout the story. There are some marks left on a sheet of writing paper, oil stains left by Franck’s car, even the glow of Franck's shirt in the dying light of dusk standing out against the dark wall, but of primary interest is the stain left by a centipede Franck smashed on the wall one night at dinner. The details of this incident is told over and over in detail, although it happened “at the beginning of the month, perhaps the month before, or later.” Each time the incident is recalled, more incriminating evidence is revealed. The first time, the narrator says “A…seems to be breathing a little faster, but this may be an illusion. Her left hand gradually closes over her knife…The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched around the knife handle”. Another time, he amends “The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white cloth.” Then, “The hand with tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white cloth. The five widespaced fingers have closed over the palm with such force that they have pulled the cloth with them”, the creases of which spread out until they touch Franck’s hand where he rests it next to a “knife blade [which] has left on the cloth a tiny, dark, elongated, sinuous stain surround by more tenuous marks” before Franck's hand rises to push down a suspicious letter in his shirt pocket. Finally, the incident is recalled in a different setting altogether, being in the bedroom not the dining room: “he comes back toward the bed…The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white sheet. The five widespread fingers have drawn the cloth with them…” The narrator may only be describing what he remembers, but it clear that his memory reflects his psychology: the incident of the centipede killing goes from incidental to incriminating.
Even the description of the stain reveals the narrator’s state of mind: “the outline seems indelible. It has no relief, none of the thickness of a dried stain which would come off if scratched at with a fingernail. It looks more like brown ink impregnating the surface layer of the paint.” “It has no relief” describes the nature of stain but also reflects the attitude of the narrator: he, too, has no relief from the thoughts that keep running through his mind. The ink “impregnating” the surface once again reveals that the narrator feels there is something sexual going on.
The killing of the centipede becomes the focus of the narrator, but its precise significance eludes us. Is the centipede the affair, the stain on an otherwise serviceable relationship? Or is the centipede the narrator, causing consternation in A and quickly dispatched without mercy by Franck? Or does the killing of the centipede symbolize the way Franck can meet the needs of A, swift and sure, while the narrator simply sits and watches? Each reader, perhaps, gives a different interpretation and hence the story's meaning and impact changes with each reader.
As significant as the descriptions of these stains are in the story, the efforts the narrator goes through to eradicate them is just as telling. Some stains are simple to erase, just adjusting the angle of perspective--“It is easy to make this spot disappear thanks to the flaws in the rough window”, while others require real effort, such as the removal of the centipede stain that requires an eraser and a razor: “There now remains only a vaguely outlined paler area, without any apparent depression of the surface, which might pass for an insignificant defect in the finish, at worst.” One can’t help but wonder if the narrator is thinking of using some sort of tool to extirpate the interloper in his marriage. “The precision for the tool permits the area exposed to its effect to be carefully determined.” How can the narrator remove these thoughts, the apparent treachery and all that it entails, and restore his relationship to what it was before, to make this all “insignificant”, “without any apparent depression”? At one point the narrator describes a car crash with Franck inside, the “car immediately bursts into flames…It is the sound the centipede makes”. This “observation”, another memory that is apparently only imagined, is probably one of the closest clues we get to the true feelings of the narrator.
Interestingly, it is not the centipede stain that is so hard to erase but marks left on the blue paper. This is tangible evidence that she has written to Franck something secret, something that she has not shared with the narrator, that she has orchestrated a miscommunication with the servant to maneuver the narrator out of the room so she could deliver it to Franck, and that Franck then tried to hide in his shirt pocket. It is this interchange more than any other that causes the narrator to then rethink all that has gone before and after. The remaining evidence, the “two short pen strokes” appear to resist both the eraser and the razor, “doubtless because they were made too heavily. Unless a new word, skillfully arranged to cover up these two unnecessary strokes, replaces the old one on the page, the traces of black ink will still be visible there.” What is that new word? What will replace the suspicion, jealousy, and uncertainty?
Another way that the author allows us to glimpse inside the thoughts of the narrator is to follow his observations. As he waits for his wife to come home that fateful night when she and Franck had “car trouble” and had to spend the night, the narrator reflects more on the sounds of things around him, the insects and animals “shrill and short”, the kerosene lamp “it’s sound plainative, high pitched, somewhat nasal”, and most tellingly, the sound of trucks that rumble by : “it is moving just as fast as the preceding one, which for a moment might cause it to be confused with a touring car…” All the while the narrator observes that “A…should have been back long since” and reasons they might be delayed from “engine trouble” to “driver’s fatigue”. As the reader reads the descriptions of all these sounds, he can feel the how intently the narrator is listening for his wife’s return, his anxiety as he waits in vain.
As the night progresses, the description turns to A’s bedroom and the content of her drawers, as though the narrator is looking for something, some evidence perhaps of the infidelity he imagines when “the light suddenly goes out”. In the absence of the light, the abrupt cessation of the kerosene’s hissing, the narrator seems overcome by the darkness and silence: “the faintest movements become impracticable”. Even his ability to measure, or describe becomes hindered in the “total darkness”. Not only can the reader discern the apparent depression and despair of the narrator in that moment, but the reader can also see that the incessant descriptions, of the rows of banana trees in the plantation, the shadow length of the columns, the explication of insect behavior, all of it is a means of distraction for the narrator as he attempts not to see what he thinks he sees: his wife falling in love with another man.
Grillot’s style does more than experiment with the style of narration. The entire act of taking reflection, motivation, even the ubiquitous “I” from the story reveals the feeling of powerlessness the narrator has about what is happening. He is reduced to simply a bystander, peering through the blinds as it were, grasping at memories and trying to piece together the story from snippets of conversations and moments of observations. He is like the workmen in the plantation surrounding the termite-ridden logs, looking at the problem from all the angles, and yet remaining motionless. Are his observations true? What was it that he did see? What does all of it mean? He constantly questions himself--”it may…be false, entirely made up,...or even imaginary”.
Grillet has not removed psychology from his story, rather he has left the precise motivations, anxieties, and conclusions up to the reader to puzzle out using the narrator’s account to provide the clues. Using vocabulary, time shifting, and motifs the reader is able to not only deduce what happened but what the narrator’s feelings are, and empathize with him as if the reader were the narrator himself, inside his brain, re-living all of the true, false, imaginary observations. Grillet does not tell us the psychology of his narrator, he allows the reader to live it with him.
