Mama Day

George’s inability to find Willow Springs on a map is symbolic of his larger character flaw: his inability to recognize, and improvise, when logic falls short. His insistence on finding a rational explanation for everything paralyzes him from considering the alternative rituals that could save him, and it ultimately becomes his downfall. While the novel does not favor one “brand” of ritual over another, Naylor does suggest that remaining close-minded to the possibility of the supernatural is dangerous, in the same way that clinging to the status quo—embracing confirmation bias—is equally hazardous. George, in failing to entertain Miranda’s superstitions, dooms himself: he lacks the courage to step outside of the comfort of his maps, charts, slide rules, and graph paper, and so he remains a prisoner to his own biases.

As George lies awake in bed after his unsettling dream, he considers the paradoxical “sound of silence” (302). A paradox is a seeming contradiction that may actually have some truth to it; for example, someone may be paradoxically described as a “smart fool.” On the surface, this seems absurd—how can one be both smart and foolish? However, upon deeper reflection, it makes sense that one could be intelligent but still make foolish decisions, as there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom.

Naylor employs paradox as George describes the silence around him. He recalls “[t]he ticking of the wall clock out there in the sitting room, the steady dripping from the bathroom, the creaking of the floorboards” (302). While a person might consider the middle of the night to be silent because no one is awake, George’s description shows that the night is actually full of quiet sounds. More importantly, the paradox adds to the liminal character of Willow Springs: it is a place that resists logical interpretation, a place that Miranda might say is better left alone. In fact, George later thinks, “Unused air or leftover air, back then none of us could even imagine an atmosphere like this. More than pure, it was primal. Some of these trees had to have been here for almost two hundred years, and the saltwater feeding into the marshes dated back to eternity” (305). However, in the same breath that he seems to recognize that Willow Springs is a place immune to time and change, he contemplates that “a lot of this land and open space could be put to good use” (305). Again, he fails to let the natural mysticism of Willow Springs stand alone, instead trying to force it to fit his own belief in progress.

George and Cocoa’s shared dream allows Naylor to foreshadow George’s fate: in the dream, George literally sinks in The Sound, paralyzed from trying to swim to Cocoa and to shore. Figuratively, however, the dream represents George’s inability to save not Cocoa but himself. His unwillingness to open his mind to what he cannot rationally explain seals his fate. Cocoa and George may be partially inspired by Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet, and the dream sequence supports that interpretation: as star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet are locked into their fate; there is nothing they can do to escape it. Similarly, the fact that George cannot make it to the shore no matter how hard he tries suggests that he, too, cannot change his path in life. In fact, the harder he tries, the more fruitless his efforts become: “If I just try harder, I thought, but my increased efforts made it all the more impossible…A wave of despair went over me as I began sinking, knowing I’d never reach you” (303). George is—and perhaps always was—doomed to failure, as he lacks the open-mindedness he needs to survive both within and outside of Willow Springs.