Twelve Blue's Identity
“Twelve Blue” by Michael Joyce is a fictional telling of twelve interwoven stories that all intertwine identity and community. If you view it as one coherent story you will drive yourself insane. The reader only has minuscule thoughts from the different characters then it shifts,“The different story lines shift the emphasis to different characters and offer some insights into their thoughts” wrote Bárbara Bordalejo for “I love E-Poetry”. The insight gathered from these fragments gives insight into character's thoughts and thus their identity. You think therefore you are and you are what you think. As for the fragmented nature, the reader has to accept that the story is quite disjointed and it jumps from scene to scene with seemingly no explanation and or reason. However, when as the reader you assess what you have read when you decide you have finished the piece then it becomes clear that the story is disjointed but also connected through the theme of identity. On a much more simplistic level the piece is connected to the river in that the river connects to the identity of the community.
To summarize all the pieces story would be ridiculous especially because it is very difficult to tell if I have even made it through them all myself. The story seems to be an endless loop even though it isn’t. One piece of the story that stood out to me was from the piece with the link titled “a surprise”, so simple and pure. It must have been one of the threads that was not blue, in the tragic sense of the world. In that section a father acquires an amusement park ride and assembles it with much sweat and grit. Upon completing the task he offers his wife and daughter a ride to which they could not refuse even though very timid. When the ride works smoothly and all three are filled with pure joy that is one of the happiest moments in the entirety of "Twelve Blue". This section stood out to me because it is about the moment shared between all of the family members. Much is left to the reader because we only get fragments of a much bigger picture. With this fragment it is feasible to presume that who this young girl will grow up to be and identify as will come from her parents especially because of her good experiences with them. Coming of age of young women is another underlying theme in the entire piece, which will tie in to how they will form their identities.
