Memoir Week[s] Day Six: Symbolism

My mentor’s memoir told the story of navigating the world of sex, love, and literature as a person with cerebral palsy. When I adapted it for the screen, I realised I wouldn’t be able to explicitly define Lionel’s relationship with his own body. If I did, the entire message would come across as self-piteous and preachy. I did know about a poem he’d written once, though:

The cat inhabits this moment on the bed
complete, nothing left over, nothing intended –
conscious of only sensation defined
by this moment on the bed.
Alongside, I simmer with thought,
intentions, memories, questions, ambitions
and concepts; the cat, time purpose, death.
The glory of the cat's nature
is her agile, replete
inhabitation of the moment.
She unfolds her curious elastic ease
through the rich space of the room,
tensed by suspicion,
sprung by the cunning lust to kill,
testing the limits of the moment,
the moment she, after all, is gaoled in.
And her motions, her motives
are less hers
than mine.
Perception and concept and design
are the space wherein I'm free.

That was my solution right there. I had a symbol of his disability, all packaged in a poem, so I brought that cat into the screenplay. I used it throughout the entire story to demonstrate Lionel’s changing relationship with his largely-useless body.

Symbols are handy that way. They don’t need to explain themselves. Readers (or viewers) will absorb them readily, and you don’t even need to put their message into words. In previous weeks, we’ve discussed the green light as a symbol of the American dream in The Great Gatsby. Here are some other examples:

The scarlet letter is The Scarlet Letter’s sin and societal judgment.
The ring in Lord of the Rings is a symbol of power and corruption.
The mockingbird in To Kill a Mockingbird symbolises cruelty afflicted against the innocent.
Poe’s Raven in The Raven tells the story of grief and sorrow.
The white whale in Moby Dick symbolises how obsession can destroy.

Memoirs are easy to destroy with too much preaching or telling, but symbols are the perfect cure.

Quite a few of you engaged with last week’s exploration of memoirs, so I’m going to extend the theme for another week.