The Address by Marga Minco
Analysis of a Key Passage The Address by Marga Minco In The Address by Marga Minco, the author suggests that people do not realize what they take for granted until they do not have them anymore. In the excerpt, the narrator is in a house with all her possessions, and the daughter of the woman who took all these possessions has no idea what is going on. Long ago, the narrator’s mother had given all her worldly possessions to a strange lady, who always took everything away with a look of greed.
The narrator has come to the house with all the possessions, and it suddenly hits her that all her memories are just through the doorway. When she enters, she sees all of her possessions, “in a room which I both knew and didn’t know”. This one simple line describes how she feels, how though all her memories are in the room, they are not place in the right spot, as if the chronological placement was off, and all her memories are mixed up. I found myself among things I had wanted to see again but which oppressed me in the strange surroundings” describes her confusion, because though everything looked normal, (similar to the way she acts as if nothing is happening) it’s the inside story of every object that is scaring her; how it has her memories imprinted in it, and yet, they are not there anymore, because this is not her house, and she does not own any of this anymore.
I scarcely dared to look around me anymore” symbolizes her fright of looking at everything she had and lost, and now they do not belong to her, though she has a slight longing for them in order to have a sense of normality. “Somewhere on the edge there should be a burn hole in which had never been repaired” this line, when read closely, depicts the hole as a sort of ledge, where her mind is clinging onto, so she may find some familiar feeling in all this strangeness. It also depicts a large bottomless pit, where she wants to throw all the bad feelings and memories away, throw them deep into this hole.
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The daughter does not notice anything wrong, because she is like a newborn baby: she does not know where any of this comes from, but she does not question it, because she has been raised with these objects. But she is also the opposite of her mother; while her mother stole all the possessions without a worry or a care, she is sweeter, gentler. The daughter is innocent and unknowing of what happened, while the mother is guilty and knows exactly why the narrator is here. When prompted, she (the daughter) talks of how everything in the room is nothing important, how they are all antiques and nothing special.
But the narrator then offers a retort of passion and sadness “you get used to all these beautiful things at home, you hardly look at them anymore. You only nothice when something is not there, because it has to be repaired, or for example, because you’ve lent it to someone”. This small speech shows how she never thought of these possessions and memories as important, but now that they are not with her anymore, now that she knows she cannot take them all back, she feels they describe her life. But it is too late.
Near the end of the excerpt, the narrator mentions how, when she was younger, she thought her cutlery was made from silver, but never really thought of it. The daughter laughs, but when she goes to check her own cutlery, the narrator rushes out, to “forget the address” and everything she ever remembered. This is because she wants to leave every memory she had behind, to start anew. It is her sudden realization that she does not possess these memories anymore that causes her to change and force herself to forget everything from the past.
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The Address by Marga Minco. (2018, Aug 18). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/the-address-by-marga-minco/
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