"I'm awfully giddy": language repetition and the rupture of time

Narrative structure ruptures—even more so than in previous parts of the novel—in the final pages of Voyage in the Dark.  Anna’s hallucinations of the Carnival celebration during her childhood contain repeated words and phrases from her reality in the bedroom—the two realities conflated such that each reality seems to have equal causal effect on the other.  Anna says, “I’m giddy . . . I’m awfully giddy” (185) and then in the italicized section her language repeats “I’m awfully giddy” (186).  Perhaps the conflation of these two realities points to the performative reality of the masquerade—namely that by wearing white masks, the slaves perform the roles of their masters in this public space, confusing social roles in an acceptable and contained arena.  Unlike the slaves (who publicly perform a different role) and the masters (who function as the audience), Anna rather occupies a liminal space—“between the slats of the jalousies,” where she can safely watch the masquerade. 

This hallucination changes, however, demonstrating the way in which the present imposes itself on this memory.  Anna repeats “I’m giddy” (186), and then in the following italics section, she imagines herself dancing:  “we went on dancing forwards and backwards backwards and forwards whirling round and round” (186).  Thus, the insertion of herself into the action of the Carnival (the dancing) seems to be caused by her present feeling of “giddiness” in the bedroom (possibly due to blood loss, fatigue, etc.).  Anna’s “fall” in her memory/hallucination is continued into the present moment where she claims, “I fell. . . . I fell for a hell of a long time then” ( 187).  Movements and sounds subsume language and narrative linearity, perhaps suggesting the text’s attempt to transgress social expectations of narrative form.