In “A Memory,” frames symbolize the narrator’s limited perception and how it interferes with her experience of reality. Influenced by what she’s learned in her painting class, the narrator habitually makes rectangular frames with her fingers through which to observe the world around her. She uses these observations in an attempt to make some sort of meaning out of her life and the surrounding world. Yet, in the same way that the size and shape of the frame determines what’s visible in a painting or photograph, the meaning the narrator is able to glean from her observations is mostly determined by her own preconceived ideas about life. These, in turn, limit what and how the narrator actually sees, thus cutting her off from other aspects of reality. If “A Memory” is seen as a story about what precedes—or perhaps launches—the narrator’s coming-of-age process, then the presence of these frames suggests that the narrator has not yet reached maturity. Rather, her perception of reality, while in the process of evolving, is limited by her own inexperience and naivety.
Frames Quotes in A Memory
From my position, I was looking at a rectangle brightly lit, actually glaring at me, with sun, sand, water, a little pavilion, a few solitary people in fixed attitudes, and around it all a border of dark rounded oak trees, like the engraved thunderclouds surrounding illustrations in the Bible. Ever since I had begun taking painting lessons, I had made small frames with my fingers, to look out at everything.
I remember continuing to lie there, squaring my vision with my hands, trying to think ahead to the time of my return to school in winter. I could imagine the boy I loved walking into a classroom, where I would watch him with this hour on the beach accompanying my recovered dream and added to my love. I could even foresee the way he would stare back, speechless and innocent, a medium-sized boy with blond hair and unconscious eyes looking beyond me and out the window, solitary and unprotected.
Frames Symbol Timeline in A Memory
