Chapter 3

Isserley goes for a walk by the sea after breakfast. We get to know more about what her life here is like in comparison to back home.

EVENTS

  • Isserley wakes up because of sunlight, unusual. She can see a cloudless sky through one window, and snow on oak tree branches in the other.
  • Getting up is not without problems – she hasn’t been doing her exercises.
  • She watches TV – she flips through three channels – her view of them is that of a non-vodsel, it being her language’s word for what we call human. She’s missed news so switches off.
  • Exercises for 15 minutes. We get a description revealing her otherness, no underwear/bra, her breasts stay up by themselves. Wears same kind of outfit every day (= the uniform of a routine?)
  • Sea breezes smells especially spicy. Snow something wonderful for Isserley even after all the years she’s been here.
  • Has breakfast (mussanta paste on bread, and later a bowl of sour tasting gushu) in the largest steading (the largest and least shabby of the farm buildings).  Apart from giving news that Amliss Vess is coming the next day, the men leave her alone.
  • Carefully burns up contents of backpack – firewood has been collected and kept dry for this purpose. Comes across passport, burns it too. Only keeps British money.
  • Isserley goes for a walk down by the Moray Firth, taking in the beauty of the ‘great uncovered world’.  Marvels at the variety of shapes, colours and textures. Enjoys having shoes off. Tastes a whelk from a rock pool. Tries three different languages to greet the stray sheep.
  • Period of reflection: weighing up the sacrifice she has made against the short lifespan she would have had in the New Estates (decay and disfigurement, overcrowding, bad food, bad air, lack of medical care, living in underground corridors of bauxite and compacted ash, working in a moisture filtration plant or an oxygen factory). All she had to do was walk on two legs. Freedom to wander in unbounded wilderness … of water and air.
  • Throws German hitcher’s keys and watch in the sea.
  • Has a bath and washes her hair (a feature she had been proud of back home).
  • Drives past and greets Esswis on her way out of the farm. He is painting the building white – in honour of Amliss Vess arriving.

RELATIONSHIPS & CONFLICTS

  • Isserley’s internal conflict: not regretting what she had done, appreciating what she has here in spite of the cost
  • Esswis and the locals: resented as ‘mad Scandinavian’ for letting farm decay. Although antisocial, respected as being a man of his word.
  • Esswis and Isserley are different from the others: they have to encounter the outside world. The farm workers – labourers and process workers – inside the steading, are not people Isserley would not normally have met back home. And have not undergone the same surgery that Esswis and Isserley have.
  • Isserley to the world: treats animals and vodsels differently. Seeks contact with sheep, contact with vodsels is work.

SETTING

  • The cottage is Victorian  (= oldish). Isserley has an attic bedroom in it, it’s honeycomb shaped (associations?). Floor not flat, not well insulated or decorated – just a small portable TV for news and alarm clock to wake up/keep time by..
  • Farm activity is subsonic (=?)
  • Fields shrouded in snow (why shroud?) like fruit cake and cream (why?). Sheep in west field, turnips in north field like frosted cherries (why?). Dessert imagery. Forest to the south, sea to the east. No farm vehicles or workers (why not?) . Fields rented out to locals, otherwise untouched. The buildings rotted, rusted and grew moss.
  • Anything above ground is delapidated not to attract attention, the rest is underground literally and figuratively.

THEME/S

  • Relative perspectivity: Earth being viewed as a beautiful wilderness in comparison to where Isserley comes from.
  • Emphasis on Isserley’s utter loneliness and isolation, and what she makes of it.

SYMBOLS/MOTIFS

Isserley’s luxuriant hair as a self-experienced beautiful feature which she has to shave to be attractive to vodsel males (her work).

Seeing snowy landscape as food.

DRAMATURGY

No explicit dynamic in the ongoing narrative: more of a day in the life of. Wake up, eat breakfast, burn a rucksack, go for a walk by the sea, talk to a sheep, have a bath and wash your hair. Go for a drive. But the interior narrative (i.e. inside Isserley’s head) consists of flashbacks enabling the the sense of contrast.

MEMORABLE FEATURES

  • Dignity given to the sheep.
  • Reflections on how attractive but unhappy hitchhiker was.

LINK TO CHAPTER 4

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