Class Discussion on Doris Lessing's
The Memoirs of a Survivor

Today's Excerpt

Behind the wall I found a room that was tall, not very large, and I think six-sided. there was no furniture in it, only a rough trestle around two of the sides. On the floor was spread a carpet, but it was a carpet without its life: it had a design, an intricate one, but the colours had an imminent existence, a potential, no more. There had been a fair or a market here, and this had left a quantity of rags, dress materials, scraps of Eastern embroideries of the kind that have tiny mirrors buttonhole stitched into them, old clothes -- everything in that line you can think of. some people were standing about the room. At first it seemed that they were doing nothing at all; they looked idle and undecided. Then one of them detached a piece of material from the jumble on the trestles, and bent to match it with the carpet -- behold, the pattern answered that part of the carpet. This piece was laid exactly on the design and brought it to life.

It was like a child's game, giant-sized; only it was not a game; it was serious, important not only to the people actually engaged in this work, but to everyone. Then another person bent with a piece chosen from the multicoloured heap on the trestles, bent, matched, and straightened again to gaze down. There they stood, about a dozen people, quite silent, turning their eyes from the patterns of the carpet to the tangle of stuffs and back again. A recognition, the quick move, a smile of pleasure or of relief, a congratulatory glance from one of the others -- there was no competition here, only the soberest and most loving co-operation. I entered the room; I stood on the carpet looking down as they did at its incompleteness, pattern without colour, except where the pieces had already been laid in a match, so that parts of the carpet had a bleak gleam, like one that has been bleached, and other parts glowed up, fulfilled, perfect. I, too, sought for fragments of materials that could bring life to the carpet, and did in fact find one, and bent down to match and fit, before some pressure moved me on again. I realized that everywhere around, in all the other rooms, were people who would in their turn drift in here, see this central activity, find their matching piece -- would lay it down, and drift off again to other tasks.

I left that tall room whose ceiling vanished upwards into dark where I thought I saw the shine of a star, a room whose lower part was in a bright light that enclosed the silent concentrated figures like stage-lighting. I left them and moved on. The room disappeared. I could not find it when I turned my head to see it again, so as to mark where it was. But I knew it was there waiting; I knew it had not disappeared, and the work in it continued, must continue, would go on always.

Questions about the Reading

1. The woman sees incredible detail in her surroundings. How might this affect her actions outside of the house?
2. How can the work on the carpet act as a metaphor for this society?
3. What insight into the minds of the people populating this society does the detail in the description of the fabric scraps reveal?

http://domain/lessing3.html Edited: May 14, 1999 Paula Edmiston Send mail to Paula Edmiston Return to The Flying Cat

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