Ravens

I chose Ravens because I’ve always been fascinated by their symbolism. Ravens are traditionally understood to represent prophesy or a bad omen. Likewise, Ravens are seen as having a special connection between the physical and spiritual world, likely because, according to their symbolism, they exist in a liminal space between death and life. This fits well into the subject matter of Williams’s chapter. Williams begins the chapter on the topic of her mother’s cancer but later ventures to describe her father’s birthday, her grandparent’s courtship and the changes to Saltair after the Great Depression. I expected the chapter to be entirely about Williams’s mother’s cancer and eventual death and was surprised by these divergences. At first message appears to be: time passes, things change: people die, people are born, and the world drastically changes shape. Upon further inspection, I’d like to argue that while those themes are present, the chapter is speaking about fleeting good moments that become memories and the act of holding onto those memories when things change for the worse (ie Mother’s cancer and the corruption of Saltair). The grandparents hold onto ideas of Saltair the way it was when they courted: glamorous. The Mother and Father hold onto memories of past birthdays. Despite all of this, the raven does symbolize a bad omen, suggesting the general corruption of all things good within this family. The raven’s prophetic symbolism suggests that this corruption, like the Mother’s cancer is inescapable.