At first I was perplexed reading “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid” by Michael Ondaatje, yet in reading “Paris to the Moon” by Adam Gopnik, I found a strange and surprising metaphor. Gopnik writes of a carousel that strongly contradicts the description of the typical carnival favorite:
“The animals are chipped, the paint is peeling, the giraffe and elephant are missing hooves and tusks, and the carousel is musicless and graceless… A God-only-knows-how-old carousel motor complains and heaves and wheezes and finally picks up momentum to turn the platform around” (38).
Surely the carousels I am used to riding are colorful not chipped, horses not widlife, and sweet not silent.
All things considered, this carousel made me think back to how Sallie in Ondaatje’s piece lives her life. She seems to be imprisoned in the same lifeless cycle. A cycle that once was and has the potential to be alive again, yet remains dark, dreary, and disappointing. Sallie chooses to live a routine, never growing beyond the means of her house. It is as though she is the conductor of the ride who enjoys the stuttered spin of the carousel more than the possible success beyond the mobile platform.
In thinking of the physical appearance of the ride alone, I am reminded of Sallie’s plain, simple, and “ghost-like” nature. Even the animals prompt me to think of how Sallie took many animals in, but they almost always were “wounded” (Gopnik, 35) like the elephant and the giraffe. The music of the carousel, like the excitement of Sallie’s life is nonexistent.
If Gopnik’s claim that “your life will be composed of hundreds of small things that you arrive at only by trial and error,” (46) than it is nearly impossible to argue that Sallie has much of a life since even her small moments are limited and redundant. I wish that I could have known Sallie in order to encourage her to escape the captivity of her carousel and risk riding a new ride!
“The animals are chipped, the paint is peeling, the giraffe and elephant are missing hooves and tusks, and the carousel is musicless and graceless… A God-only-knows-how-old carousel motor complains and heaves and wheezes and finally picks up momentum to turn the platform around” (38).
Surely the carousels I am used to riding are colorful not chipped, horses not widlife, and sweet not silent.
All things considered, this carousel made me think back to how Sallie in Ondaatje’s piece lives her life. She seems to be imprisoned in the same lifeless cycle. A cycle that once was and has the potential to be alive again, yet remains dark, dreary, and disappointing. Sallie chooses to live a routine, never growing beyond the means of her house. It is as though she is the conductor of the ride who enjoys the stuttered spin of the carousel more than the possible success beyond the mobile platform.
In thinking of the physical appearance of the ride alone, I am reminded of Sallie’s plain, simple, and “ghost-like” nature. Even the animals prompt me to think of how Sallie took many animals in, but they almost always were “wounded” (Gopnik, 35) like the elephant and the giraffe. The music of the carousel, like the excitement of Sallie’s life is nonexistent.
If Gopnik’s claim that “your life will be composed of hundreds of small things that you arrive at only by trial and error,” (46) than it is nearly impossible to argue that Sallie has much of a life since even her small moments are limited and redundant. I wish that I could have known Sallie in order to encourage her to escape the captivity of her carousel and risk riding a new ride!