National Book Award novel “Salvage The Bones” by Jesmyn Ward (post 2): Author interview and first chapter have contradictions that suggest multiple personality.

Contradiction Re Pit Bull Dogs

After having read the author’s memoir, which tells how she was raised by her steadfast mother (and often abandoned by her father), I was shocked to find the first chapter of this novel revolving, lovingly, around a pit bull dog named China who was giving birth to highly-prized puppies, while the protagonist’s mother is mentioned only briefly as having previously died after giving birth.

Moreover, in an appendix to this novel, “Q&A with Jesmyn Ward,” the author is asked about pit bull dogs in her life and novel:

“…At the heart of your book is this incredible relationship between Skeetah [a brother of the first-person, narrating, female protagonist] and China [his female pit bull dog]. Where did China come from?

My father owned pit bulls when I was young. He sometimes fought them…My father’s favorite and sole pit bull was so dear to us that sometimes it was my babysitter; I remember sitting in our dirt driveway as a six-year-old crying because I was alone while that dog licked me” (1, p. 265).

In Ward’s memoir, Men We Reaped, she was attacked by her father’s pit bull, Chief, who gave her three deep puncture wounds on her back, a three-inch gash running from the top of her left ear, and the bottom of her left ear nearly ripped off (2, p. 59). Her father told her that “the dog had been trying to rip out my throat”…“My father found him and shot Chief in the head and buried him in a ditch” (2, p. 60).

How can one person have such contradictory memories? It is easy if you have the separate memory banks of different personalities.

“I” vs. “Me”

In the novel’s first chapter, the first-person narrator almost always refers to herself as “I.” But in three places, she refers to herself as “me” for no apparent reason. For example, on page 1, beginning with the first sentence: “China’s turned on herself. If I didn’t know, I would think she was trying to eat her paws. I would think that she was crazy. Which she is, in a way. Won’t let nobody touch her but Skeet…” However, at the bottom of page 1: “Me, the only girl and the youngest at eight, was of no help…”

Why would she say “Me…was of no help”? It makes me wonder whether “I” and “Me” are two different personalities.

“the other me”

Later in chapter 1, the protagonist has a romantic encounter with Manny:

“I glanced at his face, the sweat like glaze. My lips were open. Another me would’ve licked it off…But this girl wouldn’t lean forward…This girl waited…he wanted the other me…The girly heart that, before Manny, I’d let boys have because they wanted it…But with Manny, it was different…He wanted my girl heart; I gave him both of them” (1, pp. 15-16).

The reader can contrive to make sense of the above. After all, people have various feelings, and some feelings come out more with some people or under some circumstances. But, if you just take what is written, and just try to understand it with ordinary common sense, it is not clear why she is using phrases like “another me” and “the other me,” and why she is making a distinction between her “girly heart” and her “girl heart.”

The protagonist seems to be struggling to make distinctions between her different personalities (although she may not think of it in those terms). How would she know about her different personalities? As previously discussed, some alternate personalities are directly aware of each other. But an intelligent person can also make inferences from what other people have said about her behavior.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Salvage the Bones [2011]. New York, Bloomsbury, 2012.

2. Jesmyn Ward. Men We Reaped: A Memoir. New York, Bloomsbury, 2013.