Outside Reading 2

Annotations on Hubert Butler’s “Aunt Harriet”

“It is a very brief story but nothing at all if I do not convey the closeness I felt to that body in the box.  Love?  Affection?  Admiration?” (394).

           

This passage intrigued me because Butler refers to his aunt as a “body” dead in a coffin, yet he still expresses such grand emotions toward her.  I feel that this explains the disconnect one often feels when mourning death and seeing their dead loved one in a coffin.  The experience is unexpected and confusing.  Butler loves and admires his aunt, but can’t see past the grotesquness of the funeral traditions.

“I have left Aunt Harriet in her coffin a long way behind, but I am thinking of the memories she took with her; they were all unimportant but the past is a mosaic of tiny pieces, a fragment of a larger picture…” (396).

Here, Butler takes a step back from his previous observation to take in the larger picture and remember his aunt as a person and a loved one, rather than simply a body in a box.  He also tries to relate to her personally, by speculating on the pieces of her life she took with her in her death.

“I spent the rest of the night wrestling with this problem even after the tapping had stopped.  What worried me was the thought that in some supreme effort of faith she had half-conquered death, which like a wave in an ebbing tide had left her stranded half-alive on the foreshore” (400).

Here, Butler is voicing his concerns and fears, subtly twining in the irrational fears that death and loss can conjure.  I thought this section was beautifully written, while not being over done.

“Aunt Harriet was self-effacing and considerate.  She would sooner have gone through the ordeal of death a second time than be resurrected in a blaze of newspaper publicity” (400-401).

Butler is able to silence his fears because he remembers the personality and strength of his aunt.  This is another instance in the piece where Butler is able to disconnect / relate death from / to the person who passed.  I like the complexity and confusion in that; it relates to the experience of mourning well.

“Students come there to learn about the flora and fauna of the Nore valley.  The cows there produce special cheeses and the pigs special sausages.  It is still a place where it is easier to believe in happiness than in pain” (402).

The closing of the piece finally explains why the setting was so important for Butler to continually describe.  In it, he can remember his aunt and find “special” memories that are “easier to believe in” than pain.