Literary Analysis of Marsha Norman's Night Mother

Suicide leaves those left behind with more questions than answers. Why someone would take their own life is something that begs an answer, but rarely is there satisfaction in the answers we find. The play "Night Mother" written by Pulitzer Prize winner, Marsha Norman explores the landscape of suicide in an intimate and revealing way. It takes reflection to begin to see the whys of Jessie's suicide. For me, being able to comprehend the reasons took uncovering my family history. Like the characters in the play who did not own up to the truth about their lives until the evening of that fateful night, my discoveries seem way over due. Some families are talkers, some are not. Those things left unsaid have a way of shaping us in spite of all the good intentions with which they are covered up in the first place. Anyone who chooses suicide has made the wrong choice. My Grandfather committed suicide and his father before him. Breaking the chain of despair, my father chose to live his life a different way, a way Jessie, the main character, in the play never considers. People need to hear the hope and know the love that enables a person to stay alive. Some answers should never be left unsaid.

Would hope and love make a difference to Jessie? The most interesting question the story raises is; would Jessie's life have been different if it would have been filled with conversations like the one that occurred that critical night? It is not like Mama never talks to Jesse. It is just she never says anything important or really meaningful. So, Jesse preferred the silence of her father while he was alive. His affection came through in the simple jester of making pipe cleaner animals for her. Mama on the other hand, always seems to want to own or manipulate Jesse. There is never any real concern for her as a person. This is evident in her confession "Jessie, Jessie child... Forgive me (Pause.) I thought you were mine" (Norman 1530), after Jessie fired the fatal shot behind the closed door.

A closed door is Jessie's answer to the reality that there is no real love in her life except for her memories of her Father. After Mama reveals to Jessie she did not love her husband, she laments "You loved him enough for both of us" (Norman 1514). As Jessie's physical condition improves, she is free from the terrible epileptic seizures she fears. Her new found health, however, brings with it the stark realization that her life lacks anything meaningful. Jessie believes her disease has not only stolen her memories, but also her very self. Explaining to Mama, Jessie maintains she wants out of life because, "It's somebody I lost, all right, it's my own self. Who I never was. Or who I tried to be and never got there. Somebody I waited for who never came. And never will"(Norman 1525). Firmly convinced of this, Jessie decides not to try to improve her life, but to end it.

This is the conclusion my grandfather made in 1950, five years before I was born. This event and the other weighty experiences and conditions my father faced in his life brought him to a much different conclusion. My father learned instead to overcome. What secret motives did he have that enables him to live what I observe as a life that is both simple and profound? These words truly describe the man who raised and nurtured me. Although he describes himself as a private man and does not talk much of poverty, abuse, his alcoholic father, nor his experiences at war and the witnessing of the Holocaust in Germany, he later repents of his silence and writes it all down in a memoir for me and anyone else who would want to know the man. It is there that I find the answers to many of the questions I had about his past.

Another interesting question this story causes me to consider is; can we remember too much? Jessie's torment really begins when the medicine she takes starts to work and her memory returns. The knowledge of what her life has becomes is what is too much for her. Jessie's epilepsy makes her dependent on her mother and her mother's feigned helplessness makes Jessie's trap feel all the more hopeless. Facing this confinement she reveals her true feelings to Mama by admitting, "What if it has everything to do with you! What if you are all I have and you're not enough" (Norman 1523)? This comment shows Jessie's own obsession with self concern.

My grandfather's demise occurred, likewise, when the pursuit of his own pleasure led him into full blown alcoholism. Similar to the epilepsy Jessie suffers from in its memory loss, alcoholism differs in that its onset is self inflicted. Epilepsy can be treated successfully with medicine. Alcoholism on the other hand is most successfully treated in AA by its spiritual program. The devastation Jessie experiences could can be dealt with in the same way. The answers to her purposeless can be been found in a purpose greater than herself. Author Marsha Norman offers no spiritual solution because, the truth is, there are no answers to the isolation Jessie experiences when we look to this life to find them. The answers lie in the spiritual realm and make Jessie's solution to her problem tragic.

Another tragic solution was remembered on April 18th of this year, a national holiday in Israel called "Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day the official day that pays tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising" (Foxnews) As the report flashed up on my T.V. screen it made me think of my father. In early May of 1945 after spending two months in a camp outside Breman, Germany where he witnessed Hitler's "final solution" for the Jewish people, my father was liberated by Allied troops. The Israeli holiday celebrates people like my father along with those who survived the Holocaust.
Explaining the purpose of the holiday in a statement to the press, the Israeli government said:

"On Yom HaShoah we remember the victims - those who survived and those who did not. We remember the lives that were cut off cruelly and inexplicably. We remember that the brave efforts of both Jews and some Gentiles resulted in the saving of lives, and yet, despite the fact that each life is a world unto itself, the dimensions of the tragedy far outweighed all efforts to avert it. We remember those who survived, those who were faced with the monumental task of rebuilding completely shattered lives, without a home or even a country to return to and often without any surviving family members for support. We remember and celebrate the triumph of the human spirit for, almost miraculously; thousands of Jews arose from the ashes to build new and productive lives despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges that faced them."(Foxnews)

My father also arose from the ashes of his early life and the burden of what he witnessed to build a life for me, my mother and three sisters. His memories are not easy memories to carry.

Sometimes when I hear people refer to the Holocaust, I wonder if they are remembering in a healthily way, especially if their comments are tinged with bitterness. A coworker of mine described to me her visit the Holocaust museum in Israel. She called it "a terribly moving experience; both beautiful and completely sorrowful" (Eberst). Elie Wiesel stated on the completion of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that the intention of such a place is that no one should leave unchanged:

"Here children and adults learn that Good and Evil are part of the human condition, and they can be infinite. Here we learn that the loneliness of victims, their sense of abandonment, their silent despair as they walked, in nocturnal procession towards the flames, are not to be forgotten; they must leave a trace, a burning scar on man's history, on its memory, and God's as well." (Wiesel)

When I asked my friend if she thought it was healthy to remember this way, she echoes Wiesel's words, "How can we forget" (Eberst)?

In his speech Wiesel speaks about the second death the survivors face if what happens to them is not remembered. Not being believed after having endured such an ordeal, and to have overcome, is as cruel as the original sin with which a person is inflicted. Weisel relates, "In the beginning, you so wanted to share your memories from [with] others. But they refused to listen. 'Do not look backwards, people told you. It is unhealthy. Turn the page; the future is waiting for you'" (Wiesel). In the early 1990's there were men who claimed the Holocaust did not happen. For these reasons my father testified before a committee of Israeli scholars who sole purpose was to refute these claims. I am sure it was a difficult task for my father.

Weisel's comments lead me to a third question; how do you handle your past especially if it is difficult? This is a question that Jessie never explores although she seems to explore every other option. She tells Mama, "I'm not giving up! This is the other thing I am trying. And I'm sure there are some other things that might work, but might work isn't good enough anymore. I need something that will work. This will work. That's why I picked it." (Norman 1524).

My Father's memoirs show me how he handles the past as I ask the question; what is healthy, what is not? He explains in his writings:

"Wartime experiences are impressed in your memory and never leave you. Failure and disappointments can lay heavy on your mind, but ... I have always tried not to dwell on the past. I remember it; but I don't want to be caught up in the past; and I do not plan to ever be defeated by past slights or anything else in my memory bank." (West 118)

Taking the whole of what my father wrote, I find the secret that enables the Holocaust survivors to rebuild their lives too. My Father was embraced by a community of people who loved, nurtured and taught him. In his old age, he wishes only for more of that. Describing his wish, he shares:

"I have been made aware through the later years that we are never really prepared for the situations of life as they happen to us. It would have been well if I had a spiritual mentor in my early years. All our yearning to know more about ourselves and how we should react in any situation is pretty much 'do it yourself" (West 118).

Looking at his life I see a man who loves God and longs to know him more deeply every day. I see a man who tries to love those around him the best he can, knowing he is imperfect, and so will his efforts to love be imperfect. He chooses to love anyway. Everyday he lives the law of God given to the Jewish people 3,400 years ago. Jesus summed it up best in Matthew 22:26-40:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (NIV Study Bible 1475)

Those who survived and overcame the devastation of the Holocaust evidently take these words to heart and build their lives upon them. They are people who are a source of inspiration to us, especially as we consider their past.

Jessie's action leaves no such source of inspiration. My grandfather left a legacy of pain. Somehow it never occurred to either of them that they might find meaning in looking outside of themselves, or by trying to connect with others. What might have Jessie found if she had ventured outside her home? Norman paints a bleak life for Jessie, one that is so far removed from the things that keep a person engaged in life. I would hope that if any of us would come across a Jessie, we would attempt to break through the isolation and be a friend.

In his memoirs my father mentions a poem about being that kind of friend, "The House by the Side of the Road," by Sam Foss. It expresses his conclusion to life. And I am grateful for the man who made this verse his own. It goes like this:

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
in a fellowship firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
Where highways never ran----
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by--
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I,
I would not sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban----
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I see from my house by the side of the road,
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife.
But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears,
Both part of an infinite plan---
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice,
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.
Let me live in my house by the side of the road---
It's here the race of men go by.
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish---so am I;
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man. (Foss l 1-40)

Works Cited

Barker, Kenneth, general ed. The NIV Study Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Bible
Publishers, 1985.

Eberst, Shirley. Personal Interview. 24 April 2004.

Foss, Sam Walter. "The House by the Side of the Road." 4Literature.net. 24 April 2004.

Foxsnews. 19 April 2004. Foxnews Channel. 20 April 2004 http://www.foxnews.com.

Norman, Marsha. "Night Mother." Making Literature Matter: An
Anthology For Readers and Writers. 2nd ed. Eds. John Schilb and John Clifford.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. 1497-1530.

West, Robert Perry. "A Chronicle- Facts and Other Stuff Concerning the Life Robert
West" Unpublished manuscript. 1992.

Wiesel, Elie. "Remarks by Elie Wiesel" 2 Nov. 2003. United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. 24 April 2004 .