King’s story offers us a glimpse into the spacetime of Goat Island only as Stella sees it; in other words, we know only what Stella experiences or can remember, which we quickly learn isn’t very reliable.\u00a0We are therefore challenged to draw a comprehensive image of Goat Island based exclusively on the limited testimony of a woman who remembers little and sees ghosts. Given Harvey’s definition, we may therefore consider Goat Island to be a “field of flows” and Stella’s experience of it a small crystal. We learn\u00a0that just in Stella’s lifetime, the island has seen its share of flux: bitter winters that give way to mild summers, decades of fruitful fishing industry that wax and wane with time, birthdays and deaths and children who move away. Yet despite its ever-changing face, Stella holds onto it for dear life because it is what she knows. This is powerful: how does she continue to find such comfort in the recognizability of a place that is so different now from when she was young? I think considering this question helps us understand her ghosts. She\u00a0wants so much to hold tight\u00a0an era that has passed. It is, like the bit of water between her and the mainland, a Reach. With this in mind, it is no coincidence that the literal Reach between Goat Island and the Mainland freezes at the same time Stella’s mind begins to conjure ghosts.<\/p>\n
In fact,\u00a0we should be especially cognizant of\u00a0Harvey’s use of the word “crystalized” as it relates to\u00a0the frozen reach as a motif within the story. When Stella encounters a frozen bird on her back porch, she immediately recalls her last similar experience, and although she says “Frozen” out loud, King writes, “something inside her [speaks] another word.” Here, frozen takes on dual meaning. Literally, here is Stella holding a dead bird, smack in the middle of the second coldest winter in her memory. But more than this,\u00a0an experience that has for so long been held still, unmoving in her memory, rushes back to her, like a river just after thawing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
King’s story offers us a glimpse into the spacetime of Goat Island only as Stella sees it; in other words, we know only what Stella experiences or can remember, which we quickly learn isn’t very reliable.\u00a0We are therefore challenged to draw a comprehensive image of Goat Island based exclusively on the limited testimony of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5611,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[331086],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/allen-island\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}