Aimee Bender’s short story The Healer is based on two teenage
girls, one with a hand of fire and the other with a hand of ice. The rest of the townspeople appear to have
normal, human-flesh hands. Both of the
hands seem to be a burden to each girl, but the fire girl has it worse. While the fire girl is considered dangerous,
everyone else is amazed by the ice girl’s healing powers. The story’s resolution remains unresolved and
unhappy. Unlike the usual happy endings
of all fantasy stories, The Healer is
so childish that it also doesn’t seem to fit under Faber’s idea of a quality
book. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Faber, an English professor, claims
that books are only seen as magical through what their words say. Nothing else in the book would matter. These quality books have “… stitched the
patches of the universe together into one garment for us…” (Bradbury 83). Emotions, lessons, and important facts are
examples of things we wouldn’t want to forget, and thus, we would store them
into books. Faber strongly believes that
these quality books, which hold such unforgettable memories, are
significant. Furthermore, he describes a
quality book as having “…texture… pores…features… truthfully recorded details… telling detail, [and] fresh detail” (Bradbury 83). Ultimately, if a book, or story in this case,
doesn’t have these characteristics that a quality book should have, it does not
fit under Faber’s idea of a magical and “worth remembering” book.
Aimee Bender’s story The Healer surely has an unsatisfying
ending, but that may make the story even more realistic. The plot is very simple, yet has so many
convincing underlying concepts. Bender’s
writing style is extremely bland and she provides only thin details for her
readers. Especially from the first
sentence of her story, “There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand
made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice,” we are just told to accept
what is happening as it is, with no explanation of why we should believe it
(Bender 27). In addition, the tone and
word choice is playful and childish, particularly towards the end of the
story. However, even though Aimee
Bender’s short story isn’t the exact definition of Faber’s idea of quality, it
definitely feels magical to me. So, if The Healer is in fact tasteless, simple,
and the direct opposite the idea Faber presented of what a quality book is
supposed to be, then why was I able to have such a magical experience with this
story?
Evidently, the most obvious
“magical” effects in The Healer are
the girls’ fire and ice hands, the two hands normalizing each other as they
touched, the ice hand being able to cure and heal all diseases, the rest of the
body taking on the fire once the fire hand is chopped off, and the feeling of
nothing caused by the hand of ice. Right
from the beginning, the story became intriguing to me. The use of fire and ice as a trait for the
two main characters caught my interest, as I knew to expect a thrilling and
“worth remembering” story. I was
astounded by the magic that was performed for the townspeople by the two
girls. Clearly, even the author herself called their junior high performances "magical" (Bender 31). It was exceptionally odd to
figure out that the ice girl did so many good deeds but didn’t have the ability
to feel any emotions towards her actions – “…but I feel nothing. I just feel
ice” (Bender 34).
Despite the actual magic going on in
Bender’s story, there are hidden perceptions that interestingly enough are
unusual, and in our world anything that is out of the ordinary or simply weird
is something magical and worth cherishing.
First of all, the author appears to conceal the notion of
isolation. Most importantly, the fire
girl and ice girl are secluded from the rest of the town with their
mutation. They are the only two in the
town who have such a supernatural power.
She also readily depicts the fire girl as lonely. “[The fire girl] didn’t keep the smokers
company; she just did her duty and then walked home, alone,” showing that the
girl was an outcast and people were only amused by her hand (Bender 28). Besides the fire girl’s social activity in
the beginning of the story, she is even excluded from the town’s limits at the
end. After the girl is taken out of
jail, for she was first put into jail because many believed her fire hand
imposed a threat, she moves into “…a shack in the back of town by the
mountains” (Bender 34).
Fascinatingly enough, the
townspeople seeking for pain is alarming yet alerts me to believe that they are
really seeking for something more… something maybe magical. Many came to visit the fire girl in her shack
made of metal just so the fire girl can “…remove her blazing arm from the ice
bucket and gently touch their faces with the point of her wrist” (Bender
35). It appears to be that the pain of a
burn on their face makes them feel alive.
Undoubtedly, the pain of the scar on their face felt wonderful, as “for
one long second, it felt like the world was holding them close” (Bender
35). The reason all of these people come
see the fire girl seems to be because they are searching for anything that can
make them feel less lonely. This sort of
pain caused from the burn looks to feel better than the feeling of loneliness or
the feeling of nothing. The scar happens
to unite the individuals who are feeling distant from the world. As there becomes a group of people who walk
around with the same scar made for the same reason, they are able to recognize
others who feel the same way they feel themselves. The townspeople become less lonely as they
are now part of a group of many.
Magically enough that a scar is what is needed to bring a group of
independent people together, it is even more magical that the burn makes this
group of people feel wonderful.
Lastly, although there happens to be
an unsatisfying ending to the story, Aimee Bender takes on a new and different
approach to the purpose of a fairytale.
We expect the usual type of fairytale, such as Cinderella, to have a
happy ending where all the problems are resolved. Nevertheless, The Healer offers an alternative ending where the issues remain
unresolved or just get worse. Bender
leaves us only knowing that the ice girl leaves the town, disappearing without
any news of why. Perhaps such a problem
shows the real aspects of our life. We
all imagine everything to have its purpose as well as we always want to know
why things happen the way they do. But,
sometimes, things aren’t so easy to understand and we are left without
explanation. Bender is able to include
such a vital quality of life, and I suppose this is an aspect of a story that
is as magical and “worth remembering” as Faber says it is.
Therefore, while many can say that
Aimee Bender’s story The Healer is
impractical and not at all magical or “worth remembering” because of Faber’s
strict sense of a quality book, from my experience, this short story was
magical in its own way of quality.
Although Bender may have been childish and very plain in her writing,
she was able to certainly build upon major elements of reality. She expressed relative issues in a mischievous
way, yet still she proved that her work is unordinary and that we can find
quality that is magical and unforgettable within anything, even if we have to
dig deep first in order to find it.
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