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The Fusion of Truth and Mystery

October 6, 2016 by Lucas Hickok

“They [space and time] fuse into spacetime. Memories and dreams are the stuff of such fusion”. When we thoroughly went over this claim in class one day, I still felt a little bit confused and blurry when it came to this fusion of spacetime. However, as mysterious and gothic as Stephen King’s story may have been, The Reach helped me come to understand this idea a bit more. With this fusion, there is no separation between mental experience of place, and the place itself. Everything that Stella Flanders experiences on the island is inextricably tied to the island itself and nowhere else. The reach is a concept just as much as it is a physical object. This is sort of like Stella and other Goat Island inhabitants’ , such as her grandchildren, ideas about the dead. Goat Islanders are constantly asking questions about the Reach and the mainland, while also asking themselves questions about the dead (“do the dead sing?”). When Stella actually crosses the Reach and begins to interact with her friends and family who have passed away, is when I began to try and interpret this idea of spacetime as it relates to this story. Every mental vision that Stella has, whether real or not, is a manifestation of her previous, real, physical experiences with Annabelle and Bill. Yet it is still an unreality. A mysterious vision that is based in truth but has arrived at a time when Stella is exploring a physical realm that she has not yet explored. It is the simultaneous blending of two truths, and two mysteries, that are ultimately rooted in place, or rather, the experience of place. It is what Stella knows in time and space past, fusing into her present experience of spacetime.

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