(Originally posted on 10/1/2009)
(Footsteps in snow. Sorry, can't find the photo taken by Wayne R. Bilenduke that was printed in my book. Alternative photo.)
I think this is by far the story I have to spend the longest time reading.
Mr. Guraliuk was right, this is a very sleep-inducing "short" story. "It goes on and on and on and on… like forever". But, paradoxically, that's what makes it such a brilliant short story.
When you read Sinclair Ross's lines, you feel cold. You can imagine the coldness of hard window glass pressing against your fingers as you look out to the freezing white snow-covered endless landscape and long for the person you love to arrive. You can feel your eyelids heavy as you watch the time go by; your heart heavy with sadness and loneliness but still not letting go of that weak hope, the only hope that keeps you still alive amidst the brutal coldness of winter. Of course if you've never been through a cold, white and lonely winter before, you wouldn't know what it's like to have no one by your side except for yourself; you wouldn't know what it's like to have to speak to yourself to comfort those scary emotions, and eventually find your own voice strange and aloof; you wouldn't know what it's like to live just one day with silence and watch the relentless winter: "the wind struck from all sides, blustering and furious." It's not about being strong enough to withstand the wind, it's not about being brave enough to take care of yourself; it's about that inevitable feeling when snow falls and everything is erased by the whiteness, that feeling that we all fight to dismiss but in the end will have to succumb to anyway and admit: loneliness.
This short story seems endless. It stretches in front of us this scene of endless white and extreme isolation. It's not just a geographical isolation, it's the loneliness of a soul, a heart. Throughout the story, the setting doesn't change (the small farmer's cottage with "the painted door" is all that we have), the three characters don't do much, other than walking, painting and thinking (mainly), and the limited omniscient point of view restricts and controls what we are allowed to know, pushing the reader's patience to the maximum. So limited is it but still it's endless; it's like one of those evenings when you're trapped inside your house for some reason with nothing to do particularly, and comes that feeling time is frozen there forever.
Still, the conflict is apparent: Ann struggling with herself, with her loneliness, with her desires for Steven, with her hope that her husband would return, with her trust for John. At times she fights with the winter, but that's just a metaphor; the real struggle is the internal conflict.
I don't why but when I finished "The painted door", I suddenly though of O Henry's "The last leaf". Both short stories are written about the cruel winter, both ended with a death because of the coldness, both involved "paint", and both had surprising endings. But of course other than those very few points everything else is completely different; one is about love and loneliness, one is about life and art. And so it would be a very awkward comparison for these two. But if I were allowed to hastily generalize, taking into account what Mr. Guraliuk said about Ross's "The painted door": "This is a perfect Canadian short story", I would have to say Canadian literature is so much quieter than any other country's literature that I've read. American literature is apparently(generally) fierce, fast-paced and immediately enthralling, just like "The last leaf", where actions speak louder than thoughts and words, and the plot is quickened by Johnsy's illness and the way Henry uses the "leaf" as a point for attention. But "The painted door" is silent, deep in thoughts and internal conflicts. Instead of narrating action, it describes at length the landscape "to mirror inner reality". Everything, Ann's emotions, the winter, the snow, the blizzard, were blended together in one vast and overwhelming atmosphere: cold.
"It was as if all across the yard the snow were shivering awake-roused by the warnings of the wind to hold itself in readiness for the impending storm. They sky had become a sombre, whitish grey. It, too, as if in readiness, had shifted and lay close to earth. Before her a she watched a mane of powdery snow reared up breast-high against the darker background of the stable, tossed for a moment angrily, and then subsided again as if whipped down to obedience and restraint. But another followed, more reckless and impatient than the first. Another reeled and dashed itself against the window where she watched. Then ominously for a while there were only the angry little snakes of snow.[…] In the distance, sky and prairie now were merged into one another linelessly."
(Footsteps in snow. Sorry, can't find the photo taken by Wayne R. Bilenduke that was printed in my book. Alternative photo.)I think this is by far the story I have to spend the longest time reading.
Mr. Guraliuk was right, this is a very sleep-inducing "short" story. "It goes on and on and on and on… like forever". But, paradoxically, that's what makes it such a brilliant short story.
When you read Sinclair Ross's lines, you feel cold. You can imagine the coldness of hard window glass pressing against your fingers as you look out to the freezing white snow-covered endless landscape and long for the person you love to arrive. You can feel your eyelids heavy as you watch the time go by; your heart heavy with sadness and loneliness but still not letting go of that weak hope, the only hope that keeps you still alive amidst the brutal coldness of winter. Of course if you've never been through a cold, white and lonely winter before, you wouldn't know what it's like to have no one by your side except for yourself; you wouldn't know what it's like to have to speak to yourself to comfort those scary emotions, and eventually find your own voice strange and aloof; you wouldn't know what it's like to live just one day with silence and watch the relentless winter: "the wind struck from all sides, blustering and furious." It's not about being strong enough to withstand the wind, it's not about being brave enough to take care of yourself; it's about that inevitable feeling when snow falls and everything is erased by the whiteness, that feeling that we all fight to dismiss but in the end will have to succumb to anyway and admit: loneliness.
This short story seems endless. It stretches in front of us this scene of endless white and extreme isolation. It's not just a geographical isolation, it's the loneliness of a soul, a heart. Throughout the story, the setting doesn't change (the small farmer's cottage with "the painted door" is all that we have), the three characters don't do much, other than walking, painting and thinking (mainly), and the limited omniscient point of view restricts and controls what we are allowed to know, pushing the reader's patience to the maximum. So limited is it but still it's endless; it's like one of those evenings when you're trapped inside your house for some reason with nothing to do particularly, and comes that feeling time is frozen there forever.
Still, the conflict is apparent: Ann struggling with herself, with her loneliness, with her desires for Steven, with her hope that her husband would return, with her trust for John. At times she fights with the winter, but that's just a metaphor; the real struggle is the internal conflict.
I don't why but when I finished "The painted door", I suddenly though of O Henry's "The last leaf". Both short stories are written about the cruel winter, both ended with a death because of the coldness, both involved "paint", and both had surprising endings. But of course other than those very few points everything else is completely different; one is about love and loneliness, one is about life and art. And so it would be a very awkward comparison for these two. But if I were allowed to hastily generalize, taking into account what Mr. Guraliuk said about Ross's "The painted door": "This is a perfect Canadian short story", I would have to say Canadian literature is so much quieter than any other country's literature that I've read. American literature is apparently(generally) fierce, fast-paced and immediately enthralling, just like "The last leaf", where actions speak louder than thoughts and words, and the plot is quickened by Johnsy's illness and the way Henry uses the "leaf" as a point for attention. But "The painted door" is silent, deep in thoughts and internal conflicts. Instead of narrating action, it describes at length the landscape "to mirror inner reality". Everything, Ann's emotions, the winter, the snow, the blizzard, were blended together in one vast and overwhelming atmosphere: cold.
"It was as if all across the yard the snow were shivering awake-roused by the warnings of the wind to hold itself in readiness for the impending storm. They sky had become a sombre, whitish grey. It, too, as if in readiness, had shifted and lay close to earth. Before her a she watched a mane of powdery snow reared up breast-high against the darker background of the stable, tossed for a moment angrily, and then subsided again as if whipped down to obedience and restraint. But another followed, more reckless and impatient than the first. Another reeled and dashed itself against the window where she watched. Then ominously for a while there were only the angry little snakes of snow.[…] In the distance, sky and prairie now were merged into one another linelessly."
(The painted door - Sinclair Ross)
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