Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
I felt very uncomfortable reading Sorry to Disturb the Peace. Patty Yumi Cottrell’s protagonist, Helen Moran, was out of control. I am a control freak. That is one of the reasons I like to write; I like to create worlds where I can control every last aspect of their creation and every problem turns out the way I want it to. In real life, I struggle to try to accept that there are situations I cannot control and I cannot determine other people’s reactions. I like to try to put myself in as few uncontrollable situations as possible. I like to be able to predict my friends behavior and I like to read books where I can predict the ending, where I feel in control. While reading Sorry to Disturb the Peace, I felt out of control. Helen moran had no self control or impulse control. Many of her decisions were wrong and I could see that, but I couldn’t get her to see that, and she never repented or saw that what she was doing was wrong.
The book is extremely fast paced, because Helen always feels like she is in a rush, doing the first thing that comes to mind. An example of this is when Helen books a one-way flight to Milwaukee after hearing of her brother’s death on page 21. The passage describing this goes from discussing booking the flight to calling to reroute the delivery of her funeral sweater to emailing her supervisor to discussing her probation at work within the span of a single page, giving the reader literary whiplash. I had to really slow down as I was reading because the plot was moving so fast and Helen was jumping through subjects at such a rapid pace it was hard for me to keep up.
I am curious if Helen felt as out of control to write as she is to read. As I was reading I felt like I was on a roller coaster because the subjects kept changing and I felt it was hard to follow Helen’s change of thought and keep up with all of the strange things she did. At times she was a very annoying narrator for me because I wanted to be in control of the book I was reading and I didn’t like the discomfort I felt at giving up control to Helen. It was a very dramatic change from the last book we read, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember, where Christine was always in such complete control.
I loved the choice of title for this book, Sorry to Disturb the Peace. I felt like that was a title I really wanted to analyze. When I first looked at it, I didn’t understand how it related to the book, but upon reading it, it felt like the perfect title. Helen discusses the term on page 126 when a “middle-aged man” yells at her,
“What business do you have here? He shouted. Young man! Answer me now!
He must have been shouting because he was deaf.
I took off my hood. I’m not a man, I said loudly.
What’s your name, then?
Helen.
This is a private neighborhood.
I’m sorry to disrupt the peace.
The man didn’t say anything and returned to his estate. I’m sorry to disrupt the peace was my stock apology; I used it all the time at my workplace, it was a good apology because it could mean so many different things to people. It could mean, I’m sorry, I made a mistake. It could mean, I’m sorry I’ll ruin you, bitch.” I notice as I type that out that Cottrell doesn’t use any quotation marks. I didn’t notice while I read it, showing that it didn’t inhibit my reading at all, but it does make a statement about how this is all being said in the voice of Helen, rather than being acted out for us on the page like a movie, where the action is not being filtered through anyone’s voice. It also indicates that all of the action and dialogue is being filtered through our unreliable narrator.
But the point I was trying to make with the passage is that Helen goes through life disrupting the peace and not being particularly bothered by it. She has a cavalier attitude about how she affects other people, allowing her to use the same phrase whether she is genuinely apologizing or promising revenge. The title is appropriate because it describes how Helen moves through life. It is also appropriate because it acknowledges how the book affects the reader, the feelings of discomfort at being out of control. The book disturbed my peace at a reader and for me the title seemed to acknowledge the experience of reading it but without saying whether it is apologizing for the feelings it inspires or just acknowledging them with an attitude.
One other thing that attracted my notice as I read Helen's narrative is that she always referred to her family as her "adoptive family," "adoptive brother," "adoptive mother," and "adoptive father." There was always an emphasis on the adoptive aspect of her family which held them at a distance, indicating that she never felt accepted by them or close enough to them to call them her true family. This relates to how she and her brother "never checked the Asian box. If someone asked us our nationality, we usually said, adopted" (101). Helen viewed adopted as her nationality and as her identity. She was never given a chance to get comfortable enough in her surroundings to develop an identity beyond that. She was always adopted first, and then she could either rebel against or conform to the stereotypes as she wished. She always identified as the "adopted kid" and never "Mary and Paul's kid" which shows the disfunction in her family that she never addresses head on.
She always avoids discussing particulars about how her parents failed to help them adjust. She never addresses how her parents could have done more to possibly prevent her brother's suicide. In that avoidance, we see how she doesn't feel comfortable enough challenging her parents, even though she constantly is rebelling against them. She always wants to please her parents, by mopping and sweeping the floor or by trying to be helpful by putting the flowers in what she thinks is water. And yet she also desires to rebel against them by moving to New York and leaving their sphere of influence. This contradiction in her behavior is one of the driving forces of the plot, Helen's desire to break away from her adoptive parents and ask the hard questions about her brother's death that no one wants asked while still being too afraid to confront what really went wrong.
- Anna Erice
One other thing that attracted my notice as I read Helen's narrative is that she always referred to her family as her "adoptive family," "adoptive brother," "adoptive mother," and "adoptive father." There was always an emphasis on the adoptive aspect of her family which held them at a distance, indicating that she never felt accepted by them or close enough to them to call them her true family. This relates to how she and her brother "never checked the Asian box. If someone asked us our nationality, we usually said, adopted" (101). Helen viewed adopted as her nationality and as her identity. She was never given a chance to get comfortable enough in her surroundings to develop an identity beyond that. She was always adopted first, and then she could either rebel against or conform to the stereotypes as she wished. She always identified as the "adopted kid" and never "Mary and Paul's kid" which shows the disfunction in her family that she never addresses head on.
She always avoids discussing particulars about how her parents failed to help them adjust. She never addresses how her parents could have done more to possibly prevent her brother's suicide. In that avoidance, we see how she doesn't feel comfortable enough challenging her parents, even though she constantly is rebelling against them. She always wants to please her parents, by mopping and sweeping the floor or by trying to be helpful by putting the flowers in what she thinks is water. And yet she also desires to rebel against them by moving to New York and leaving their sphere of influence. This contradiction in her behavior is one of the driving forces of the plot, Helen's desire to break away from her adoptive parents and ask the hard questions about her brother's death that no one wants asked while still being too afraid to confront what really went wrong.
I'm interested that you found the pace fast. In reading the Paris Review interview, they called the pace slow, as it would take her forever to walk from one room of the house to another, because in doing, she would go through long inner tangents. I don't know if I really appreciated a speed at all, but now that you mention it, perhaps her rambling tangents and lack of quotation lead me to feel like there is a fast pace, as we just tumble along with her.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the point about an honest narrator -- perhaps she is more honest than most, because she is honest and clear that the world is filtered through her lens. I mean, isn't everyone's story and narrative filtered through their own lens? Perhaps books who have a stronger narrator voice, and a weaker character voice, seem more unbiased. I do agree that Helen was not particularly self-aware. I agree with her brother than she might have some schizophrenic tendencies, in this regard.
I liked how you highlighted the author's choice to write all the dialogue without quotation marks. That was a really important point in her crafting of the character of Helen, and I kind of just glazed over it and didn't give it the attention it deserved. It does as you imply here, contribute to the overall unreliability of the narrator or at least drive home the fact that this story is told all from one character's perspective.
ReplyDeleteIn terms, of the pace, I this it was more frenzied than fast. That dissonance made it hard to follow even though it was a deliberate point of characterization. I think I too would have enjoyed this work more if it hadn't felt so out of control.
This is so interesting. You're giving Helen a lot of credit for her bravery--kind of. We'll mine that in class.
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