Millhauser’s “History of a Disturbance” takes the form of a letter from a man to his wife, and is therefore written in the first and second person. The purpose of the letter is to explain to Elena, the narrator’s wife, why he has been acting differently. It tracks the events within the narrator’s psyche which led to his current state; he first began to feel a weight to words that he had never noticed before, an inability to understand what they really meant, and a contempt for the way they could ruin the things they were trying to describe. This feeling continued to grow and eventually became oppressive, until he could barely recognize a cup as a “cup.” He eventually came to a decision, a “vow,” that he would cast off words entirely and learn to experience the world as pure perception, which would allow him to access the truer, fuller world hiding beneath the world of words and become one with the universe.
I thought this story was an interesting alternate perspective on the loss of language. To me, the premise of a narrator gradually losing the ability to understand words lends itself more to psychological horror than something to be desired. However, the narrator puts forward an interesting and surprisingly convincing argument against the use of words. It is true that they can be reductive, and that may be an inherent feature to them. The struggle to describe complex emotional and sensory experiences using words is one that dates as far back as human history, and it will continue on, probably forever. Our ongoing failure is the reason for the existence of expressive art.
Of course, throughout the entire story the reader is acutely aware of the irony that were it not for words, the story wouldn’t exist. The formatting of the story as a letter written in the first person, from a point in the narrator’s life when he has already decided to cast words off, is an interesting and deliberate choice. The narrator has been forced to return to the world of words in order to implore his wife to join him in wordless existence — the thing he hates most is the only vessel for his message to his wife. The very form that the story takes is itself a counterpoint to the narrator’s argument that words are nothing but detrimental to human beings. Words are proven necessary.
Thanks for this, Grace. I appreciate the irony of his requiring words to make his case. I also like this observation: “To me, the premise of a narrator gradually losing the ability to understand words lends itself more to psychological horror than something to be desired. However, the narrator puts forward an interesting and surprisingly convincing argument against the use of words.” Does this story fall into the realm of the fantastic? In the end, this probably isn’t a significant question, but it’s an interesting one in the context of this class.