Low_Visibility

Low Visibility By Margaret Murphy To prevent yourself, in any given situation, from falling into invisibility, you need to step into character and define yourself and your worth. If not you one day will slip away, both physically and psychologically. The main character from the short story “Low Visibility” from 2008, is one of the fortunate who act before it is too late. The story is about the woman Laura, and her marriage with her abusive husband John. They are watching the News where they follow the street riots all over town. Laura doesn’t speak and doesn't move, in terror of what her husband will do to her. However, even when she doesn’t draw attention to her self at all, her husband John, slowly but surely punishes her absentmindedly. The street riots spread to their apartment building and the store under them gets broken in to. John goes down to make them stop and ends up getting beat up. Laura goes down to the street and finds her husband lying on the ground in bad shape. When John asks for her hand as help, she neglects to do so. A rebel passes them on the street, and winks at Laura and doesn’t see John at all, who is begging for help. Laura asks the man if he isn't scared of getting caught, whereto he answers (p. 5 l. 165); "Not me girl. I’ve been invisible all my life.” Laura walks away from John, surrounded by explosions, without helping him. The story is narrated by a third person, and therefore we know what Laura and her husband are thinking, while we at the same time, have a full overview of what is happening physically in the story. The story also begins in media res where the couple is watching some kind of riots on the news. John is conducting his own rude monologue (p.1 l. 8): “Scum” and (l. 32): “Vermin” & (p.2 l. 60): “Animals” and making snide remarks about Laura’s terrified, silent responses (p.2 l.39): “ Nothing to contribute'” & (l. 41): “No sharp insights into the situation'”. However, they soon discover that the riots are going on right outside their building and John decides to go out. Laura surprises herself by commanding him not to. John has not heard her or does not want to hear her, and she starts believing that she is, truly, invisible. When John goes down to the street in attempt to stop the rebels, she pulls out a tiger-eye stone from her pocket, which she had been given from an old friend. The gemstone, she was told, gave courage and created harmony out of chaos. Laura clung on to this stone as if it was her last piece of hope she had. It represented her previous life, where she actually was alive, and had feelings. It gave her the strength she needed, and she found John outside who was badly injured. John asked her to come to his aid, but she finally had, had enough. She grabbed a brick, and thought about what to do. She could throw the brick at him and hurt him, with a hard enough strike she could even kill him or seriously injure him, as he had injured her, or she could cast it aside and leave. It is worth noticing that this was an absolutely perfect opportunity for her to revenge herself, but she chose to leave him, simply saying: “Order out of chaos”. She had had enough of the chaos. I think this tiger-eye stone is very important for the story’s meaning. To create harmony out of chaos almost sounds anarchistic, and is usually the philosophy behind many riots. That the riots dominate the city, the same day as Laura frees herself from her husband, I do not think is a coincidence. She needed the chaos as help to realize how awful her life had become, so she could liberate herself from her husband, and thereby achieve harmony. Laura used to be a confident, energetic and spirited woman with good humor, clearly illustrated in the following examples: (p.1 l. 19): “She wasn’t always like this. Once, she was a girl who could set a room to laughter.” & (p. 4 l. 152): “She wanted to help him, to give him a chance to feel like he belonged”. Now she has become an empty shell, all color and charm stripped from her. Laura describes the change in her as subconscious; she barely noticed the gradual change in herself. She has become a silent, invisible piece of furniture, that changes its’ shape according to John’s rules (p.1 l. 29): “ The slaps and shoves that at first shocked her, became something to be expected, they reshaped her, molding her into something less distinct, more insubstantial”. She is terrified of him and his ways of hurting her. Laura describes his abuse: how he hits her absentmindedly, how she has learnt to appreciate the small things; how she has learnt to perceive how to behave; to read his mood and then judge how much liberty she is entitled to (p.1 l.36): “She shakes her head - just enough so he knows she didn’t mean to interrupt” and has learnt to disconnect herself so she feels less pain. Even though Laura has been through a tough ordeal (p.2 l. 48): “... he hurts her. Twist and kneads, probing, bruising her flesh.”, her kind heart is mysteriously preserved and some part of her gentle nature has survived: at the end of the story, she resurrects and despite all the misery John has put her through, she withdraws without harming him- this indicates an extraordinarily kind and sympathetic heart. In the end of the story, Laura is faced with a very big decision. The fact that she does not throw the brick at him, which she considers doing, shows that she is a stronger person than he is because she can act without violence. She finally finds out that she is worth more than the terrible marriage he kept her chained to. When she leaves him, he is the one lying wounded in the streets, while she walks away unharmed. Their positions in the marriage have changed and suddenly she is the one in control. The end of the short story is open because we are not told, what will happen to Laura, after she leaves John. Also in the end of the story we discover Laura’s name and her identity. Before this, she was a nameless, speechless woman - a contrast to her husband John, whose name was the first word mentioned in the story. And finally Laura’s personality is reappearing and she has disengaged herself from the invisibility cloak, passing into visibility.