Joyce Carol Oates’ “The Tattooed Girl” appeared to me, upon first reading, to be a novel about the randomness of life interrupting discipline. Much of the life that interrupts the discipline of the novel, the discipline of Oates’ protagonist Joshua Seigl, is death. In fact, the process of decline that Seigl goes through in the novel often contrasts with the very disciplined nature of the person that he is; this man who has spent his life as an academic, an intellectual, a writer, in the world of logic and a literary career that gave him acclaim and celebrity. With his diagnosis of a nerve disease in the opening of the novel, Seigl is faced with two situations with his becoming ill and meeting Alma, or possibly one that propels the other, which essentially both force him to question his life of discipline and concede to that discipline.
The relationship between Seigl and the Alma, who he meets in a bookstore and is instantly enamored with, enough to offer her a job as his assistant, is, needless to say, quite complicated. There is a connection between them that appears to transcend class, intellectual status and even ethnicity. Instantly, Seigl is attracted to her on multiple levels upon their meeting, before even speaking to her. “..he wasn’t a man who took much notice of other people, even sexually attractive young people.” (75) One may read this initial sexual attraction to her as the reason he speaks to her, but in their conversation and seeing her more closely, there is an almost visceral, mercurial connection of empathy he feels for her. “The girl turned blank blinking eyes toward Seigl, wiping her nose with the edge of her hand… The mark on her cheek was unfortunate: it made her look smudged, despoiled. Your impulse was to reach out and brush the blemish away.” (74) It is through this attraction, this connection, that Seigl invites Alma into his home and employ, fully aware of the differences between them. In fact, Seigl is willing to disregard his caution even after experiencing her more simple ways of thinking about the world, in their conversation over the existence and persecution of witches, when Alma cannot reconcile the existence of people persecuted as witches and the stereotypical witches of popular myth.
In a novel that leaves much to individual interpretation, I read Seigl’s physical decline as something, even with all his intellect, he was unprepared for. I do not believe that Seigl and Alma’s relationship was as simple as one in which he overlooked all else—especially Alma’s deep seated prejudices—in order to have a relationship with her, to understand her. Seigl has spent his career seeking to understand those familiar but distant to him; for instance, his signature work is a novel based on his grandparents’ experiences, not his own, and he works heavily in his translations, translating the work of others into his own language. While Seigl struggles to understand Alma, he is at the same time struggling to understand his physical state, his illness, what is wrong with him. “Seigl persisted. “Surely there must be a gene. There’s a gene for everything now.” (44) And it is this unknown, this unnamed illness, that throws such confusion into Seigl’s life. He cannot understand what is bringing about his decline and death, and unable to deal with that uncertainty he turns to his work, to the complicated relationship he has with Alma.
If one is to read the novel as Oates’ commenting on the nature of decline, on the unexpected, unknowable way in which our lives can come to end and for which we can never properly, for lack of a better word, prepare for, one may also read the novel as a comment on death’s random and memorial aspects. If death can occur from this unexpected, causeless disease that cumulates in a random and final ending of a life, then what is left behind—in terms of one’s life’s work and the people one has affected—is equally difficult to define. Throughout the novel there are multiple references to literature and other work as the product of people’s lives that may not always find an audience. For instance, upon meeting Alma, Seigl comments that “[there is] Nothing so sad as unwanted books. Like spurned hearts.” (74) This image of these books, the product of people’s minds and lives as possibly not accomplishing their task of reaching and being appreciated by others is especially relevant to Seigl’s life and death. Seigl is a writer who has during his life achieved fame and acclaim, and these images represent all the others who, like him, tried and were unable to achieve what he did. And that is even not to say that, after Seigl has gone, his work will continue to endure. The novel leaves that question up to imagination, whether or not, after all that was Seigl’s life, his work will endure. An image that occurs during the scene in which Seigl dies perfectly illustrates this idea: “’This we can leave in the grass!’ Seigl took the cane from her and flung it aside. Days later it would be discovered amid the grave markers of strangers and brought to the cemetery groundskeeper.” (282) In this instance, Seigl is willfully tossing aside what he practically needs, and lets the cane simply fall, to be found by others who may or may not be able to interpret what it means, or the story behind it. Much like his work, his published books.
Likewise, Seigl’s death is described as a sudden, ultimate event. “His face was contorted, almost unrecognizable… she saw him loose his balance and fall backward… like a dead weight…” (283) In other words, at Seigl’s end, he changes briefly from the person he was and then dies. Similarly, what Seigl does leave behind in the novel, Alma, is equally unsure what to make of his life, of what has happened. “…when she woke each time he was still dead.” (287) She also appears unable to comprehend his religion at his funeral “(A strange chapel it was: no cross…)” (288) In a sense, Seigl and her relationship with him has given Alma a new life, although how that life will be is not defined in the novel. Like his work and the possibilities of Seigl being remembered throughout history, the effect he has had on Alma is equally ambiguous, unknown, and left up to whatever random fate the future may bring.
