In Autobiography of a Face, we learn the life of Lucy Grealy and her struggles growing up with cancer and then disfigurement. From this single sentence, I knew it was going to be tough to break from the Mimetic Register for this book, in particular with the way I read. In fact, I nearly had to put down the book when I began thinking of the pain that she went through when going to Chemotherapy for her childhood cancer in chapter four.
Throughout the chapter, we learn of the cycle of which Lucy takes her treatments. How her mother picks her up, the treatments being quick and less complicated, the other patients and how their diagnoses, etc. The mimetic register drew me into the reading because the words on the page painted a depressing picture. However, that was when I began to notice Narrator’s attention to detail. I believe that Lucy Grealy wanted us to feel what her time in the Radiology Department was like to draw us into the mimetic register. She was using these details in the situation in a conventional form to draw us in. “My body, wanting to turn itself inside out, made wave after wave of attempts to rid itself of this unseeable intruder, this overwhelming and noxious poison. I shook with heaves so strong they felt more like convulsions.(Grealy, 75)” There are quotes like that littered throughout the entire chapter. We expect a cancer patient to go through chemotherapy often, so to emphasize how often she goes, Lucy explains what she had observed and felt in her time there.
As I approached the end of the chapter four, I began to notice something else. Something that was happening to Lucy’s character that really wouldn’t occur to a kid, cancer patient or not. On page 81, she noted that due to her having so many brothers and sisters, she wouldn’t get time alone. While this would be a regular thing for any kid, it was the second line that made me think. She says, “I liked to lie on my sister’s bed, look out her window, think to myself, So this is what she sees when she wakes up in the morning.(81)” While laying in bed is fine, why would she think like that? Why would she be comparing herself like this to her sister? Why is she asking what it’s like to be someone else? 
This is what broke me from the mimetic register. It made me realize that Lucy was doing more than tell the story of her struggles. Up until this point, I thought the Lucy of the story was trying to be ignorant to her situation… But just like all kids, she grows up and begins to search for her Identity. Her actions such as laying in her sibling’s bed and diagnosing some of the other patients in the radiology department make her seem just like a kid, but it’s her thoughts and questions that tell the story.
The final shred of proof of the search of identity being the theme is the time Lucy’s father took her to her chemotherapy treatment instead of her mother. She remembers the event, “Once my name was called he’d accompany me into the office and exchange greetings with Dr. Woolf, but as soon as I was asked to take off my clothes he’d turn to me and say, “Right then, I’ll go get the car.” Perhaps in part, he was embarrassed to see his daughter half naked, but I knew that he did not want to see me suffer(84).” Most kids would have been nervous to be alone, but Lucy felt freer. Free to say what she wanted without the parents causing her to change her answers to suit what they wanted to hear. This small action had given the young Lucy clarity to not just herself but her position in the world.
I expect as the story to continues into her teenage and adult years, the book’s themes of identity will push themselves more and more to the front. The kind of thinking she had so far is much more expected in a teenager’s mind than a child’s. I hope whatever she does find makes her happy for a girl in her position.
Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. Print.
How Writers Read... 
I’d like to argue that this genre being memoir is in a qualitative form. For example we read of the continuous visits to the doctor, but each visit does not produce the same result. For example at one doctor’s visit Lucy began to cry with feelings of suffering. The visit proceeding she was encouraged not to cry by her mother who had tears in her eyes. She realized then she was not the only one who suffers. In this example there was a progression in the repeated situation of visiting the doctor. The repetitiveness helps us to look foreward and predict what might happen at future doctors visits along with the knowledge of previous progressions. As this is a memoir about illness specifically cancer I am already expecting that which is common to such a story such as suffering and life changing events. What I feel makes this story diverge from the generic expectations would be the personal details that not every memoir about cancer contains. For example she tells us about her animals she plays with on her island. The snake she played with didn’t have her complete care because it was not like the other animals. The animals never came inside or left the island which she felt made their lives authentic. This very well may represent herself, not being compassionate toward herself because she’s different and feeling isolated in the life she leads. Other memoirs might include the same sentiments but not in the same context such as Lucy’s.
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I think this second portion of the book delves more deeply into the thematic register, unlike the first section and the blog, which contained a lot of context and, for us as readers, mimesis. There are a lot of key, metaphorical scenes that take place, like, as Julie mentioned, Lucy’s animal island and the snake who she ignored because he’s “different”. We also see a new theme develop close to the end of this section which we haven’t encountered before: religion. Lucy begins to question (and hope for) the existence of God and she finds the carvings in the bathroom stalls of the hospital: “god is near” and “be here now”. I see parts of each form present in Grealy’s memoir, but the one most obvious to me is “repetitive form”. This new introduction of religion (we’ll see if this keeps us) is repeated throughout this section of the text. As discussed in the previous blog, Lucy’s attitude toward her illness repeats throughout. While she doesn’t enjoy being ill or her treatments, she still craves attention and being considered special. However, at the end of our section, now that Lucy is a bit older, she has finally realized what she LOOKS like. She suddenly seems to care. This will be an interest transition to witness. This also shows the syllogistic progressive form in that it allows us to experience Lucy’s journey with her step by step, expecting our judgment and telling us why and how she felt the way she did.
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