The Tattooed Girl, by Joyce Carol Oates is a novel about prejudice and hate, good and evil.
Josh Seigl is a reclusive writer, and he has been diagnosed with a neurological disorder. His first novel (written about his own grandparents’ experiences in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust) won acclaim, but he has yet to publish a second book. Seigl continues to ride on the waves of his first novel “The Shadows”. He decides to hire an assistant to help him. He is beginning to realize that he needs assistance, not only with his work and files, but his physical ailments.
“He told himself he wasn’t frightened: his soul was tough as the leather of his oldest boots.
He would hire someone to live with him. And he really did need an assistant for his translation project.
He was a discreet man, a private man. To friends who’d known him for more than twenty years, and even to most of his relatives, an enigmatic man.“
He hires Alma, a seemingly almost-illiterate woman, whose skin is embellished with tattooes. Therein begins the journey of prejudice and hate and the evil that lies within.
Her tattoos have been forcibly inked on her by various men, and she is a victim of their persecution of her. She has an extremely low self-esteem, stemming from her childhood, which included her grandfather’s verbalizations about his hatred of the Jews.
“A Jew is a despised thing her grandfather had said screwing up his burnt-looking face to spit, and Alma said, Why? and he said, Because they are accursed of God and man, and Alma said, Why? for surely she wished to know, and her grandfather said, vague but angry, Jews killed Christ.”
Alma is a time bomb, a woman seething underneath her tatooed exterior.
Alma is menacing in her quietude, and believes Seigl is a Jew. She hates Seigl for his monetary status and house on the hill, for his “good old boy” moneyed ways and attitudes. Seigl, meanwhile, dislikes Alma for many reasons, including her tattooes.
He dislikes her appearance, her tattoos are weblike in the way they weave across her face and body, almost frightening. He also dislikes her slowness in finishing projects he assigns her, and hates her almost illiterate-like mind. Yet, he continues to employ her, as he is fascinated by her at the same time. He is almost self-righteous in his perspective towards Alma.
When Alma finds out that Seigl is not a Jew, she becomes more angry and disgusted with him than she was to begin with (Seigl’s father was Jewish, and it is the mother who carries the Jewish lineage, not the father). She seethes, and her thoughts fester within her. She is beating within her soul, like the drum of a warrior. She feels that Seigl is using his surname and his status to gain acceptance for his writing.
The beginning of the end, commences, often with surprise.
I found it ironic that Alma, a non-Jew, is tainted with tattoos, which is symbolic of the Holocaust. Not only does Alma have tattoos, but they are in a web-like fashion, dotted here and there, across her face, neck and body, in haphazard fashion, without thought or design. The pigments are emphasized in an ugly manner when she is angry or embarrassed.
Oates was brilliant in rendering Alma in that manner. The Tattooed Girl, is not only a title, but is a primary force, although silently, throughout the novel. Whenever alma is mentioned, as such, it is with capital letters, exactly like the title of the book. That is meaningful, in itself. Oates has given Alma power within her silence, and her strength resounds from within, building to a crescendo.
Their relationship takes on a love-hate status, and all too late, the love aspect can never be realized. Through their manipulations of each other, the novel comes to an extreme end.
Oates is masterful with details, and in her ability to delve into the mind of men and women on the brink of physical and mental collapse. Her words bring vivid paintings to the mind, and also bring to the forefront the issues of identity, anti-semitism, prejudice, hate and evil. The Tattooed Girl is interesting from the perspective of how our inner turmoils and prejudices are often synonymous with our exteriors, and create the environment we end up in, almost self-fulfilling. Oates brought her writing skills of excellence to this novel, leaving nothing unturned, from the physical to the emotional.
I personally own and have read this book.
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Jew Wishes…Peace to you all.
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