#62 Really, Doesn’t Crime Pay? (Myrna)- Alice Walker
Myrna is a young wife of Ruel Johnson. She wants to be a writer but is forbidden to pursue this from
her husband. Her creativity will not be denied however as she writes everyday
in her journals:
“Its over twenty years worth and would fill, easily, a small
shed.”
These journal entries is what we are reading. Unfortunately
these snippets are as far as she gets:
“And all the while I
was grieving over my last story. Outlined—which is as far as I take stories
now—but dead in embryo. My hand stilled by cowardice, my heart the heart of a
slave.”
She is stilted, depressed and bored: “I must really think of
something better to do than kill myself.”
She befriends a man, a vagabond who claims to also be a writer.
He is younger than her husband and gives her attention she craves. He finds her
notebooks, convinces Myrna to hand them over to him and promises that he will
try to make her the Next Nora Hurston! She is deceived and betrayed. Her only joy left in life is denying her
husband a child.
Notable Passages: “…nobody aught to look on other people’s
confusion with a cold eye.”
“I wonder if he feels our will clashing in the dark.
Sometimes I see the sparks fly inside my head. It is amazing how normal everything
is.”
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