Dino Buzzati’s The Falling Girl
This is a surrealist narration of a nineteen year old girl, Marta, who leaps from a skyscraper of extraordinary height. However, instead of witnessing the usual crescendo of motion as natural to free falling bodies according to the dictates of the law of gravity, we instead witness a regression of motion giving the illusion of the girl, though falling, is hovering on her descent. Along her vertical path she meets the different inhabitants of the skyscraper beginning with the occupants of the top floors composed of the elite, the privileged of society; then, midway are the working class. From these people she received invitations to stop and join them, party for a while, queries as to her identity and her reason for being in such a hurry. Though flattered with the attention, she declined these verbal interactions because she was in a hurry – she must arrive in time for the big party down below where the glittering glamorous city with its powerful men and even more powerful women adorned in their furs and diamonds awaits her. As she progressed in her descent, darkness and fear grips her, no longer possessing the confidence and vibrancy she had earlier in her flight below, such that by the time she passes the twenty eighth floor, a couple saw a decrepit woman drop by instead of the young, fresh beautiful nineteen year old girl.
At the surface, this story appears to be a conventional suicide narrative. We witness the girl falling and what happens along the path of her fall. But in her falling she is actually rising. The text presents a progression of life only it is presented in inversion. The girl is not falling, she is rising. In the regression (descent because of the fall) is progression. Her descent is actually an ascent to reach the city which promises opportunities for her, the true inauguration of her life. It is an ascent to reach her ambition her place in the sun – the party she had always dreamed of as a child. But as she nears the end of her vertical path (whether viewed from above or from below) darkness starts to grip her. Insecurities start to set in thus she looses confidence as she realizes there are other girls falling/ rising. It becomes a race. Some of the girls are falling/rising faster than her. Fear grips her, she might not make it to the party on time. She might not be able to fulfill her dreams, her goals. The image projected in the story is that the girl was looking down at the city of promises from above. Reverse the picture and we will see the girl looking up, metaphorically, to that city of promise. In such manner we don’t see the girl falling but she is actually laboring her way to the top – to the fulfillment of her goals, gaining popularity along the way ( manifested by the attention she received from the tenants she met along her vertical path). Then as dictated by Fate, we will all grow old and decrepit at the end of our lives.
The text presents a new perspective of viewing life’s progression. The plot presents an activity of rising through the falling action. A conventional short story plot would begin with the exposition progressing to a rising action that would lead to the falling action or denouement to its resolution. In this particular story, as the girl falls the more the story unfolds such that the falling action actually brings about a rising action and it continues that way. We don’t even see a resolution of the story. There is no mention of the girl anymore as she passes by the twenty eighth floor. Instead, the story ends focusing on the old man going back to sipping his coffee. Perhaps this is to spare the reader of the obvious. But this is in the perspective of looking at the girl falling because in such perspective, the end result is inevitable. But if we view the action as rising, then the resolution is in the hands of the reader.
Interestingly, the story begins at dusk when Marta was nineteen years old and at the prime of her life then ends in the morning where she is seen as a decrepit old woman. This is an indication of the reverse perspective of the narrative because conventions in literary discourse would connote mornings as beginnings, a time of youth, vibrancy, the prime of life and dusk would signify the end of the day, the end of our prime where man begins to be old and feeble.
:))
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