Monday: Chapters 20 through 22 [ Edited ]

[KxBurns]

Chapter 20: About Monday

-I really like the way this chapter is structured. We find out rather abruptly that Ginny went through with the poisoning and Vivien is dead. But then we are plunged into doubt and uncertainty, along with Ginny, due to the time confusion. Rather than any sign of remorse, Ginny feels "a new life force coursing through my body, ousting years of lethargy and inertia...waking me from slumber, showing me the world more clearly' (p. 241). How does her physical state reflect her mental state in this chapter?

-Ginny has achieved a complete disconnect between what she does and feels and what she believes to be her self. Several times in this chapter – and many, many times throughout the book – Ginny makes a statement only to follow it up by saying that she is too levelheaded or not superstitious enough to have such feelings or do such things.

-her claims that her actions were unpremeditated but preordained by fate (p. 243) are not surprising. Is this the case of a cold-blooded killer excusing her behavior or a very sick woman protecting herself from what she has done?

-what do you think is signified by the fact that, as distressed as Ginny is by the time discrepancies, she claims she would also "be quite happy to be left alone, in eternal timelessness" (p. 245), the very thing she once feared?

Chapter 21: Pranksters and a Second Dose

-I'm finding plenty of humor in Ginny's thoughts in these chapters. The "last-minute fingertip reconciliation" really made me laugh!

-how does the following statement allow us to reconcile Ginny's inability to kill a fly with the cold-blooded nature of her work and, later, her murderous tendencies?: "…we naturalists strive for the greater proliferation of the entire lepidoptera genera, not for the survival of individuals" (p. 251).

-do you agree with Ginny's characterization of herself on page 253 (last paragraph), continuing onto p. 254? What about the passage on p. 255 where she spells out for us the parallel between herself and the caterpillar: she wants both to claim the murder as an act of self-efficacy but also reject responsibility for it. She believes her life to be the result of "circumstances acting on my biological makeup," which in her opinion relieves her of the burden of free will. Aren't we all the product of the interplay between environment and genetics? Does that mean we (and she) have no choices?

-Ginny points to her inability to kill the fly in school – and her subsequent torment at the hands of her classmates – as the moment that set her on this particular path (p. 257). What do you think of this view?

-while taken to an extreme here, Ginny's explanation of how she both loves and hates her sister articulates a sentiment that maybe we can relate to on some level. Sometimes the qualities we love about a person are also the things that in our lesser moments we resent, particularly in the complex sibling relationship where one child's strength can highlight another child's deficiency (or at least be perceived that way by the child). Do you agree or disagree?

Chapter 22: PC Bolt and Inspector Piggott

-I marveled at how Ginny's detachment allowed her to answer the Inspector's questions pretty honestly and with convincing calmness. But what did they make of the state of the house? And what does Eileen know?

-is Ginny's obsession with time going to lead to her downfall?

Message Edited by KxBurns on 03-12-2008 12:37 PM

[dhaupt]

20 - I found the chapter very confusing myself and found Ginny contradictory again when she says " I tried my best to rekindle our friendship. I tried to love her, to like her..." when did she do that, she spent the last three days spying on her and going to her "secret" place whenever Vivi tried to bring up things that Ginny didn't want to hear. I was disturbed by the fact that Ginny blames Vivi for her death by drinking the milk. And again time is a big portion of the chapter and of Ginny's life and now it's unbalanced. I guess I just don't understand the need for the killing.

21 - So in this chapter she's killed her sister but just to make sure she's going to make a second dose. And all she can talk about in moth's and when she looks into Vivi's room and sees the carriage clock and can't wait to own it, just shows us how sever her mental illness is. And then we find Vivi still alive and Ginny lies about calling the doctor. I find the most telling statement of the chapter is when Ginny says that she takes no pleasure in murder but feels no shame. I think she feels little if anything at all. And I found it really morbid talking about Vivi's body twitching after she dies.

22 - I think we understand just how important time is to Ginny when after finding out she's lost 3 hours she faints, not faints because she's just killed her sister and she's lying dead up in her bedroom and there's a cop outside. Up until this very minute I was thinking that maybe Ginny was making up Vivi's visit.
I wonder why the police think Vivi killed herself when the strange moth lady is telling the cops about where to find the poison?

[bentley]

I don't think that the cops believe anything that Ginny says; I think they learn the truth and that is why they look at her strangely. They probably suspect that Ginny did murder her sister; but also think that she is mentally deranged (which by now is also true). They probably know all there is to know about the inhabitants of that town and house. What disorder Ginny had was certainly exacerbated by her sister's presence and goading. She probably pushed her over the edge making her question every element of her life and existence; she may have felt that her sister was trying to steal what was rightfully hers after all of those years: a peaceful existence and end of life in the only home she ever knew

Message Edited by bentley on 03-12-2008 02:45 PM

[detailmuse]

Is this related to the top of p.249: "I suck my middle finger and hold it up to check the light wind"? I laughed at that -- Ginny is inadvertently (?) flipping the bird toward the prankster kids. No wonder they taunt her!

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KxBurns wrote:

Chapter 21: Pranksters and a Second Dose

The "last-minute fingertip reconciliation" really made me laugh!

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Message Edited by detailmuse on 03-12-2008 02:29 PM

[bentley]

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detailmuse wrote:

Is this related to the top of p.249: "I suck my middle finger and hold it up to check the light wind"? I laughed at that -- Ginny is inadvertently (?) flipping the bird toward the prankster kids. No wonder they taunt her!

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KxBurns wrote:

Chapter 21: Pranksters and a Second Dose

The "last-minute fingertip reconciliation" really made me laugh!

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Message Edited by detailmuse on 03-12-2008 02:29 PM

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Very funny.

[lcnh1]

I had read the whole book before the discussions started.  In one of the earlier threads it was mentioned that maybe Ginny and Vivi are the same person.  I looked at these chapters in a different light after that thread.  I'm still not sure, but I wonder if it is possible that Ginny has a split personality and in "killing" Vivi, she really killed off a part of herself - the part the kept her somewhat mentally stable all those years of living alone.  Maybe Vivi was the way that she coped with life.

[kiakar]

When Ginny was hiding in the woods watching Vivi go through the graveyard, is when she decided what she had to do. She saw her look over all the graves but she pretended the baby's grave was not there. I think Ginny was harboring the sorrow she had felt but couldn't express for her baby that died. And when she realized that Vivi had completely forgot about the baby or it didn't faze her in anyway that the baby died she then took revenge on Vivi.

[Thayer]

I found Ginny's  belief that you "learn as a scientist not to trust your feelings and to rise above any unqualified instinct or emotion," to be very chilling. It will be interesting, with her scientific background, to get Ms. Adam's thoughts on this quote when she joins our discussion.

[nmccarthy]

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KxBurns wrote:

Chapter 20: About Monday

-I really like the way this chapter is structured. We find out rather abruptly that Ginny went through with the poisoning and Vivien is dead. But then we are plunged into doubt and uncertainty, along with Ginny, due to the time confusion. Rather than any sign of remorse, Ginny feels "a new life force coursing through my body, ousting years of lethargy and inertia...waking me from slumber, showing me the world more clearly' (p. 241). How does her physical state reflect her mental state in this chapter?

Message Edited by KxBurns on 03-12-2008 12:37 PM

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Ginny has completed her metamorphosis; she has emerged from her chrysalis "It's the first warm day of spring. The early light, which has just begun to pour through the window, is bright and hopeful". pg. 241-242

As for the significance of the physical metamorphosis, "My feet and ankles are set solid as if, today, they have been carved together from a single block of wood." I love the description of knuckles on her crippled, clenched hands loosening up with the heat of the water and the toes of her hoof-like, single-toed goat separating as the paper is inserted between them. She is unfolding.

Very clever. But what kind of moth did she emerge as?

Nancy

[kmensing]

Ch 20

Two words for ya--Holy Crap! Ginny did it. I had to put the book down at this point and go make popcorn.

Ginny hasn’t actually seen the body yet, so is Vivi dead? And the clocks all out of alignment, how odd is that.

So if Ginny did kill Vivi, did she push her off the bell tower and did she push Maud down the steps?

So far, this is my favorite chapter.

Ch 21

The children leaving a pile of moths on the steps--I found that humorous.

Vivi’s not dead in the beginning of the chapter, but she is in the end. I’m stunned at Ginny’s ability to poison her a second time.

And why are the police there?

Ch 22

The tone of this book has taken quite an unexpected turn. The police are left thinking that Vivi committed suicide. And don’t they think it odd, that the only question out of Ginny is “what time is it” repeatedly.

[dumlao_n]

Wow lcnh1 made an interesting point.I have never thought of the Vivi as the mentally stable personality of Ginny. Another point to think about.

[dumlao_n]

Here's a thought...all of characters in the Stone family have some kind of mental illness. How else would it be since they all have their odd quarks? But none of them realizes they do have a mental illness because they are not stable enough to realize otherwise? Or if the mental illness is not genetic than they create their own illness on their own either in the mind only or in actions.

[Everyman]

I had trouble in these chapters with Ginny's ability to function quite deliberately and intentionally with her increasing disconnect from reality.

Oh -- and does anybody understand why she felt that she had to kill Vivian?

[Everyman]

I found echoes of both Hamlet and Macbeth in these chapters.

Hamlet in "the time is out of joint:" surely her time has become out of joint (Why do we think all the clocks and watches suddenly went off? Something supernatural? Or she is just reading them all wrong? This wasn't explained at all, and doesn't make sense to me.)

And Macbeth in the knocking at the gate, an interruption in the horror of murder for an almost casually ordinary episode.

[Everyman]

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lcnh1 wrote:

I had read the whole book before the discussions started. In one of the earlier threads it was mentioned that maybe Ginny and Vivi are the same person. I looked at these chapters in a different light after that thread. I'm still not sure, but I wonder if it is possible that Ginny has a split personality and in "killing" Vivi, she really killed off a part of herself - the part the kept her somewhat mentally stable all those years of living alone. Maybe Vivi was the way that she coped with life.

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I had abandoned that theory fairly early on -- where would the dog have come from for one thing, and there were too many things that wouldn't work with that theory -- but the final persuasion was that Eileen had talked with Vivian.

[Everyman]

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Thayer wrote:

I found Ginny's belief that you "learn as a scientist not to trust your feelings and to rise above any unqualified instinct or emotion," to be very chilling. It will be interesting, with her scientific background, to get Ms. Adam's thoughts on this quote when she joins our discussion.

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Yes, that's something we should definitely discuss with her. If she decided to murder somebody, could she as a scientist be as clinical about it as she presents Ginny as being?

[pigwidgeon]

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Everyman wrote:

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Thayer wrote:

I found Ginny's belief that you "learn as a scientist not to trust your feelings and to rise above any unqualified instinct or emotion," to be very chilling. It will be interesting, with her scientific background, to get Ms. Adam's thoughts on this quote when she joins our discussion.

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Yes, that's something we should definitely discuss with her. If she decided to murder somebody, could she as a scientist be as clinical about it as she presents Ginny as being?

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This quote from Ginny made me think of the countless animals that are tortured, and killed, in the name of scientific research. Clearly, there does have to be some ability for, at least part of, the scientific community to "rise above emotion". I can't imagine it, and I don't want to.

[bookhunter]

I really want to understand WHY Ginny kills Vivi.  Ginny has her own "ginny logic" about everything, so I think she must have a "reason" for killing Vivi.

She is thrown off kilter by Vivi's seemingly ignoring the baby's grave.  In Ginny's mind, Vivi is SUPPOSED to mourn the baby because it was HER baby.

She is further thrown off by Vivi saying that Clive killed Maud.  This upsets Ginny's memory of what happened.  Further, Vivi suggests that Ginny had some fault in Maud's death by not telling the police what she had seen.

Because Ginny requires a strict order and structure in her thoughts and actions, she rids her life of anything that interferes with that.  She has shut off rooms, sold all the "clutter" in the house.

So killing Vivi is ridding herself of something that upsets her orderly life.  And like in the quote that Thayer pointed out, as a scientist she rises above instinct and emotion.

Does that make sense to you all (in "ginny logic", at least!)"

Ann, bookhunter

[bookhunter]

And why are all the clocks no longer synchronized?  Do you think that in her disjointed state she has zoned out and fiddled with the clocks as a manifestation of her mind?  Her mind is no longer neat and orderly so she unknowingly adjusts the clocks to reflect that?

Ann, bookhunter

[pigwidgeon]

I found it interesting that, at the beginning of chapter 20, Ginny acts as though she isn't sure that she actually poisoned Vivi. As if her actions, in the moonlight, were only a dream. Then she validates that she has actually done the deed. Isn't it perplexing that Ginny "secreted it (the tin of potassium cyanide) up the left sleeve of (her) dressing gown"(240)? Who was she hiding it from? Vivi is asleep. This is such a child-like action.

On page 242, Ginny says "I don't feel any different. I don't feel like a murderer." How does she expect to feel? I think she expects a murderer to feel guilty, and doesn't. She has conviction about what she has done, and believes that it is the natural course of events. If anyone was ever in doubt of Ginny's mental status, these chapters are very clear. She is one sandwich short of a picnic. (or doo-lally, as Ginny herself would say)

I'm a little confused about the discrepancy with the clocks and watches. Did the poisoning of Vivi stop some of them? I would like Ms. Adams to explain this further, when she joins us, if it isn't illuminated in the end of the story.

Why is Ginny "relieved" to hear Simon in the kitchen? Maybe I missed the point, but I don't get it? She's caught up in thought about not wanting to check on Vivi, and how to get someone to find her, and all of a sudden she's "elated" and giggling. Please, someone explain this to me.... otherwise, another question for Ms. Adams. By the way, a block of cheese and shredded wheat? What was she thinking? Don't get me wrong, my dogs will eat ANYTHING, but a little dog like that,... so strange.