Crash and Contrast

The vivid imagery Coetzee uses during the bicycle crash in Age of Iron is unlike any other i have read. it is truly disgusting down to every last adjective. But what I found interesting was the comparison Mrs. Curren makes between the crash and a time when her daughter cut her finger in the bread machine. The whole scene with the crash mentions blood so many times that I almost want to stop reading and skip ahead to less gory sections. Her memory of her daughter is so calm and contained compared to the event happening around her in the present time. All this chaos about carnage, and blood and emergency, then a little relief of sorts with her flashback to her wrapping her daughter's finger with pointed maternal care (61-63).

It's interesting how motherly she sounds when she talks about taking care of her daughter. She reassures her daughter by sweetly whispering to her, calmly in the waiting room. The only description we have of her daughter's finger is a "slice." No fountains of blood or butcher chops or any other gross, gory imagery. Just a little, mendable slice.

I feel like this sort of contrast illustrates the urgency Mrs. Curren feels in her life right now. She cannot view anything as simple and calm. Every event seems to be huge, important and complicated. Maybe she chooses to look at it this way because she knows that death will bring no such variety or excitement, but I don't know. I think her sense of urgency definitely stems from her issues dealing with her imminent death. Nothing can be taken for granted and everything must be lived to it's fullest extent. All sounds, visions, smells accounted for. She doesn't want to just write something off as a small happening and dismiss it with few sentences, she doesn't have time for that. That was for her earlier, younger days when she had life ahead of her still, like the memory with her daughter. Now she squeezes every ounce of sensory experience out of life and lives every moment like one big climax. She has to make it interesting, even if it is just a bike crash, it might (probably will) be her last.