Dee seemed to be very concerned that the soldier made it home safely to the girl he loved. Pasquel later found Dee hiding out in the pillbox, and they ended up discussing the relationship of the soldier and the girl again. Why was this so important to Dee? Did she feel like she could relate to the relationship these two people might have had, assuming Pasquel's and Dee's inferences about them were true.
As we continue to read, we find that the soldier was not longing to come home safely to the girl he was presumably in love with, but instead to his piano instructor. The one man he shared more than a friendship with, who he thought about every night before he fell asleep. "After the first swing, it is done: the painter will not make it home to Germany, to his piano instructor or his sister- killed anyway, a week ago, in a fire at the munitions plant where she worked, his spoiled sister whose photograph he carried to war and whose portrait he painted twice on the wall of a pillbox bunker on the Italian coast." (Walter 328). The girl in the paintings ended up to be his sister, and if Dee knew that I believe she would have felt a much different connection to the painting than she did when she thought it was the woman the painter loved. However, I am still unsure why Dee was so infatuated with the painting and the love story she connected it with.
I think Dee fixated on these paintings and the fictional love story because she connected it to her own life. She wanted to believe that the painter and the fictional lover she made up would get back together against all odds, so she would have hope for her own love life. Her relationship with Richard Burton ended pretty badly and she probably felt really alone. Especially when a person is sick, they want someone who will support them. Being so helpless with no one familiar around to comfort her probably felt really lonely. That is probably part of the reason why Dee developed such a strong connection with Pasquale; because she needed someone to help her.
ReplyDelete"'And they got married?' Dee said.
Pasquale could see it all laid out before him. 'Yes.'
'Did they have children?'
'Un bambino," Pasquale said-a boy. He surprised himself by saying this, and his chest ached the way his belly sometimes did after a big meal; it was all just too much.
'You told me the other nigh that you would have crawled from Rome to see me' Dee squeezed Pasquale's arm. 'That was the loveliest thing to say.'"(Walter 264)
The way Dee talks to Pasquale in this passage proves that she just wants to know that there is someone who cares about her(Pasquale). People need to believe in love and need to feel love. I think that is why so many people watch romance movies or read romance stories; they want to know that it is possible to get that happy ending and that they can be loved. I think this is also the same reason why Claire and Shane had such a strong reaction to Lydia's play, it made them believe in love again.