In Neil Smith’s “Scrapbook”, he presents his characters as an aftermath of a massacre that has happened in Robertson Hall in Scotts University ten days ago. In the tragedy, ten victims lost their lives and more others like Thomas and Myuko narrowly escaped death. Although the survivors struggle to continue with their normal lives, it is not easy. The freshness and vividness of the events as they happened in “room 523” are continuously disturbing their conscience not giving them at least some little peace. The memorial march the following weekend beginning from Davies Park is organized to help the survivors, the families of the victims, friends and the whole of Scotts University students relieve the weird memories of the massacre and give them some hope of solidarity that will enable them to forge ahead in the days ahead.
At the very beginning, the story of Scrapbook begins with a symbolic image of Petersons Hall but here it has lost its roof and all its classrooms and corridors demarcations are visible in Maclean’s magazine (Smith 2007, p.87). When Amy, who happens to be one of the “lead lights” or a target by Mac Donald sees the diagram she is able to connect what may have conspired to lead to the massacre. Amy is able to present the irony of her thoughts when she accounts how the students who seemingly walked the within the classrooms and corridors unsuspectingly and happy did not know the looming danger. By accounting the events of the bloody day, how the women were separated from men, the women shot dead and Mac Donald shot himself from the women’s latrine, Amy is able to connect the dots of the events of that day although she was not there.
Additionally, the reader is able to vividly understand the story and follow the thoughts of the author as well the emotions and feelings of the characters in the story. One of the survivors Myuko makes a drawing of a large Japanese character in her diary that she says resembles a “big cat” described in her community as the closest kanji to the cheetah (Smith 2007, p.106). The “big cat” can be taken to stand for the menace that is facing this community at the moment. It resembles in the big like a big cat that is not easy to exterminate and serves to show the greatness of this menace to the society.
Myuko and Thomas are overwhelmed by emotions of the day of the massacre. They hug each other and breath hard tucked to themselves. When Amy joins them, she “…tries to make out a cheetah in the random lines and dashes, but the character could be anything. An elephant, a tulip Or something less easy to define Rage, love, shame, forgiveness Any of these things Or all of them at once.” (Smith 2007, p.107) This shows how big the menace behind the difference in language was yet difficult or hard to define and contemplate. It could be taken to mean that therefore that events like it happened in room 523 of Petersons Hall are likely to repeat themselves in future and may be hard to bring to a stop.
Further, objects have been given a lot of importance in a story about people to help present real characters thereby impacting the meaning of the message more. When the characters in the diagram in Maclean’s magazine appear, they seem to Amy as having distinguished colors which represent the difference in color among the students in room 523 (Smith 2007, p.88). The pale color of the women huddles on one side of the classroom represents blood and death. These are the group that was shot by Mac Donald. The sticks representing the men in the classroom are also shown to exhibit color purple and this shows their uniqueness in color too, different from the color of the other sticks which represent the rest of the students in the University. These images have therefore been used to represent the difference in images which are the major cause of death and the massacre that took place in Scotts University.
Reference
Neil Smith : “Scrapbook”; Bang Crunch: published 2007 (pp. 87-107)
