ABSTRACT

George grapples with the survivor's guilt that scars him, but he has gone back to earlier, harder-to-reach sources of agony too. A primal response to too much pain or horror is to scream and lose consciousness. One screams in response to pain, but as screaming goes on it blots pain out. If one chronically suffers loss of consciousness in the face of unrelievable agony, the capacity to respond to what bothers one can suffer grave lacunae or even fail to develop. George's thoughts and feelings might keep disappearing through the hole in his agony. But some of the fury, chaos, controllingness, and emotional noise loosened its grip. The agony cut a path through suffocation, pierced him, kept piercing him. Breath goes through the opening, in and out. The joy of speaking through the agony makes a special sound.