Themes Major in Shirley Jackson's "My Body"
Boundaries Shirley Jackson's "The Body" uses boundaries to help illustrate her unique autobiography in several ways. The page from which the hypertext begins shows an illustration of her body that it outlined in boundaries surrounding various parts of her body. However, upon clicking upon these body parts, one is not brought to isolated blocks of texts which simply expand toward ideas regarding merely that body part--each body part links to other body part related sub-texts. This shows that the boundaries in her hypertext are not definite. While useful in their dividing nature, they are also especially useful because of their acknowledge artificial nature. If each boundary was absolute, her autobiography would no longer flow. Her memories are "centered" around her body, but each memory isn't restricted to the body part around which it focuses. Her memories flow together to build a body centered autobiography. The boundaries are only useful in such a way as they do not obscure the idea they are attempting to frame. Additionally, within her body, Jackson seems to blur the boundary between her body as a vessel and herself as the consciousness residing inside her body. Jackson seems to distance her consciousness from the body, despite entirely basing the autobiographical nature of the hypertext on the fact that her body and its constituent parts are what have allowed her her experiences in life. QUOTES: "They are whole unto themselves. My skeleton doesn't need me, I think. It's waiting me out, tolerating my spasms, my ambitions. When I am kissing someone and our teeth bump together, jarring us both, I think: our skeletons touched." "There are no lines in nature." So outlines, those supposedly self-evident bits of piping around every given thing, didn't exist. Finally someone had the guts to admit it!" "My own body was, I felt, invisible. It was difficult to negotiate the field of crossed gazes between my towel and the pool, but I knew my sudden feeling of unhappy celebrity was my own invention. I didn't register, I was like a stick figure, of which you don't ask, is it well drawn, is it beautiful? My body was the engine that propelled a pair of eyes through the world." Undefined/Uncertain Potential The theme of not knowing the capacity of a given thing is another theme of Jackson's "My Body." She speaks of her various body parts with a reverence of someone mystified by capabilities possessed but not understood. Jackson spends a great deal of time discussing her discoveries of capabilities she did not know she possessed, or learning to attain capabilities she thought were beyond her reach. "Every so often my though, pencil left some careless line that humped off the page with extraordinary meaningfulness, more knowledgeable than I would ever be. I learned to recognize the truth in the accident; I pirated chance for booty." "With infinitesimal movements, invisible to everyone else, I could make my hairs straighten and bow, straighten and bow." "A little later, I felt a funny tickle at my collar, and looked in the mirror. A big dribble of pink had flowed all the way down my numb chin and was running down my neck. My lips, I figured out, only worked because they were conscious. Without feeling, I would leak continuously. (A principle that might hold true, I thought uncomfortably, for other parts of my body as well.)" The world was still wonderful and I was still eagerly a part of it, but I was
not the world's privileged daughter and suitor. I had no magical insight into the will of things, and I would be doled no special favors. The broken branch hung by a hinge of bark, and I felt ashamed and full of rage at myself for breaking it. I had been shown up: I was stupid and brutal in my pride, just like everyone else.
Exploration Jackson uses the theme of exploration throughout "My Body." The hypertext is set up in such a way that one must explore Jackson's body in order to understand the story behind the body. She makes one travel through the experiences had by each of her body parts in order for you to understand the experiences of her body as a whole, and thus herself as a whole. However, Jackson doesn't make one linearly go through her body to find out how each part has contributed to her greater...