The Last Day of the First Part of My Life
When we are not immediately involved historical events but were alive to bear witness to them, we often think of them in the context of our own experience—in fact, this is the only way we can think of them. It is not uncommon for someone to ask “Where were you when the first plane hit?”, “Where were you when JFK was shot?”. Too seldom, however, is the question answered in any substantive way, usually composed in a few short sentences consisting of time,
place, and age.
What if we really answered that question? What if instead of focusing specifically on the retelling of a lived event, we focused on the relatable experience that we lived before and during that event, and folded the repercussions of the event into our lives as they reflect the very lives of others? What parallels could we draw between the experiences we lived and the experiences that others lived, especially during times of turbulence? How could we, all at once, show that close proximity to an event is so staggeringly different than great proximity, and yet entirely the same in its complete removal from the actual event? How does this unite those of us far removed from the event with those only slightly removed?
In The Fourth State of Matter, JoAnn Beard guides us through a short period in her life when, while working in the physics department at the University of Iowa, she deals in her off time with a beloved dog in the throes of death, an ex-husband who isn’t quite yet an ex-husband, and an army of squirrels living in her attic. We become one with her struggle, we meet her friends, we understand her job and we pass the time with her. We see parts of ourselves in her, and parts of her in ourselves.
Beard achieves this solidarity through a very simple and effective mechanism -- she tells the story just as it happened to her. The culmination of the story (which I have withheld mentioning for the same purpose) is left as the culmination; we do not see the end of the tale just as Beard could not see the end of the tale. It was simply a time in her life that she lived the way each and every one of us lives: navigating the curves as they come. There is no allusion to the
way her story may end, no cryptic analogies, no declarations that allow the reader to assume how it may end. We are one with her.
It is not until the very end of Beard’s article that the reader comes to learn of her experience with the 1996 shooting at University of Iowa. In fact, no mention is made of the tragedy whatsoever until the moment it begins occurring, and still we are only guided through the events in context of how she experienced them: removed, separated, safe in her home. What’s more, there is no lengthy buildup, no introduction, no pause for effect, no time to react – just as Beard experienced the event itself. Gang Lu, the man who perpetrated the murders, is simply one of many characters we have come to learn a few things about through anecdotes that Beard shares with us, through her eyes and experiences, just as we would learn about an acquaintance of one of our own friends. We come to know Gang Lu the way that Beard did: the first mention of him is contained within a single sentence: “A graduate student, Gang Lu, stops by to drop off some reports.” A single sentence, a glimpse, a fraction of interaction, just as it was for Beard. We don’t see Gang Lu again until his final visit to the office before committing the massacre.
Beard’s piece employs two literary devices, with minor adjustments, combined into a single piece of work that, instead of alienating the reader by presenting facts as facts, pulls the reader into Beard’s life without asking.
Lived experience is a literary device that portrays a story through a direct or first-hand account of an event that otherwise was not experienced by the reader. The device’s definition has shifted in modern times, more often referring to the experiences of those who have been oppressed because of their status, race, gender, ethnicity, or religion. The definition likely shifted this way (and rightly so) due to these groups of people experiencing trauma and tragedy far more
often than culturally accepted groups of people. While Beard is indeed a member of the oppressed due to her status as a woman, in the context of her essay, we benefit more from the former, more sterile definition of the device.
Why does the lived experience work as literary device? The answer is straightforward enough: if I wasn’t there to experience it, I need someone who did experience it to describe it to me. This is the very basis of every story we encounter, and the story’s status as fiction or
non-fiction makes the principle no less effective. Just as we read the news to discover what’s happening in the world around us through eyewitness accounts and fact-gathering performed by journalists, we read stories in books told by people that experienced events that never happened, and yet we identify with them and learn from them in the same manner.
There is a curious difference in Beard’s retelling of her lived experience, however. When we compare her style to other accounts of traumatic events, the difference becomes clear immediately. Think of the last time you heard a story from someone you know. Why did they want to tell you the story in the first place? Before they began telling you the story, what did they say to set up the tone? What part of the timeline did the story begin?
More often than not, we are given someone else’s experience in stark contrast to how it was actually experienced. They want to tell the story because we weren’t there to experience it, so the focus of the story becomes the part of the event that made it memorable. They’ll remember in the middle of an entirely different conversation that they wanted to tell you this story, become animated, and the entire atmosphere of changes. Now you know to expect something; you are ready,you are prepared. And, more than likely, they lead the story with the memorable event, and circle back to describe the events leading up to it.
It is in the space between the event, the storyteller’s experience, and the listener’s experience that she draws out what makes the lived experience one that needs retelling at all: it just happened. This space is where we connect as people, for while our status as experienced and inexperienced can never be reconciled, our status as having existed on the same perimeter of the event before it occurred can never be taken away. We have all been alone. We have all fallen in love, lost love. We’ve worked long hours. We’ve made friends. We’ve been tired, been sick, been happy. This is where we become united as teller and listener, and this is the space where Beard begins and ends her story. The result is a much more powerful understanding of the experience itself, and the repercussions.
Part of the reason Beard is able to tell the story this way is because she was not at the school the day the shooting occurred. She is removed from the event itself geographically, and yet, when she begins to list the events as they occurred -- Gang Lu lumbering from office to office, firing round after round into the bodies of his and Beard’s coworkers -- it’s as if she is there, omnipotently watching the tragedy unfold. We are taken there with her because, like her,
we weren’t at the school either, and heard the events from another source. There are layers and layers of experience to be illustrated here, as Beard heard the news from her friends; those friends heard it from people at the school; eventually the news picked it up as well. All of these accounts are removed from the events themselves, and Beard’s embrace of that removal makes the removed experience of the events that much more powerful to the reader.
This removal from the actual event is employed by another device in the piece, known as background. Typically, the major elements of a story are brought to the foreground to place emphasis on them. Even after some contextual background is added, the piece usually returns to the foreground throughout, essentially reminding the reader of why they’re reading and what they’re reading. Here, Beard has done the opposite by pulling the events from the background into the foreground. Not surprisingly, all these details -- the sick collie, the wounded relationship, the pest problems, the drone of professional work -- are what draw us into wanting to listen to her story, and what force us to recognize that we have a great deal in common with the author.
Where the one device starts and the other ends is virtually indeterminable in the piece, and is why the distinction in the piece seems to be nonexistent as well. In addition to not needing to be distinguished from one another, a distinction may only serve to delimit the experience as it's told. Indeed, as has been mentioned, it is more common for a listener to become alienated from the events of a story they are being told, because the distinction is made so clear about what is important in the story and what is not. When an author places the event prominently in the foreground they are setting up the experience as foreign to the reader; the reader becomes instantly removed from the story itself by necessity. One cannot choose to be removed from something they are already removed from. But when the author can move to the foreground of
the article that which is at the foreground of all of our lives -- life itself -- the reader becomes instantly connected to the material for the same reason: we cannot choose to unlive a life we have already lived.
After the shooting occurs, an interesting moment takes place that encapsulates the powerful force of retelling a lived experience in the way Beard has:
“I tell the white face in the mirror that Gang Lu did this, wrecked everything and murdered all those people. It seems as ludicrous as everything else. I can’t get my mind to work right, I’m still operating on yesterday’s facts; today hasn’t jelled yet. ‘It’s a good thing none of this happened,’ I say to my face.”
Two elements of this real moment illustrate the combination of background with lived experience, and how that combination resemble our own lives: fact, and disbelief.
Beard heard the facts about the shooting. She heard them from her friends, and she saw and heard them on the news. The facts were presented to her, she did not experience them. They are nonetheless indisputable, as facts will always be, and until they were presented to her, what was once in the background of her reality moved to the foreground; at the same time, her life ceased being a life and became a lived experience. While reading her story, our reality is her reality: her everyday life. The shooting becomes part of our reality only in the instant it becomes
part of her reality.
Additionally, when Beard is talking to herself in the mirror, she is in disbelief of these undeniable facts, telling herself it’s a good thing that they didn’t happen. It cannot be expressed how universal this truth is for the human mind, so much so that it could be happening at this very moment, and neither you nor I would know until the truth of it no longer mattered: we can never be fully aware of the realness of our reality. Just as the philosopher Descartes famously observed:
“As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences while asleep as madmen do while awake -- indeed sometimes even more improbable ones. How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events -- that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire -- when in fact I am laying undressed in bed!
The point is this: when we dream, we are unaware of its separation from waking reality. We cannot distinguish between a dream and reality until reality is presented to us the next morning, and reflect on the dream and determine it to be so. Morning comes and transforms the reality of the dream into the absurdity of the dream. It is no wonder that Beard includes this anecdote, not only in context of shock and disbelief, but also because it is a parallelism of the way she tells her story to the audience.
Just as we lay in bed dreaming, with no choice but believe whatever absurdities may occur there, we have no way of seeing that morning will come to reconcile those absurdities. We simply carry on in what we perceive to be reality. While Beard was working at the University of Iowa, taking care of her sick dog, trying to mend her relationship, she was whole in her reality. There was no disclaimer announcing that six of her co-workers would die at the hands of a department intern in the coming days. The tragedy became part of reality the moment it happened, and it became part of Beard’s reality as soon as it was told to her.
What Beard has done is extracted an inexorable truth about our universe and about reality, and injected it into an event that only a handful of people experienced, only one of whom survived. She began with her reality of her simple life, and made it our reality simultaneously. We accept her reality because we have no knowledge of any other reality. We become comfortable, or at least comfortable with, the life she lives. The shooting and killing of her
colleagues is her cold morning, her bright sunlight, her distinction between the life she lived and the she now lives, and it becomes our cold morning with her.
We wake together.