A to Z Challenge 2015 - Emotions & Reactions - N is for Numbness (writing discussion & fiction)

This year for the A to Z Challenge, I'm investigating emotions and reactions and their use to in writing. So, I'll be talking about my first thoughts as a writer when I think about the words we use to describe emotions and my experience of their use in literature.

numbness

numbness: the state of lack of feeling, deadness, insensibility.

As opposed to boredom, which is loss of interest, numbness is a total lack of feeling. When I think about numbness, the idea that comes to mind is that nothing is felt, and in a lot of cases, nothing is thought either. Numbness is the mind shutting down, unable, or unwilling to cope with the emotions that would otherwise ensue.

Shock can be one source of numbness, what the person is seeing is just too incredible to process and, in this case, it may be a fleeting reaction. This was used to great effect in The Lady in White, a ghost story starring Lukas Haas. A subplot of the story is that a school janitor is accused of the killing of children over a number of years, he is black and an easy target, but, against the odds, he is freed when it is clear he couldn't have done it. His wife is overjoyed to see him and stands one side of the car in which he is sitting. One of the mothers of the dead children bends down to the other side of the car, apparently in reconciliation, but then shoots the man. His wife, who has just watched her husband;s blood splatter on the car window goes completely blank. She stands up, walking away, the crowd parting in front of her, and it is not until she collapses that people realise she has been shot as well. It is an emotionally charged, shocking scene, and all because of the woman's total lack of reaction.

It is the contrast that makes this use of numbness so strong.

However, numbness can also be a slow-growing thing, a disinterest in the world, a refusal to react to it, which is cultivated over years. This type of numbness is a protection, the armour someone wears after disappointment, or difficulty. It's a kind of torpor, a self-induced hibernation, sometimes only mental, sometimes physical as well. It is the awakening from this 'sleep' that can form the pivot of a story, which is especially interesting when people don't even know they have cultivated a numbness in their lives. Routine, the use of reactions, like grumpiness, that are so familiar they are no longer emotions touching the mind, merely part of the armour,

This is used a lot in little orphan annie style stories, Annie being one of them, where a perpetually grumpy old man is shown the delight of the world again through the eyes of a child. Pollyanna has a similar character in Mr Pendergast. These characters are set in their ways, their only reaction the habitual grump, which I would say is so ingrained it has ceased to mean anything. They are, for all intents and purposes, numb to their world. Then, along comes 'a little ray of sunshine'.

The most difficult challenge, I think, is to write from the perspective of the numb character. If anyone has read I Am David by Anne Holme, about a boy that escapes a labour camp which is the only life he can remember, they will have read this awakening from numbness expertly done. When David learns to see colours again, it is quite a heart-rending concept.

So, whether it is dramatic contrast, or slow rising from darkness, numbness can be a powerful reaction.

QUESTION: Have you read/watched/written numbness - did you find it an easy concept to grasp?

~

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