Audience and Addressee

Part of being self-aware is being conscious of who you are addressing when you represent yourself and your ideas. Thus, when we read autobiographies it is important to question who the writer was intending to speak to when they wrote their narrative. If the piece was intended to be published for the masses, we can agree that one of the audiences is us, the nameless, faceless reader. However, upon further inspection, we can find if the work is addressed to someone specific. If the book is dedicated to someone, or if the text is obviously directed towards someone, then we can infer that the author's writing is influenced by the idea that a specific audience will be reading it.

"And most of all beware, even in thought, of assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of grief is not a proscenium, a man who wails is not a dancing bear... - Aime Cesaire"

This epigraph in Don't Let Me Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine shows this kind of self-awareness. Rankine realizes that she is allowing a collection of people, most of which are people she does not know, to witness an intimate recollection of her personal life and of one of her most personal feelings, loneliness. The epigraph is directed to the readers technically as a warning, but in actuality it is more a request of empathy over judgment, or at least of an attempt to understand the content that the reader is about to delve into. 

Personal Take:

I had a very intense connection to Rankine's novel. I tend to get trapped inside of feelings, especially those involving empathy. After passing out directly after talking to a professor about being overwhelmingly elated with the then current state of my life, my circle of friends voted me most likely to die from intoxicating happiness. Paradoxically, I have spent hours crying to my mother over the phone about physical abuse in a new friend's relationship, genocide in Libya, and other varied forms of injustice. It took a long time for me to accept these intense emotions and it's a perpetual battle trying to control them and harness their intensity to produce a positive outcome for myself and for those who I care about. I've never felt totally comfortable showing these intense emotions because I never wanted to be someone's "dancing bear."  My overwhelming sense of empathy caused me to feel the loneliness conveyed by Rankine while I was reading her book and the epigraph was so incredibly fitting for this type of narrative. It is a mantra to remember whether you have been the spectator or the spectacle. 

- Mary Alice Miller