Essay Draft

The Healer: Confusing and Scary or Meaningful and Deep?

            With lines like “One [girl] had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice,” The Healer, a story by Aimee Bender, seems, at first glance, to be an allegory or a short story. Short stories or allegories should be easy to understand. Along with easy comprehension, allegories tend to have some sort of easily-made connection that links the text to the world. This real-world connection often gives the reader a moral, lesson, or the theme of the book.

            However, The Healer doesn’t agree with any qualities of a short story or allegory. Firstly, it isn’t easy to read, and it’s hard to comprehend, because it’s very strange and the plot is confusing. Furthermore, there don’t seem to be any real-world connections that the reader can make to give him or her lessons or morals. When I read The Healer, expecting a normal allegory or short story, I was confused, as Bender didn’t give any connections for the reader to make, which made me feel alienated and confused. If readers expect a short story or allegory is supposed to be something easy to understand and easy to draw connections from, yet The Healer, which seems like it should be an allegory or normal short story, confuses and alienates the reader with its confusing plot and lack of connections and obvious themes, then what does Bender hope to accomplish by confusing and alienating the reader?

            One way to think about the reason that Aimee Bender alienates and confuses the reader in The Healer is to give the readers connections to the similarly alienated and alone characters in the book, because this makes the complex themes of the book stronger and far more meaningful to the reader by making the themes more connectible to the reader’s experience while reading the book. We can see examples of how Bender alienates the reader to make their experience relate to the experience of the characters, and therefore to the themes, when Bender introduces characters like Roy, and also in the interactions between the outcast and strange characters in the story like Fire Girl, Ice Girl, and the narrator, Lisa.

In The Healer, the reader is often made confused and is alienated by the characters in the story. One such instance is when the Lisa and the reader are introduced to Roy. “… [Roy] was a cutter. He cut things into his skin with a razor blade. I saw once; some Saturday when everyone was at a Picnic and I was bored, I wandered into the boys’ bathroom and he was in there and he showed me how he carved letters into his skin. He’d spelled out OUCH on his leg” (Bender 3). Here is an example of how Bender alienates the reader. Immediately, Roy’s qualities seem uncommon, and, if looked at deeper, confusing and troubling. Roy’s being a cutter is strange enough, but this is likely not enough to confuse or alienate a reader. However, Roy’s problems appear to be deeper: He clearly knows he is a cutter, and knows full well that it is hurtful to his body, hence his writing “OUCH” on his leg. Despite this, Roy seems to want to have others practice this behavior. He shows Lisa, the girl who walked into the boy’s bathroom, how he cuts his leg. It seems that he knows that it’s bad, but wants others to do it, which is certainly a little confusing and alienating, especially for a reader who expected the book to have simple connections to the real world- there are no simple connections to be found. The characters in The Healer and their confusing and strange actions and qualities are certainly one cause to the reader’s discomfort while reading The Healer.

Apart from being alienated by the characters, the plot of The Healer plays a part in confusing the reader as well. This is evidenced in the unpredictability and lack of obvious themes in the plot. A large contributing factor to how the plot is so strange and discomforting is the fact that characters appear and disappear in a moment’s notice, making it hard to understand where the plot is going to next. One excellent example of this is how Ice Girl, a main character for most of the story, is removed from the story. “I guess I never told you [Lisa], [Ice Girl] said, but I feel nothing. I just feel ice. I nodded. I wasn’t surprised. She turned a bit. I’m off now, she said, bye” (Bender 8). This unceremonious and surprising exit for one of the more important characters in the story up to that point is surprising, and moreover, very confusing. From the standpoint of the reader, it’s very disorienting to have one of the main characters in the story, one of the characters that guides and directs the flow of the story, leave on a moment’s notice. This is especially true in The Healer, where the reader is already confused- the characters are some of the only things that remain constant, so when the characters disappear suddenly, it completely changes the direction of the story, and the reader is hauled through these sudden twists and turn. The result of this, however, is perhaps even more effective in confusing and alienating the reader: Because of the lack of flow and continuity in the plot, no theme really sticks out as the obvious point to take away from the book. When reading a normal allegory, the reader expects to draw a connection from the text that allows him or her to understand the theme, moral, or point of the story. However, because of The Healer’s lack of a straightforward plot, there is no straightforward allegorical connection, and therefore no obvious theme. The combination of a disorienting plot, lack of easily recognizable real-world connection and no content that seems to be the point of the story plays an important part in confusing and alienating the reader.

Like the reader, the characters in The Healer are alienated or alone in the society they live in. Two of these alienated characters are Ice Girl and Fire Girl. Right from the very beginning, they are described as “mutants” (Bender 1). Aside from this, both Ice Girl and Fire Girl are very closed about their feelings and emotions, which leads to a lack of positive and beneficial relationships with others, which is shown as Lisa describes Fire Girl as walking home alone (Bender 2), and when Ice Girl says she “feels ice” (Bender 8). Fire Girl’s being alone is an obvious indication of her alienation in society. It shows that she has no real friends, and so she has no one to talk or discuss her feelings with. This is massive in being alienated- being alone and isolated. Ice Girl is also seemingly isolated. Her saying she feels nothing, only ice (Bender 8), gives off the connotation of cold and sad, and the fact that there’s ice makes Ice Girl’s feelings seem desolate and inhabitable, like some far-away place. Both Ice Girl and Fire Girl are seem alienated in the story.

Roy is another character who is alienated in society The Healer. This is evidenced when Lisa first meets him in the boy’s bathroom (Bender 3). Roy skips school often, and him cutting his skin is another reason that he doesn’t seem normal. Skipping school, and especially cutting, would likely mean that he’s alone, and isolated. The fact that he’s resorted to cutting himself means he is probably an outcast in society, and this combined with his skipping school, means that he certainly has few, or perhaps zero, friends or companions, which definitely would lead to him feeling alienated. Bender definitely created characters that were outcasts in society, and seem like they are alienated and alone.

Because both the characters and the reader are alienated, The Healer allows readers to connect with the characters very easily because they share the same trait of being alienated. While The Healer doesn’t have many things that are easy to connect to, and though even the characters might seem strange and confusing at first, it is the characters’ alienation in the story that makes them relatable. The reader, as previously discussed, feels confused and alone while reading the book, and a big part of that is the fact that the story is so confusing, and there’s nothing to connect to. So, when the reader sees the characters isolated and alone in society the same way that he or she is alienated while reading the story, the character might more easily connect to those characters, because, unlike much of the story, the idea of alienation is, due to Bender’s writing, one that the reader can readily connect with.

Because the reader can connect to the characters in the story, they can more easily understand the alienation-based themes that the characters present in the story.

The characters are the agent in The Healer that reveals the themes of the book. Each character has a theme or multiple themes that they show to the reader based on their individual and unique situation in the book, but all stem from the characters’ connecting trait of alienation. The problems and alienation of characters like Fire Girl, Ice Girl and Roy means that they show a reader that the opposite is good, because few readers would want to be in the situations of many of these characters. Roy, for example, is alone, and hurting himself even though he knows it’s bad for him. This would, perhaps, give the reader a lesson in the value of friendships, as Roy is alone and isolated, and also the value of self-esteem and pride, which would stem from seeing Roy cutting himself, which is obviously a sign of his unhappiness, especially because he does this knowing full well that it is hurting him.

The reader can also connect to Ice Girl’s alienation, which holds more themes. We see that she is an internal character that doesn’t show much emotion, and, like Roy, seems to be alone and not social. The reader might connect to this because the reader, throughout the book, is also left alone, as there is little to connect to. This would allow the reader to have a more complete understanding of Ice Girl’s position. From Ice Girl’s lack of socializing and communication, we might see the value of friendship, relationships with others, and the value of expressing one’s self and one’s emotions. These are all valuable themes that the reader gets by connecting to Ice Girl’s alienation through the reader’s own alienation.

Some might say that these themes would be recognizable without having to be first isolated by the story. Indeed, this might be true, as the themes are fairly obvious in the characters. It seems pretty obvious to a reader that Roy would be better off not cutting himself and having friends, and Ice Girl should probably share her emotions with others. These themes would likely be noticed by the reader without the reader being alienated first.

However, the themes of the book would mean little to the reader who cannot relate to what the themes mean. Yes, the reader might understand that friends are a good thing, or maybe only that cutting is bad. But the reader who doesn’t connect to what that means, at its core, for a person in the position of Roy, won’t get the full, complex theme that is shown by Roy. The ideas of having relationships, friends, and something that you can rely on in general, is far more applicable to the reader who has had to read an entire story not being able to connect to anything. This would make the reader understand more of the position Roy is in, how it connects to the position the reader was in, and therefore the value of the theme itself. The fact that the reader can connect to the characters that show the themes is vital to the reader having a deep and complex understanding of the theme, rather than a weak and petty understanding.

Aimee Bender masterfully connects the reader and the theme-bearing characters by alienating the characters in the story and the reader in her writing. Although the story alone gives little to connect to, because both reader and character are alienated in one place, the story, the reader can easily connect to the characters, which give the reader not just the themes themselves, but gives understanding, insight, value, and meaning to the complex themes in the story.