Writing an autobiography is not like testifying in court under oath. You can fudge things a bit, leave out embarrassing details, embellish stories or even make them up.
My very personal hunch is that the climactic episode in the mountains when Pascal ran into the Vampire and gave her his lunch never happened. Maybe he did see her from afar and maybe he even thought of helping her out. Maybe he even left his lunch on a rock for her.
But the entire story seems a little too convenient: it seems he needed to make it up as a way to expiate for his guilt. Did he invent it to deceive himself, to make peace for himself, to look less bad to our eyes? I don't know. But something doesn't fit.
COMMENTS (I encourage disagreement with my opinions. Feel free to say that my arguments are not persuasive because......
I prefer that disagreements come with some kind of rationale, not just as quick dismissals.)
Professor, this is a very interesting approach to the Vampire scene. I too had my doubts when reading through this section; it seemed, as you stated, all too "convenient" an action for our narrator, while coming in a bit cliched as well. We must keep in mind that at the time of this event, the narrator was a mere boy, oblivious to the hardships that would befall him in America because of his "immigrant" status; if he had known at that time, then he very well might have given the Vampire lunch and showed compassion in a world giving her anything but.
ReplyDeleteAs such, I agree that this event did not occur in the same way D' Angelo conveys it to us; I believe that his perception of events changed with his experiences over the years, and we are seeing that very altering of memories in this scene. It might not have happened in that exact way, but it is the way in which Pascal, a successful poet in America at the time of writing, would have acted IN THAT MOMENT, and NOT in the way that the naive, peasant Italian boy hunting Vampires would have went about things.
I would like to bring up Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 as we consider this scene in detail.
DeleteWhat has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
God has already created everything that we are to experience and enjoy, and what we see is merely a repetition of its presence. Applying that concept to this section of the narrative, perhaps Pascal was SEEING HIMSELF in the Vampire, A PREMONITION OF SORTS of WHAT IS TO COME. If everything has already been planned, then Pascal is catching a glimpse of what life will be like for him as an illiterate immigrant laborer in America. Just a thought that came to my head!
While taking notes during this Vampire scene I wrote that Pascal could be easily making this up. If he wasn't making it up, maybe he remembered it wrong because it was so long ago, or maybe he was in shock and wants to believe it this way? I think it is very easy to make something up in an autobiography because who is going to tell you that something you remember or something that happened in YOUR life did not happen?
ReplyDeleteIt is absolutely true and I regret I forgot to mention it in the posting. Nina mentioned her doubts that the scene really took place. It shows remarkable critical ability, the ability to get so close to the text as to embrace it while at the same time maintaining a critical distance. Not an easy feat. Brava.
DeleteI do see that the scene was definitely embellished. It may be a way for D'Angelo to allow us to make connections later on in his life as most of you have explained. I do think that the scene was an important one at the beginning of the book because it helped to lay out the life that he had in Italy and explained the importance his people's belief in the supernatural had in his life.
ReplyDeleteI found the scene with the vampire to be humorous and something to make us smile. I do not think it happened the way he describes it to us. He probably wanted to portray the vampire as helpless at a time where everyone feared her. It could be that Pascal wanted a sense of closure when it came to different people or events in the autobiography. To describe the scene as such, it was a way to make him look good to us because he supposedly gave her lunch, but I think what really happened was that he saw her and just ran away.
ReplyDeleteI never had any doubts about honesty of an author at this part. When I read everything was very smooth and interesting. I am not at that stage of knowing an English to realize if this was true or not but for now I do not believe that he make up that moment. I do not see any issue with him giving his lunch to vampire.
ReplyDeleteEmbellishing on an autobiography is very easy, and like Nina mentioned, who is to tell you what happened or did not happen in your own life? I find it hard to believe that a young boy would approach someone he feared his whole life when he was alone in a deserted area. Perhaps Pascal included this as a way of hinting that in his time of troubles he contemplated his social interaction with the vampire and thought that he might not have given her a fair chance, just like people were now doing to him. Maybe he wishes someone would have been so generous to him as he was to the vampire in this scenario he envisioned.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading Son of Italy, I too came across parts of the book where I thought things were a bit too embellished to a point where it could have been made up. An example would be the part of the book where Pascal was walking home in the freezing cold weather. When Pascal got back to his "house", his bed was soaking wet because a bunch of kids were messing around with him and opened his window. Pascal then used his overcoat as a blanket which put an emphasis on his extremely poor living conditions. This very well could have been made up to further appeal to the emotions of the reader and I believe that this was the case here. I could be wrong, but this was my initial reaction while reading this part of the book.
ReplyDeleteIt is a very interesting approach that Professor Carasi has about the vampires, but I would have to disagree. I would not say that it NEVER happened, instead I would say that Pascal imagined it to happen in his own mind, and it was embellished. To Pascal it did actually happen, even if in reality it did not physically occur. It is very possible that Pascal made this up to seem more innocent in our eyes, but initially I did believe that this event occurred, and I do believe that Pascal does see these types of things in order to make peace for himself.
ReplyDelete