Forget-me-not: Giving Voice to Memory in Mark Z. Danielewski's "The Familiar" and Elsa Morante's "La Storia"

Abstract

Among the many, intertwining motifs spanning the volumes of Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar, the repeated reference to forget-me-nots is not one that leaps off the page to the reader. Its presence in Xanther’s seizure in Volume 4: Hades speaks to larger notions of memory of tragedies such as the Armenian Genocide, or even the chronomosaic timelines present in Danielewski’s earlier novel, Only Revolutions. This paper, while exploring notions notions of memory through Adriana Cavarero’s theory of the narratable self, will argue that their root is in Elsa Morante’s 1974 novel La Storia, which centers on a Jewish mother and her son, both epileptic, in Rome during World War II. Yet, while both works utilize their characters’ epilepsy as a way to better acknowledge the suffering and tragedies occurring around them, Morante’s articulation of the crushing wheel of history differs from the more hopeful presentation Danielewski provides. Through her epilepsy, Xanther instead emerges as a character who highlights the importance of giving voice to others, especially those unable to speak for themselves.