A True Story.

Although we've (I) already talked about this quite a bit in class today, I still wanted to delve into A True Story. When I finished it, I was surprised to feel absolutely no fulfillment. In my mind, this was not a happy ending. I felt bereft of something that I didn't know I was looking for until hours after I'd completed the reading, and I think it was a general desire to think that the mother and son lived happily ever after.

To begin, I was struck by the harsh reality of Aunt Rachel only being able to recognize her son through his scars rather than his face, his body, his physical attributes in general. Obviously, she missed all of his formative years, and she even addresses the fact that his growth was something that escaped her entirely. "I never thought o' dat befo'! He was only dat little feller to me yit. I never thought 'bout him growin' up an' bein' big. But I see it den" (117). Similarly, there is something terrible in the fact that she recognizes through his scars - details that were forged through pain and injury that have left their marks permanently. That could be a romanticist point of view, but it seems important, as Twain didn't choose a birthmark or freckle or something that forms naturally from the start, but is just as permanent and unchanging.

But when Aunt Rachel finally does find her son and recognizes him for what he is, the reader realizes that he didn't come back as he said he would. Instead he is there by chance, and he is happy, and he doesn't remember her. "... an' I ups an' says 'Git along wid you! - rubbage!' De young man's face kin' o' changed, all of a sudden, for 'bout a second, but den he went to smilin' ag'in, same as he was befo'" (118). Upon reading the passage, it seems that her son remembers something important but he can't quite put a finger on what it is. He's completely forgotten his parentage, to the point where something tells him that it's something he should know, but it's insignificant. And then when he does figure it out, there is a moment of recognition and yet the character says absolutely nothing, and Aunt Rachel simply ends the story with the fact that she's had no trouble, and no joy. Her son forgot about her, and never meant to come back for her, and although he's alive, he's not her son; he's someone else altogether that she doesn't know at all.