"shaping" time

I am interested in the way in which Rhoda seems to refuse form.  At the very beginning of the novel, she claims that she “hears a sound,” which may seem, on the surface, more vague than the other children’s descriptions of visual or auditory imagery.  However, Rhoda claims to identify with the wave frequency itself—that which produces sound rather than our subjective labeling of what this sound is (her mimicking the sound “chirp cheep” can be seen as an effort to get at this essence).  Sound, as a wave, oscillates in frequency, conveying Rhoda’s desire to refuse a definite form.  Furthermore, in the classroom, when Rhoda remains after all of the other children have left, she claims that she only “sees figures” (13) when the other children write down answers to the math problem.  Whereas the other children write down numerical answers to the math problems, Rhoda sees/understands the frightening concept of time itself:  “the loop of the figure is beginning to fill with time; it holds the world in it.  I begin to draw a figure and the world is looped in it, and I myself am outside the loop.”  By having no form—Louis even claims that Rhoda “has no body as the others have” (14)—Rhoda is able to immortalize herself outside this loop of time, simultaneously denying and preserving her identity.  

The most significant aspect of Rhoda’s refusal of form appears on page 29 as she gazes in the mirror.  She claims that she “has no face” and “shifts and changes.”  Rhoda’s denial of form which conveys a certain lack of self-identity/affirmation conveys not only her isolation but also her inability to project desire.  Crying “Oh, to whom?”  Rhoda reveals her own insecurities about self, form, and objects of desire.  Associated with the water/waves as she makes petals float on the surface, Rhoda thinks of her mind “pouring out” as she tries to stop her “hopeless desire” to be Susan or Jinny.  Since she is associated with water and reflections, Rhoda is able to take on many shapes/forms and not be singular in her identity.  She conceptualizes the past in terms of forms and shapes—the school term being “done with” and “in one shape” (45) and views “silence” itself as taking a form—by “closing in” on her.  Rhoda is afraid of the finality of the past, therefore visualizing it as having a form.