“But a person can be genocided - can have every connection to his past severed - and live to be an old man whose rib cage is a haunted house built around his heart.”
Alexie’s memoir revisits his childhood traumas and how it shaped his adulthood and also affected his relationship with his mother. Having an abusive mother and a hard childhood Alexie detached himself from his past to create a new life. Hence the statement also highlights the broken familial bond with his parent as their relationship became irreparable over time. However, he is still haunted by his early experiences and family history that affect him to the present day as an adult. Thus, the memoir written after the death of his mother is sort of a therapeutic endeavor in dealing with the past.
“So I wonder: Will a person who has drowned,
Or almost drowned, always feel
Like they're drowning,
Even after they've been saved?”
The novel is a combination of prose and poetry altogether in conveying Alexie's own childhood and into adulthood. Thus, the quotation highlights the essence of the narrative, which deals with tackling one’s past and childhood traumas. Alexie had a hard childhood that involved bullying, abuse and an emotionally unavailable parent hence chose to move away and begin a new life as a scholar. However, the past still haunts him in the present through the complicated relationship with his now-deceased mother. Furthermore, the past ordeals that shape his character and life in general. Thus, the excerpt encompasses this emotion of always feeling helpless despite getting closure or moving on.
“Thing is, I don’t believe in ghosts. But I see them all the time.”
Alexie believes himself as an individual who does not believe in mysticism or spirituality hence ghosts are not real. However, dealing with his past especially delving into the lives of his deceased parents in the memoir, Alexie relives the past. The statement is significant to the themes of the narrative such as loss and grief in that dealing with the death of a parent and the troubled relationship with them brings up ‘ghosts’.
