Alice Sebolds Lucky - Essay Example

Before the book is even opened, before the is even read, Alice Sebold’s novel “Lucky” tells you what it’s about in the information printed on the front cover just above the title: “In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was Lucky” (Sebold, 1999). Beginning with the details of the brutal rape that changed the course of her life when she was 18 and a freshman at Syracuse University in 1981, Sebold invites her readers into the lifelong effects of that one event. From the intricate description of police action following her report, through the days and weeks following both in facing other students back at her dorm room and in returning to her parents home for the summer break, to the recognition and trial of the man who raped her, Sebold gives a real life account of the various ways in which rape can hurt a woman, physically, psychologically, socially. By including the stories of several of her friends and acquaintances that she meets along the way, Sebold also sheds light on the ways in which others reacted to similar experience or to herself as a victim. Told with her characteristic forthright style, Sebold paints a picture of the reality of rape as she has experienced it over the course of the approximately 18 years since it happened. In painting the picture of her personal experience, Sebold approaches the subject with a frank, tell-it-like-it-is approach that typifies her writing style. As she described the way in which her attacker painfully manipulated her breasts, she narrates the way in which she dissociated herself from the experience. “’Nice white titties,’ he said. And the words made me give them up, lobbing off each part of my body as he claimed ownership – the mouth, the tongue, my breasts” (Sebold, 1999, p. 16). By painting the picture in such straightforward language, without appeals to sympathy or apology, Sebold immediately draws her reader in, allowing them to sympathize with the experience in a way that has not often been presented. “’I was raped’ I said. … I felt I had to say it. But I felt also that saying it was akin to an act of vandalism. As if I had thrown a bucket of blood out across the living room at the blue couch, Myra, the winged chair, my mother. / The three of us sat there and watched it drip” (Sebold, 1999, p. 76). Rather than allowing anyone to skirt around the issue of what happened to her by referring to it as a ‘thing,’ Sebold forces her readers and her associates to focus on the issue at hand by using concise, sometimes vulgar terminology. In her accounts of her life before the rape, she describes scenes of a fun-loving, adventurous child eager to explore her world further than the confines of the house, yet descriptions of after the rape, while still infused with her cynical, dry humor, are tainted with subdued colors and failed connections. “The world I lived in was not the world that my parents or Steve Carbonaro still occupied. In my world, I saw violence everywhere. It was not a song or a dream or a plot point” (Sebold, 1999, p. 88). Through this technique, Sebold is instantly granted credibility and exposes the experience of rape as being something much more than a physical act committed one time and then done. “Rape in the dictionary should tell the truth. It is not just forcible intercourse; rape means to inhabit and destroy everything” (Sebold, 1999, p. 131). In her dealings with others, Sebold also portrays how modern day society tends to view the victims of rape. Immediately, she identifies with the traditional view that because she has been raped, she is now unavailable to any ‘nice’ boy. “I had seen how Jonathan looked at me and was now convinced. No nice boy will ever want me. I was all those horrible words used for rape. I was changed, bloodied, damaged goods, ruined” (Sebold, 1999, p. 77). In researching the police reports from her case and subsequent trial, Sebold learned that not even the police officer on duty the night she reported the rape believed her story to be accurate, especially the detail that she was a virgin. Even among those who knew her to be a ‘good girl’, though, Sebold describes the difficulties she had in re-establishing old links. In greeting her upon her arrival home, Sebold says of her father: “He did not comprehend what I had been through, or how it could have happened without some complicity on my part. His ignorance hurt. It still hurts, but I don’t blame him” (Sebold, 1999, p. 68). Like her father, not everyone understands what she has been through, yet still do not react to her as if she were diseased. “I was learning that no one – females included – knew what to do with a rape victim” (Sebold, 1999, p. 85). Some, like her professor Tess Gallagher, encouraged her to write about her experience as a form of catharsis and release, while others were bothered by the depth of her rage. “You could not be filled with hate and be beautiful … I knew I was not beautiful and in Gallagher’s presence, for three hours that day, I didn’t have to care about being beautiful. She, by writing that first line down, by workshopping the piece, had given me my permission slip – I could hate” (Sebold, 1999, p. 109). Despite the isolation indicated throughout much of the dialogue, Sebold nevertheless indicates several incidents in which she is able, almost, to connect with others, Tess Gallagher included. Her first such experience is soon after the rape when she returns home to be visited by the recuperating Myrna, who was beaten and robbed within her own home, her husband beaten nearly to death. “… what I remember is being in the presence of someone who ‘got it.’ Not just knew the facts but – as near as she could – understood what I felt” (Sebold, 1999, p. 75). Because Myrna had not been raped, though, Sebold makes it clear that a complete connection could not be established even among these two victims. Through her experience, she realized early that she was now intimately connected with other victims she had never even met. “She knew I knew about her, and she certainly knew about me, but we never spoke … But via her son, Mrs. McAllister gave me two things: my first awareness of another rape victim who lived in my world, and, by telling her sons, the proof that there was power to be had in sharing my story” (Sebold, 1999, p. 81). However, this association with other victims also angered her as can be seen in her relationship with Tricia, the counselor provided her from the Rape Crisis Center: “I did not want to be one of a group or compared with others. It somehow blindsided my sense that I was going to survive” (Sebold, 1999, p. 141). However, it was in the rape of her roommate Lila, on her own bed, that made Sebold eventually realize that she would find no connection with these other people, not even with Lila who had a shared experience. “’It’s just not working, Alice,’ she said. ‘I can’t talk about it the way you want me to and I feel isolated here.’” (Sebold, 1999, p. 238). Although she had been warned and future therapists diagnosed her symptoms as being those of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Sebold had to walk a very long, hard road, placing herself in the dangerous streets of New York among other victims of her kind before she could finally acknowledge this conclusion. This change was brought about partly through her determination to bring her attacker to justice and the resulting fame that engendered among the law enforcement community and partly through her relationships with her students, all of whom had tales to tell equally or more disturbing than her own. “My own story paled in comparison with theirs. Walking over the bodies of their countrymen to escape Cambodia. Watching a brother be stood against a wall and shot. Raising a handicapped child alone on waitressing tips. And then there were the rapes” (Sebold, 1999, p. 242). However, it was when another author quoted her in an article as being part of the trauma side of the equation that Sebold finally recognized her symptoms within the pages. “Herman chose to use one sentence from my article at the beginning of her chapter called ‘Disconnection.’ … I decided not to keep the book just as a momento, but to actually read it. … I was reading about myself” (Sebold, 1999, p. 247). Although the condition had been recognized as an actual illness since 1989 among psychiatric circles, the application and popular recognition of this disorder was not to pass the realm of ‘psychobabble’ classification for several years, helping to explain Sebold’s refusal to recognize or seek help for it. Thus, through a straightforward, no-holds-barred approach, the inclusion of intimate details and the relationships and reactions of those around her, Sebold exposes the issues surrounding rape in a way that has not been openly discussed previously. By including not only the detailed facts regarding the physical rape, but also the long-term psychological effects that plagued her up through the writing of the book itself (“I live in a world where the two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand” p. 251), she opens the discussion forum for other rape victims, professionals that help these victims cope with the violence done to them and the families and friends of these people who would wish to help. With her daring in writing about these issues in such a concise, complete format, she also breaks the boundaries that, prior to her writings, had restricted such bold language to lesser forms of literature, never mentioned in ‘polite’ society. Works Cited Sebold, Alice. Lucky. New York: Scribner, 1999. Read More

In her accounts of her life before the rape, she describes scenes of a fun-loving, adventurous child eager to explore her world further than the confines of the house, yet descriptions of after the rape, while still infused with her cynical, dry humor, are tainted with subdued colors and failed connections. “The world I lived in was not the world that my parents or Steve Carbonaro still occupied. In my world, I saw violence everywhere. It was not a song or a dream or a plot point” (Sebold, 1999, p. 88). Through this technique, Sebold is instantly granted credibility and exposes the experience of rape as being something much more than a physical act committed one time and then done.

“Rape in the dictionary should tell the truth. It is not just forcible intercourse; rape means to inhabit and destroy everything” (Sebold, 1999, p. 131). In her dealings with others, Sebold also portrays how modern day society tends to view the victims of rape. Immediately, she identifies with the traditional view that because she has been raped, she is now unavailable to any ‘nice’ boy. “I had seen how Jonathan looked at me and was now convinced. No nice boy will ever want me.

I was all those horrible words used for rape. I was changed, bloodied, damaged goods, ruined” (Sebold, 1999, p. 77). In researching the police reports from her case and subsequent trial, Sebold learned that not even the police officer on duty the night she reported the rape believed her story to be accurate, especially the detail that she was a virgin. Even among those who knew her to be a ‘good girl’, though, Sebold describes the difficulties she had in re-establishing old links. In greeting her upon her arrival home, Sebold says of her father: “He did not comprehend what I had been through, or how it could have happened without some complicity on my part.

His ignorance hurt. It still hurts, but I don’t blame him” (Sebold, 1999, p. 68). Like her father, not everyone understands what she has been through, yet still do not react to her as if she were diseased. “I was learning that no one – females included – knew what to do with a rape victim” (Sebold, 1999, p. 85). Some, like her professor Tess Gallagher, encouraged her to write about her experience as a form of catharsis and release, while others were bothered by the depth of her rage.

“You could not be filled with hate and be beautiful … I knew I was not beautiful and in Gallagher’s presence, for three hours that day, I didn’t have to care about being beautiful. She, by writing that first line down, by workshopping the piece, had given me my permission slip – I could hate” (Sebold, 1999, p. 109). Despite the isolation indicated throughout much of the dialogue, Sebold nevertheless indicates several incidents in which she is able, almost, to connect with others, Tess Gallagher included.

Her first such experience is soon after the rape when she returns home to be visited by the recuperating Myrna, who was beaten and robbed within her own home, her husband beaten nearly to death. “… what I remember is being in the presence of someone who ‘got it.’ Not just knew the facts but – as near as she could – understood what I felt” (Sebold, 1999, p. 75). Because Myrna had not been raped, though, Sebold makes it clear that a complete connection could not be established even among these two victims.

Through her experience, she realized early that she was now intimately connected with other victims she had never even met. “She knew I knew about her, and she certainly knew about me, but we never spoke … But via her son, Mrs. McAllister gave me two things: my first awareness of another rape victim who lived in my world, and, by telling her sons, the proof that there was power to be had in sharing my story” (Sebold, 1999, p. 81). However, this association with other victims also angered her as can be seen in her relationship with Tricia, the counselor provided her from the Rape Crisis Center: “I did not want to be one of a group or compared with others.

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