The Address by Marga Minco
Analysis of a Key Passage
The Address by Marga Minco
In The Address by Marga Minco, the author suggests that people do not realize what they take for granted until they do not have them anymore. In the excerpt, the narrator is in a house with all her possessions, and the daughter of the woman who took all these possessions has no idea what is going on.
Long ago, the narrator’s mother had given all her worldly possessions to a strange lady, who always took everything away with a look of greed. The narrator has come to the house with all the possessions, and it suddenly hits her that all her memories are just through the doorway. When she enters, she sees all of her possessions, “in a room which I both knew and didn’t know”. This one simple line describes how she feels, how though all her memories are in the room, they are not place in the right spot, as if the chronological placement was off, and all her memories are mixed up. “I found myself among things I had wanted to see again but which oppressed me in the strange surroundings” describes her confusion, because though everything looked normal, (similar to the way she acts as if nothing is happening) it’s the inside story of every object that is scaring her; how it has her memories imprinted in it, and yet, they are not there anymore, because this is not her house, and she does not own any of this anymore. “I scarcely dared to look around me anymore” symbolizes her fright of looking at everything she had and lost, and now they do not belong to her, though she has a slight longing for them in order to have a sense of normality. “Somewhere on the edge there should be a burn hole in which had never been repaired” this line, when read closely, depicts the hole as a sort of ledge, where her mind is clinging onto, so she may find some familiar feeling in all this strangeness. It also depicts a large bottomless pit, where she wants to throw all the bad feelings and memories away, throw them deep into this hole.
The Address by Marga Minco
In The Address by Marga Minco, the author suggests that people do not realize what they take for granted until they do not have them anymore. In the excerpt, the narrator is in a house with all her possessions, and the daughter of the woman who took all these possessions has no idea what is going on.
Long ago, the narrator’s mother had given all her worldly possessions to a strange lady, who always took everything away with a look of greed. The narrator has come to the house with all the possessions, and it suddenly hits her that all her memories are just through the doorway. When she enters, she sees all of her possessions, “in a room which I both knew and didn’t know”. This one simple line describes how she feels, how though all her memories are in the room, they are not place in the right spot, as if the chronological placement was off, and all her memories are mixed up. “I found myself among things I had wanted to see again but which oppressed me in the strange surroundings” describes her confusion, because though everything looked normal, (similar to the way she acts as if nothing is happening) it’s the inside story of every object that is scaring her; how it has her memories imprinted in it, and yet, they are not there anymore, because this is not her house, and she does not own any of this anymore. “I scarcely dared to look around me anymore” symbolizes her fright of looking at everything she had and lost, and now they do not belong to her, though she has a slight longing for them in order to have a sense of normality. “Somewhere on the edge there should be a burn hole in which had never been repaired” this line, when read closely, depicts the hole as a sort of ledge, where her mind is clinging onto, so she may find some familiar feeling in all this strangeness. It also depicts a large bottomless pit, where she wants to throw all the bad feelings and memories away, throw them deep into this hole.