Reading Carmel’s story in Counternarratives was honestly a little depressing. It hit me on the bottom of page 89, after we had been told the stories of Carmel’s parents and their deaths, and we now began the story of Carmel, and the tone of the narrative just deadpan leaves Carmel to her own devices. Carmel seems to be this constant in chaos. She reminds me of a feeling I often feel, where I am fine and ok but little things that stress me out or upset me keep piling up, like droplets in a bucket, until eventually there is just way too much water and the bucket overflows. Carmel is steady, just going about her life and being pushed around, until eventually her bucket overflows and she erupts.

But the important part is her apparent silence until the moment of eruption. She is so alone in the chaos, she has no voice in the narration except in her eruptions which are hardly intelligible. Perhaps she has not option to join the revolution? Perhaps she is perfectly aware and choosing to stay enslaved? Perhaps she does not know she has a choice? It is unknown. She has no voice, even though the narrative is giving light to her story, the tone is so perfectly detached so as to leave her completely alone. And that is sad to me.

So then the question remains, to what degree are we seeing Carmel? What does it mean to be seen, to have one’s story be told, and how? Even when she first erupts, and she draws on the wall of her master, he doesn’t even get to see it (p. 95). Is the detached description of her image enough, or does the narrative perfectly leave something detached so as to emphasize the inability to understand Carmel and her situation? Perhaps the key of narration is to ensure one does not have the consolation of empathizing, but instead has to deal with the agony of an incomplete, detached image.