Craft Essay: "Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

Lucy Grealy would have led a legitimate suburban childhood had she not, at the age of nine, been diagnosed with cancer in her jaw. Only an unconquerable spirit like Lucy Grealy could begin to write so openly, honestly, truthfully about pain, loss, personal suffering and peer rejection.  What some would view as Greely’s loss becomes the core of strength that she draws upon to write the text.  This book is so movingly composed that the painful, vivid chronicle of her years spent, as a cancer patient becomes a masterpiece. There is a core of competence and control.  We, as the reader, know very early on in the text that we are going to be told a story by someone who knows exactly what she is doing. Anne Patchet in the afterword states that Grealy was:

“Making art, not documenting an event.  That she chose to tell her … story was secondary importance.  Her cancer and subsequent suffering had not made this book.  She had made it.  Her intellect and ability were in every sense larger than the disease” (page 231).

            Some could argue that the crux of the book is Grealy’s battle with cancer.  Others could argue that it is the way in which she perceived herself through the public’s eye.  Yet others could argue that the subject of this book is how Grealy perceives herself individually.  It is this point that Grealy claims her story and her experience as her own. Grealy is not egotistical or pleasure seeking. She never urges the reader to feel sorry for her. There is a fluidity that permeates throughout the text that lets us the reader into the shadowy, unconventional psyche that is Lucy Grealy. Patchet even addresses this issue as well when she says:

“Lucy claimed complete ownership of her history.  It was her world and she would present it the way she wanted to.  Her memory and her desire were indeed the facts” (page 231).

            This overall theme of inner psyche and Grealy’s ability to write is what ushers us into the labyrinth of her mind that is rich and yet claustrophobic ––– both inside and outside.  This is where the story truly takes place.  Immersed with both the simplicity of a child and the insight of an adult pondering on past situations, Grealy’s narrative replicates what many of us can remember feeling when we were undergoing a minor illness: delight at getting special attention from family and friends, privately thrilled at missing school and always eager to miss more. She enables us to see her world from her perspective that can be so unemotionally cruel and yet so brutally harsh. This can be seen when Grealy who has just finished chemotherapy, a few months before, and now is looking for the opportunity to work in horse stables.

                        “Did you tell them about yourself?”

                        I hesitated, and lied.  “Yes, of course I did.”

                        “Are you sure they know you were sick?  Will you be up for this?”

                        “Of course I am,” I replied in my most petulant adolescent tone.

In actuality it hadn’t occurred to me to mention cancer, or my face, to Mrs. Daniels  (page 5-6).

            We can hardly miss the exasperation of the fourteen-year-old Grealy who doesn’t even want to think about her recent bout with cancer, or her surgery that removed a third of her jaw, or how that surgery has permanently distorted her face.  There is also rage that is apparent here that Grealy can’t even comprehend where her mother is coming from.  Is this question a place of real concern and empathy, or is Grealy’s mother trying to prepare her for the outside, cruel world?  Every word in this artfully simple exchange is cleverly choreographed into an unpleasant dance of territory, hostility, dominance and submission.  What is not being said is just as important as what is being said.  Is there desperation being generated when she said, “it hadn’t occurred to me”; that Grealy wants nothing more than to be normal once more?  Is it because of her mother’s question that Grealy has to face the fact that she is indeed not normal?  We can see the look of shock and disbelief on Grealy’s face when her mother asks this question, even though the author has chosen not to say that within the text.  The shock and disbelief are present when Grealy said “my most petulant tone”.  We can feel Grealy’s pain that it is her own mother who addresses this issue of her face that then riddles Grealy the rest of her life.  Is there a distancing and chilliness that occur?  Throughout the book Grealy indicates how innocent she was of her illness, even while going through more than two and a half years of radiation and chemotherapy and fifteen years of reconstructive surgeries.

            It is Grealy herself who deals with the matter of her mother when she says:

“When dealing with my mother, one always had to act in a delicate and prescribed way, though the exact rules of protocol seemed to shift frequently and without advance notice” (page 8).

Merriam- Webster dictionary defines the word dealing as: “The actions that are a main part of the relationship between people, groups, organizations, etc.: social or business interactions, or a way of behaving or of doing business” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).  Grealy’s attitude of “dealing with my mother” takes on a position of delicacy and fragility. It then becomes this mammoth weight that she must continually live up to.  The weight that Grealy must live up to is her mother’s expectations of her.  If the rules are always changing and without notice, how is one to live up to them?  A simple act like crying becomes this life changing moment where Grealy feels she cannot express her own emotions.

“There was no need to cry, that everything would be all right, that I mustn’t cry.  How could she know I would take her so seriously?  She went on to explain how disappointed she was that I’d cried even before Dr. Woolf put the needle in me” (page 78).

            We can perceive the discomfort, hesitation, and the suppressed shame that leads Grealy to respond the way she does.  We understand immediately why Grealy might have chosen the word “seriously”–––– I would take her so seriously ––– by the end of that sentence we know Grealy has already materialized into something stronger than herself.  One may question Grealy’s word choice of seriously.  What does she mean by seriously?  Merriam-Webster defines seriously as: “In a sincere manner: earnestly ­­–– speaking seriously.  To a series extent: severely, extremely ­­––– seriously injured” (Merriam-Webster: Seriously).  Is this really though what Grealy is inflecting in this moment?  This moment of fear has become much more than just crying.  The moment takes on Grealy’s ability to face what cancer has really done to her.  Grealy describes it as:

“Lack of meaning had it’s own shape; it groped in the darkness, spoke to me only from a hole in the wall late at night, when I dreamed of witches who apologized profusely before inserting their singing knives into me, explaining they were sorry” (page 44).

            Consider how another writer could have written that scene:  Lucy, dear, you mustn’t cry.  You’ve been such a brave little girl up until now.  Why the doctor hasn’t even given you the shot and your already hysterical.  Buck up, and don’t disappoint me again.  There is a loss of meaning in the lines I just wrote.  Grealy doesn’t make this moment as harsh I have, but instills a deeper urgency to “be a brave little girl”.  Grealy describes her mother’s nature and response as potentially something wrong with either of them, or even both of them.  The “how disappointed she was that I’d cried even before Dr. Woolf put the needle in me,” she consciously or unconsciously reminds us that there is so much more than cancer at stake here.

“There was no way I could discuss it.  If the word death was even mentioned in my presence, I would collapse.  At night I dreamed of being carted off and left alone in a dark, cold room filled with bones (page 65).

            I find it fascinating that Grealy starts talking about death by not even saying the word death ––– “no way I could discuss it”.  But the word it, becomes the word death in the next sentence and is italicized.  Is Grealy only placing emphasis on the word, death?  Is Grealy internally thinking about her own death? Or is Grealy thinking about the larger issue of exactly what the circumstances of her death will be?  Tecumseh has said in regard to death that:

“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.  Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”

            Grealy doesn’t seem to fear death.  She barely speaks of it and it is only in the afterword that once again death is only briefly mentioned.  Death is not the issue.  Cancer isn’t the issue.  The issue for Grealy is her face.  Her face becomes everything she wants to be and cannot.  Her face becomes the ruling factor of her life, overpowering everything else.  She cannot see who she is at her core.  She cannot see who she is without her distorted face.  She sees only ugliness and distortion. To some degree, you get the feeling that she internalizes so much. It is not just merely society that is judging her, she is also judging herself.  Society puts so much pressure on beauty and appearance that it is no wonder Grealy’s struggle is internalized.  Her face becomes the reflection of who she is on the inside.  She is tormented from within as well as from without.  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said that:

“People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within”.

The issue for Grealy –––for nearly all the text ––– is that the “sun” is never out.  The only relief, if you can call it that, is when she faces surgery after surgery.  Those surgeries allow hope that the outcome will be everything she has ever imagined.  But those surgeries only bring more disappointment. With the disappointment, one could say, comes only a deeper resentment of her face.  It is not until the very end of the book that Grealy finally sees the “light from within”.  What a price to pay for her to finally reach that point.  Fifteen years of failed surgeries, the emotional and mental toll that Grealy had to pay to finally reach this point of acceptance.

“ Without another operation to hang all on, I was completely on my own… something inside me started to miss me.  A part of me, one that had always been there, organically knew I was whole” (page 221).

            In this moment Grealy has reached the point that the price she paid to get there was worth it.  She realizes, for her, that she had to have those experiences to finally listen to her own inner voice of who she really is.

“I experienced a moment of freedom I’d been practicing for behind my Halloween mask… I had expected my liberation to come from getting a new face to put on, but now I saw it come from shedding something, shedding my image” (page 222).

            Her own internalized image of who she was was the real issue and not her face.  If we can go back to my quote about the satin-glass window, she had to find the light within herself ––– her eternal truth about herself.

“I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever… I know now that isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all of our lives to remember the most basic things” (page 222).

            Even though Grealy never fully addresses her acceptance of herself or her face I tend to believe that she is slowly working towards acceptance based on her text.  “Shedding my image” implies that if she can look beyond the physical aspects of her face that she can and will see who she is with or without her face.  Her image is simply the way she views herself.  Negative self-perception plagues many of us. Who we see in the mirror, when we look, may not necessarily be who we really are or who we really present to the world. “Working hard” implies Grealy’s life long struggle to get where she is by the end of the text.  Even though her text may end, her struggle to acceptance does not.  Again, there is more to the text than what Grealy writes.  The scene of her looking at her reflection, holding her cup, sets the internal dialogue Grealy is having.  She, in that moment, begins to finally ponder who she really is.

            The pain and even joy of that moment resonates because so many of us, as her readers, can and do relate to this journey to find the self.  For us to strip away all the titles: father, mother, brother, sister, grandparent, aunt, uncle and so on, responsibility as parent, husband, wife, caregiver and even employee.  If we can strip away everything we label ourselves can we find who we really are?  If we take away everything we say about ourselves can we find who we really are?  This is Grealy’s deeper struggle.  Her distorted face has been the only identity she knows and without it ––– who is she really?

            It’s sad knowing that Grealy never had the chance to “literally” explore who she was beyond her face.  It’s sad knowing that we as readers can never have the chance to explore that Grealy was beyond her appearance.  Knowing that she died of an overdose only makes this story that much more painful.  Credit must be given to Ann Patchett, in her afterword, that she never mentions the overdose.

                        “You think I have talent, don’t you?” she said.

                        “Absolutely.”

                        “Okay,” she said.  “That’s all.” And she hung up.

                        She was gone.

                        I want the chance to say it again. Absolutely (page 236).

            It is after all Grealy’s talent for writing that sheds light into her mind and life.  It is her way with words that lingers with you.  It is the way she tells her story that resonates.  Her experience and her life have become a universal truth that we all share.  We are all on a journey to find ourselves, accept ourselves, and even love ourselves.  In the end, it is not whether we have been capable of finding our selves that matters, but how we work to it. Every person has their own journey, their own story to tell. It is in this realm that writers write, where stories are created and told.

Works Cited

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 19 March 2014 <www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dealing?show=0&t=1395249912>.

Merriam-Webster: Seriously. 19 March 2014 <www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/seriously>.