In the memoir, Wild, by Cheryl Strayed on page 241, the narrator talks about a necklace given as a gift by a friend.
I looked at the padded envelope. It was from my friend Laura in Minneapolis. I opened the envelope and pulled its contents out: a letter folded around a necklace she’d made for me in honor of my new name. STRAYED it said in blocky silver letters on a ball-link chain. At first glance, it looked like it said STARVED because the Y was slightly different than all of the other letters—fatter and squatter and cast from a different mold, and my mind scrambled the letters into a familiar word.
Earlier in the book we learned that the narrator chose a new name for herself after she got divorced. She picked a name that was meaningful to her. She told us on page 97:
I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn’t embrace the word as my new name because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and from the wild places my straying had brought me, I know things I couldn’t have known before.
In what ways was the dramatic object of the necklace symbolic in the narration?
What’s the difference between straying and starving?
And in how many different ways did the narrator experience both?
And what do either straying or starving have to do with the void, which comes up on page 127 when the narrator encounters a woman in the restroom in Reno who comments on the feather Cheryl has attached to her pack.
“It’s got to be a corvid,” she said, reaching over to touch it delicately with one finger. “It’s either a raven or a crow, a symbol of the void,” she added in a mystical tone.
“The void?” I asked, crestfallen.
“It’s a good thing,” she said. “It’s the place where things are born, where they begin. Think about how a black hole absorbs energy and then releases it as something new and alive.”
Straying. Settled. Starving. Sated. Empty. Full. How are these ideas all explored in the story?
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There are a lot of connections between all these ideas. She feels like a stray, an orphan. She has to be careful not to stray from the trail, especially when it is covered in snow and ice and she can’t see the trail. When you can’t see your path in front of you, it’s time to step carefully to avoid falling over the edge… into the void! And then there was the whole issue of food — and she was ‘starved’ on the trail, eating the boring meals-ready-to-eat and being overwhelmed with happiness when it was time to step off the trail for a break and have a burger and fries. When she had no money and people were eating all around her… which is the way it is for strays… the book was perfect in the way all these issues were tied together.
Perceptive question. She was starving physically and starving for her sense of self as well- the same parallels that work with the strayed. It seems she needed to be empty before she could be filled or sated, only when we are empty (or in the void) can we be open to receiving knowledge. The layers she explores throughout this book is what make it such a powerful read.
It seems that Cheryl is looking for her identity on this spiritual quest. She said in the Berkeley reading that she started off too immersed in her pain and her life was all about that, but on the journey she had to focus on the physical world and how she had to put one foot in front of the other. It seems to me that needing to survive in a physical way, struggling with the realities of blisters and bears, rocks and ice, gravity and lost boots focused her in the wild, fed her starving orphan self. The corvid chapter is one of my favorites–along with the moment she sees the red fox, and cries out for it to come back! Then screams for her mother–into the void, with a new found voice that is real–she’s no longer lost in drugs, no longer lost. In the emptiness she finds fullness.
Yes, thanks Sue. This sound on track for me. She had to become empty before she could become full. And perhaps, we get the sense, that this could happen again or be a necessary pattern for living. To become empty and then become full as a natural part of the growing and healing journey.
Thanks for this perception comment, Linda. It does seem like a story of coming into the moment so she could stop reeling from the pain of her past. There’s a rebirth in event that, isn’t there? Pulling herself out of the world and taking the focus off her grief long enough to move forward one step at a time on the trail. You’ve summed it up well here. Thanks!
Just like the old saying “Everyone who wanders is not lost,” I think needed to stray, go off the beaten path, in order to find herself. It’s interesting that it’s also past tense. She strayed, but now she’s returned.
When Cheryl writes about each of these feelings, I easily put myself in her boots. When she’s lost, starving, full you feel all of it! And I really can’t imagine being in her boots 4real. I’ll admit it – too hard for me – but that’s what makes this book Inspirational. I can strive harder, in all that I do!
and I do!