Space and Place

Smith and Watson try to contextualize the ways in which the “scene of writing is spatialized” (RA 248). The space in which a self-narrative is drafted and the place that a memory/experience takes place can both inadvertently affect self-life writing in one way or another. Smith and Watson ask if there is “a trope of spatiality that dominates the narrative?” (RA 249). In slave, captivity, and prison narratives the space found in self-life writing connotes feelings of entrapment and immobility.

The confessional narrative can also exude feelings of inescapability and stagnation. It as if the narrators have become stuck in a rut and feel the need to escape their predicament by written or spoken testimony that serves as a confession. Esther Rodger’s was a Puritan woman who was imprisoned for infanticide. In prison she wrote “I remained during my confinement at Newbury, being about one month, thinking only of the punishment I was likely to suffer” (Rodgers 97). It is fairly obvious how a confined space such as a prison cell that offered no other view than an impending death would have powerful effect on self-life writing. Esther Rodgers was then moved to Ipswitch prison, where she used the confined spatiality of the prison walls to explore the fate of her soul by turning to bible scripture. Her testimony suggests that before her imprisonment she placed no faith in god, but in Ipswitch prison she had used what little space and time she had to expand her theological knowledge to new heights.

Personal Take:

This part of the tool kit made me instantly think of Bobby Sands. Bobby Sands was a political prisoner who was interned at a Long Kesh in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’ for his suspected involvement with the IRA. He became the unelected leader of the prison maze of Long Kesh and eventually succumbed to death through the hunger strike he initiated amongst catholic inmates who were being held without trial during Northern Ireland’s bloody civil strife in the 1970s and 80s. He turned the limited space of Long Kesh into an internationally recognized civil rights movement. I have wondered what it would be like to be trapped behind bars like Bobby Sands or Andy Duframe from the film Shawshank Redemption. Honestly, I could think of nothing worse than to be confined to six by six cell with nothing but my thoughts and hostile inmates surrounding me. It is both disturbing and depressing to think about, but I think I would constantly read books. I would try to compose an autobiography or some form of life narrative that I would function to articulate my beliefs, ideology, and ultimately the purpose I found in life. I highly doubt that I will ever be in prison, but thinking about being trapped in a place with nothing but your thought, would you not take pen to pad and explore the limitless boundaries of self narrative.

-Joe Fleming