In chapters 5 and 7 the David Borkowski returns to the events pertaining to his transformative injury. This circling back to the events preceding the shooting and implicated in the robbery, and the events that follow on from the shooting, all undergo deep analysis as the author’s search for meaning seems to mimic the effects of trauma. As with post traumatic stress syndrome, the sufferer-author cannot stop his or her mind from returning to the traumatic event despite their efforts. As a narrative device it brings the reader back to the hub of the narrative, from which all the other aspects seem to emanate like spokes on a wheel. The reader follows the narrative both as the wheel turns and as it springs from the central hub, which is the pivotal moment of trauma. Here, the Borkowski uses this problem of return to structure his essay. He uses that structure to delve into and to process that trauma, which offers the reader a way into a series of events that are outside of common experience. In this case fortunately, the cathartic outcome leads to apotheosis, praxis and a personal coming to being. The redemption, if not religious is certainly social. As a framework through which repressed ideas may be slowly unlocked and tied together to unify a journey of self-discovery it is a useful device.
Many of us who read a story of crisis are thrown back into our own recollections through the empathy of the narrative. It maps personal experience in such a way as to make a process available to the reader.
The narrative will eventually move forward, even as for the moment it is caught so often in the reminiscences of the past and self-interrogation.
