Nightmares of the Past

For me this week’s reading was a little too real, and a tad bit too depressing. Most of them were just sad thing after sad thing. No smiles and little hope. Especially, Anthony Doerr’s “The Caretaker.” This story is about the American Dream, and just getting away from your past. Also with having to deal with your present, while accepting the past. It is very realistic, and, at times, too realistic. But this story does happen to hold some hope.

In “The Caretaker,” the main character lives through an awful war that makes him need to just run away. He just wants to “throw himself into the bay and drown himself.” The character is being overtaken by the evil of the war. And this war was described so realistically that I understand why he wanted to jump. The war had taken everything from him, and it had even made him a killer. So then he decides to run away and have a dream: the American dream. This even made it much more realistic because I know people ran away from their past. And, it’s odd, but they always run to America. Mostly because America’s cliché idea is that it “is the land of the dreamers.” I guess that is true, but at same time many dreams die.

I actually begin to really like the story as it progresses. Mostly because of the symbolism that was hidden behind almost everything. My favorite part was about the whales, and how, even if they did push them back into the ocean, they were doomed to come back. These whales were like Joseph’s memories and his past. He may hide them in “the dungeon,” but they’re still there. And they will still come back to haunt him. I also loved them so much, because of the symbolism behind their hearts. Since those giant hearts are like all the hearts and souls left behind. It also shows that where the narrator was from held many beliefs for the heart. Maybe tt could have been where the soul was kept or the heart was so large it meant that it had a lot of love. There can be many different ideas.

Another amazing thing about these whale hearts was that the main character went through all that work to bury them. To him it is like burying all the forgotten people from his past that never were buried. Giving them a proper burial makes him feel at least a little better about him himself, since he so burdened with guilt. Though he guild still sticks. But he loses a bit more of it after he saves the life of his old boss’s daughter. I love how he questions fate, and if all the utter shit in his life happened for a reason. Since if he had not lived through a war, lost his mother, and ran to America; this girl would have drowned. The girl becomes a large character, because she is the first person he has really let in since his mother. She even begins to take care of him. But somewhere between this he gets the amazing idea to create life from death, and make a garden where he buried the hearts.

I honestly had really mixed feeling for this story. At times it was hard for me to read, and then I just started to really like it. I can’t be sarcastic or even witty about it, because it is a very serious story. I guess if I really hated it I could have been super sarcastic, but I only a hated a few parts. Like when he was being lazy and selfish. Since that is how he used to be, and then the whales came along. Those whales made him flourish. Made him actually grow up. In a way this story is a bildungsroman, because Joseph used to be like an oversized kid. You know, relying on his mother for everything and just taking without asking. But as the story goes on he becomes a man and begins to finally care for others.