Flashback, Flashback!

*Says title in the Dora "Backpack, Backpack" voice*

Okay so I took Prof. Burton seriously when he said only one hour. I timed myself and once the time was up, it was up. So here it is!

Flashbacks have been used throughout literature in a variety of ways. Most commonly flashbacks have been used to elicit and portray a change in characters as seen with Margaret Edson’s film version of the play Wit and Charles Dicken’s  A Christmas Carol.  Edson portrays a proud woman, Vivian Bearing, who has Scrooge like qualities such as her lack of sympathy towards others because she is too focused on advancing herself intellectually. While suffering from cancer, Vivian goes through a series of flashbacks of moments in her own life to see how she, herself, has stopped her own progression and happiness. On the other hand, Dickens tells of a bitter old man, Ebenezer Scrooge, whose only concern is money and himself. Ebenezer also goes through a journey through flashbacks to see how his actions have effected and continue to affect others. Although both works of literature use flashbacks as a journey to change, Wit’s portrayal shows how Vivian must look within herself to see that it was her own choices that brought her to where she is now in contrast to Scrooge’s lesson of looking outside of himself and realizing the affect he has on others.

            While in the hospital, Vivian sees a flashback of a childhood memory where she is talking to her father about the word soporific. At first, Vivian merely observes the scene before taking the place of her younger-self. While in the flashback Vivian still looks the same; her head is still bald, she’s in a hospital gown, but this time there is a difference. She has taken on the persona of the child version of herself. She is youthful in thoughts, energetic, and excited about the world. Her childhood innocence portrays the pure love she once had for literature, for it started out as something to be enjoyed and filled her with happiness. In contrast, Scrooge’s flashback of his childhood years paints a different picture. He is sad and all alone, with no one there. His life started out dreary and as the present day Scrooge observes his dark past he is able to see from another perspective his life and how the choices of others affected him. Looking at his life from the outside Scrooge is able to see how he did not have much light in his world to start with and how he has basked in that state, instead of trying to change it. Because Scrooge was merely observing  the audience doesn’t get the same feeling that are elicited when Vivian takes on her childhood persona. While participating in the flashback, Vivian is able to see how far she has come from living and enjoying her life like she did as a child. Looking inside herself, allows Vivian to  reevaluate her current condition and see that she wasn’t always miserable, instead she brought it upon herself; in contrast, Scrooge’s flashbacks through a third party allow him to see that lack of progress he has made in his life.

            While reminiscing about her young adult years, Vivian flashes back to her days in college. In this scene, she is talking to her professor about a paper she had written that the professor found disappointing. The present day Vivian replaces her college-self as the professor admonishes her lack of understand of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet X. After this chastening, the professor advises Vivian to not worry about the paper and instead to go outside and socialize, live life. Coming out of the flashback, Vivian remarks that instead she went back to the library. In this flashback, the audience is able to see how Vivian yearns for the intellectual side of things, even in her current state, she places herself back in the shoes of a college girl trying to justify a paper that was not right. It is also through this flashback that one can see how Vivian loses her sense of wonder about the world and interacting with others and instead focuses on her own intellectual improvement. In contrast, Scrooge’s flashback to his young adult years show a time of happiness. He observing a party in which the young Scrooge is with a beautiful woman, the love of his life. She makes him happy and it seems as if though Scrooge’s life is beginning to look up. But as with Vivian’s own choice of going back to the library, Scrooge made a choice to pursue money and greed instead of a happy life with the woman he loved. And this choice broke the woman’s heart, and affected her in ways that Scrooge wouldn’t know about until he witnessed the flashback all those years later. Both of these flashbacks showed pivotal moments in Vivian and Scrooge’s lives, they show the moment of decline in the characters’ lives because of their greed. By looking in herself, Vivian is able to see that her greed for knowledge is the beginning of her decline to her present state, while Scrooge is able to see that not only does his actions affect himself but they have a detrimental effect on others.

            Vivian also witnesses a flashback of her adult years as a professor. After a lecture a student approached her desk to ask for an extension on his paper because his grandmother had died and he needed to travel to her funeral. Lacking mercy and sympathy for the student’s current condition, Vivian states that she will not allow for an extension and that either the boy turn his paper in early or not at all. Vivian compares this moment to herself in the hospital, how when she needed sympathy, no one was there to give it. By looking at her past actions and comparing them to her present state, Vivian is able to see not only how it feels to be without the sympathy of others but also gives her a look into how she is perceived by others. Not as someone great, but rather someone to be feared and strongly disliked. In contrast, Scrooge sees a flashback of an earlier moment, where he denied Bob Cratchit a wage large enough to treat Tiny Tim’s sickness. Scrooge is then shown a present day glimpse into the life of the Cratchit’s where they have a small Christmas dinner and the sadness of the parents because the inability to fully help their son. Scrooge is able to see that because of his greed and unsympathetic ways, he is affecting more people than he realizes. With an inside look into her own life, Vivian can see that  her lack of sympathy brought her to her sad and lonely present state; in contrast, Scrooge’s look into the life of others show how he has an effect on their lives and truly does make a difference, in this particular case that difference is bad.

            After going through these series of flashbacks, Vivian is still in the hospital with a changed heart, only now she is dying. Along the journey of flashbacks, she has seen where she came from, her decisions that brought her to where she is now, and what she desires for herself, that being sympathy and real human interactions, in the present and future. At the end of the play, Vivian is finally released by death, which she was able to choose because Susie, the nurse, had taken the time to explain the different options Vivian had. This small action Susie took not only fulfilled the desire Vivian had to have someone who truly cared about her, but also allowed Vivian to be released- through death- from her current unhappy state. Vivian is finally able to see that it is not all about the intellectual pursuits, but rather the love extended towards others that really matters. In contrast, at the end of Scrooge’s tale not only has his heart been changed by the flashbacks he has witnessed but he also has the opportunity to make things right. He is released from his current unhappy state by helping out the Cratchits as well as changing his outlook on life, that being it’s not about the money it is about the people. While at the end Vivian is released through death and Scrooge is released from his present state with an opportunity to fix his life, it is through the use of flashbacks that the change was elicited in both of these characters. Vivian had to look within herself to see how she had been brought to where she was currently at to learn the lesson of where she needed to go and how, and Scrooge had to look into the lives of others to see how his actions affected others and how he could fix the wrongs he had committed.