The Blue of Distance

In the short story "The Blue of Distance," Rebecca Solnit presents a series of people who lived during different periods of time in the United States and transitioned to a new life during their journey.  Each character had a similar transformation, being captured by a “tribe” or group of some sort, losing their identity, and becoming someone new.  The first person came in 1527 with a group of Spaniards.  Alvar Nunez Cabeza ventured to the southern part of the US through the Florida region who came seeking gold.  He was captured by a group and later became a slave to the tribe who held him for the rest of his life and as the author describes “loses his skin like a snake,” becoming someone different along the way.  In 1704, Eunice Williams is captured by a party of French and Indian raiders at age seven and stands by as her mother and other family members are killed.  She is adopted by the group and forced to marry one of the community members.  She ends up living with him for the next fifty-two years and with the community until she dies at age 92.  Mary Jemison is the next who was captured in 1758 when there was a raid on her parent’s frontier farm.  She too was adopted by the group who kidnapped her and her life changes as she joins the Seneca tribe.  Then there was Cynthia Ann Parker who was captured by the Comanches on a Texas plain where she also needs to shed her past and become a member of the group that she is now a member.  Finally, Thomas Jefferson Mayfield transitions in the US from one culture to another after the Civil War broke out, adapting the difference that now exists after the war.  As the author notes, “even in the everyday world of the present, an anxiety to survive manifests itself in far more rugged occasions than those at hand, as though to express some sense of the toughness of things and readiness to face them.”  There is a readiness for what comes next in those days, where transitions occur seamlessly.  “The strange has become familiar and the familiar if not strange, at least awkward”… what a beautiful way to state how change was dealt with and became a part of the being whose life changed in a moment without care for the individual.  Solnit makes the point how cultures go through a sense of “anguish” and people are taken away without thought or ability to fight back.  Her description of the butterfly that goes through distinct stages very much fits these characters and the lives they live.  The days described in the story capture the idea of transformation consisting “mostly of decay and then of crisis when emergence from what came before must be total and abrupt” like that of the butterfly.   Solnit’s story captures the times and connects our thinking of change through that which we link towards the butterfly’s metamorphosis. Her writing is creative and her symbolism connects the past to the picture we visualize of change, transformative and stage like, one that is clear and far reaching.  When you take the brief character overviews of the four you see similarities on losing your identity and becoming someone else, all doing so very easily.  It makes me wonder whether that is still present in our lives today? Or is this only the way it used to be?  Are we all not like the caterpillar, crawling along looking for our way so we can finally fly away into a more meaningful and connected life?  Ah, the blue of the distance – it’s out there, yet can we ever get there?