Page 139 - Student: dazed And Confused
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dysfunctional one - stashed away somewhere.'
(Atwood, p31, 2003)
These doubles are the versions of ourselves that slip and slide onto the page and say the
things our physical forms never would. A slippery double is not the real person who eats
and sleeps. Is the person who wrote Rock-a-bye a slightly sadistic young woman with a
penchant for fast cars? Is she a neurotic pianist with a pen obsession? Any of these things?
Perhaps writers only show the world the face they want. In opposition to this, Hunt and
Sampson (2006) seem to suggest that we may be more likely to discover something of our
true identities than we are to accurately present ourselves. King and Steinman are
undoubtedly not the murderous, speed-hungry men on the cliff edge of sanity that their
writings are famous for. The duplicitous nature of creativity may mean that the writer the
world sees is the one he really wants to be. Equally, it could be merely a mask to hide
behind. This argument is fuelled by what we want.
No matter what face we choose our readers to see, we have reasons for it and for
committing the act of writing. There are an innumerable number of reason any individual
can profess. These range from escapism to fame to a simple desire to create. Not
everyone is aware of what drives them to write but even the most intangible of motivations
is powerful. What is the man who wrote
And I ain't in it for the power,
and I ain't in it for my health
I ain't in it for the glory of anything at all,
and I sure ain't in it for the wealth.'
(Steinman, 1993)
motivated by? As these are song lyrics, maybe they were created to fit the larger work.
Perhaps the song was a vehicle for his thoughts. The argument for why we write has and
will continue to rage fiercely. So, what was Maddocks trying to achieve when she wrote
Rock-a-bye - a tale of crazed clown, fast cars and sinister trees? Certainly there was a need
to create something in the worlds of her favourite writers but also in a reality true to her.
