Cosmopolitan Vision of Home, Subjectivity 73Aunt Bea when he was sixteen years old. Tellingly, this was an expe-
rience that Williams integrates into his patriarchal Black Nationalist
ideology, arguing in a letter to his father that such experiences are
touchstones of African manliness (p. 104).
As with Stern’s, Dorothy’s narrative also ends in complete men-
tal collapse, which Phillips once again renders through the effective
utilization of a specific form of syntax. As described above, in The
Nature of Blood, Phillips deploys parentheses to “bracket” particular
strands of consciousness and to connote psychological compartmen-
talization. In A Distant Shore , following Solomon’s murder by racist
youths, Dorothy’s subsequent mental collapse is presented using a
similar technique. The following scene takes place at the novel’s end,
when Dorothy, distraught and now without friends after Solomon’s
death, is visited in a mental hospital by her ex-husband. To cap-
ture the effect Phillips achieves here, a lengthy quotation will be
required:
Why am I laughing? I stop laughing. He’s got to go now. I mean, this
is embarrassing. I stare at him, which clearly makes him even more
uncomfortable... The nurse puts down her book, and I notice her fold
over the corner of the page to mark her spot before she closes it shut.
[... ] (‘Dorothy.’) I turn and look at him. He’s smiling. He only said my
name to get my attention [... ] (‘Dorothy.’) Again he stops. If he thinks
I’m going to help him out, then he’s mistaken. I’ve got nothing to say
to him, especially if he wants to sound like a broken record [... ] He
should go now. I shouldn’t have to tell him this, or make a fuss in any
way, but he’s leaving me no choice. (pp. 310–311)Again, parenthesis is used, but this time (in a manner converse to
Stern’s narrative) the words inside the brackets are used to express
the voices of other people, whereas those outside the brackets chan-
nel her inner thoughts. Dorothy’s voice therefore becomes quite lit-
erally isolated from the changing world outside.
By placing such a degree of stress on the influence that Dorothy’s
father’s voice exerts on her consciousness, Phillips reminds us that
our attitudes and perceptions are heavily conditioned by our back-
grounds and surroundings—one’s “historical forces.” However, by
establishing such an unconventional relationship with Solomon, a