What do you think is happening to Ona in the scene in which she recalls her brother and her native tongue? Is this "a mix-up in her head," as Ted believes, or "magic," as Belle believes? Or is it something else?
Created: 04/16/17
Replies: 6
Join Date: 10/15/10
Posts: 3442
What do you think is happening to Ona in the scene in which she recalls her brother and her native tongue? Is this "a mix-up in her head," as Ted believes, or "magic," as Belle believes? Or is it something else?
Join Date: 08/16/11
Posts: 25
I suppose it could be described many ways, I lean more towards what many would describe as magic. My grandma had Norwegian, a language her parents spoke but she never spoke, come back to her in later years. This may be a more common experience than we know. Ona's parents absolutely did not want her to speak Lithuanian, wanting to give her a chance as an American girl. She had a mix of a very carefully controlled innocent childhood along with her old wild and "artsy" side. She experiences the death of a brother on ship, an unplanned pregnancy along with a loveless marriage to a very staid and troubled man and many more difficult circumstances. The boy reminded her of young people of her youth. She finally relaxed and felt love and respect from him. It didn't surprise me that those words she probably heard again and again as a child came back to her as well as the brother she never knew.
Join Date: 10/12/11
Posts: 256
Sometimes a person's past is buried deep into one's subconscious. Perhaps something that happened in a person's past may be revealed by a particular incident or conversation that jars the hidden memory. I think this is what happened to Ona. She is opening herself and her secrets to a young boy and in doing so is remembering some integral parts of her past.
Join Date: 04/07/12
Posts: 265
There were many Boy Scouts who tried to help Ona, but she nevr liked any of them. Once "the boy" arrived, she realized that he was special. He really listened to her and didn't seem to regard her as an old relic that he had to do chores for. I think his personality and quirkiness triggered something in her that made her revisit her youth.
Join Date: 09/15/16
Posts: 53
I think Ona had some supressed memories. Telling her life story to the boy on the tape recorder helped her remember things she had not thought of in a long time. Ona stated ever since she met the boy she was having some of her native language come back to her. She even told the boy "Secrets" that she hadn't told anyone else because she trusted him.
Her parents wanted her to become an American and wanted her to speak in English. They didn't talk to her much in her naitive language once they came to America. The trauma of watching her brother die and have her parents weigh him down with stones so he would sink in the ocean had to be traumatic. I think when her own son, Frankie, had to send the dead soldiers to Ocean & Ona made the statement that she felt like she was right there with him, she recalled her own brother's death. She hated that her son had to do that knowing how hard it was for her own parents.
Join Date: 10/25/12
Posts: 83
As people age and particularly when they become very old they remember their childhood and earlier years easier than the present. Perhaps the boy reminded her of her brother and then the memories of her childhood surfaced.
Join Date: 05/29/15
Posts: 460
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