Body in the water

“The Hours” by Michael Cunningham is an interesting book; or rather the prologue is very interesting. It was slow at first but then you’re a little confused with what is going on because there is just so much detail, you feel as though you are standing at the edge of the bank, but still at a distance, watching the curiosity and the crinkled concentrated lines on her forehead slowly flatten out and peace and calm take over her features. You notice how she looks around questioningly and you watch with curiosity as she searches around the beach and she finds one stone that is “roughly the size of a pig’s skull (4).” You watch her approach the bank noticing how the water is actually a murky and disgusting yellow rather than the ugly brown, although in my personal opinion the yellow is worse. Dirty yellow just shows a more murky filth, tainted, or disturbed. As you ponder the disgustingness of the water you see Virginia start to walk towards the water, walking inside it with her shows still on and the water coming right up underneath her knees and you want to yell at her, tell her to come out but just as you’re about to you realize just how peaceful she is and how there is really no one who could really stop her at this moment so you pause and let her continue. For a moment you are at peace with her and then she is in the water and you don’t really pay attention because you figure that she can just swim back, but she doesn’t; she lets the current take her and she flows away and you don’t think that about that being the last time that you are going to see her, but it is. Cunningham has this way of writing where you feel as though you are standing near Virginia as she commits suicide, but then at the same time you’re in her thoughts and you can understand what this moment means to her. When she is standing in the water in her head she says “Here, then , is the last moment of true  perception (5)” to some it would seem as though a delusional woman just walked into disgusting water with all of her clothes on, to another it may seemed as though a woman was just in deep thought and she just didn’t understand how she ended up in the water, but if you really knew her you’d know that this was a phase a phase that she wouldn’t be able to escape from, oh she’s been here before, but this time she isn’t strong enough to break out of this phase and this is her way of helping everyone be happy again. The woman in the water is just a blank picture and anyone could make a story on she ended up there. Then it feels as though you are being yanked and you’re at Virginia’s house where her husband, Leonard, has just gotten home and the maid tells him that his wife has gone out and he doesn’t even realize that he is never going to see her again until he sees the note. The note that he will be happier without her and she was the happiest she had been when she was with him, he runs out the house and that is the end of the prologue and the chapter starts. And you wonder about how Virginia got there in the first place and what happens to Leonard. It’s weird the Cunningham opens the book with a suicide.