The Memory Keeper's Daughter May 1970, Parts I–II Summary & Analysis

1970

May 1970, Parts I–II

Summary: Part I

The story jumps forward five years. Norah has discovered that Paul is deathly allergic to bee stings. He has started school and at six years old exhibits a talent and passion for music and performs in school productions. Her friend Kay Marshall asks Norah if Paul can sing a duet with her daughter Elizabeth at a fundraiser Kay is organizing. Elizabeth was born a week after Paul, and in addition to Elizabeth, Kay now has a newborn. Norah compares herself to Kay and envies her friend’s second child, elegant appearance, and worry-free demeanor, untouched by grief and the insecurity it has brought Norah. Norah has begun drinking in the morning to take the edge off her anxiety. She often speeds two hours down the interstate to Louisville to look at the Ohio River to calm her nerves, Paul in the backseat terrified by the wind in the car and rushing landscapes out the window.

Norah is heading to the interstate when she stops at the campus to see an antiwar demonstration. Among the activists, she encounters Bree and her new boyfriend, a Vietnam veteran named Mark. Bree inquires if Norah got the job she applied for at a local travel agency. Norah’s former enthusiasm now seems trivial compared to Bree’s involvement in real causes that matter, and Norah expresses disinterest in the outcome. Bree becomes frustrated with Norah’s apathy and challenges her to stop being afraid of change and independence. Norah lashes back, judgmental of Bree’s constant round of boyfriends. Norah innately recognizes her desire to be more like Bree.

Arriving home, Norah decides to knock down a wasp nest in advance of a party she’ll be giving. The insects counterattack her in a swarm. In frenzied determination, she uses her vacuum cleaner to capture and contain the wasps, destroying the vacuum in the process. The aggression unleashed upon the insects opens up a place in her that is ready for change, and Norah resolves to take the job she applied for at the travel agency if they offer it to her.

Summary: Part II

On the day of Norah’s party, Paul bursts in on David in his darkroom, and David curses at him for ruining his pictures. David apologizes and takes an interest in the stones Paul wants him to see, explaining their origins. At the party, Bree introduces her companion, Mark Bell, and he and David discover they both come from the same area of West Virginia. Bree is surprised to hear this new information about David. Paul climbs a tree and falls, breaking his arm. At the hospital, David looks at the x-rays and reflects on his first experience with pictures of hidden structures that started him on the road to becoming an orthopedic surgeon. While David sets Paul’s arm in a cast, Norah and David argue. Paul listens to their fears for his safety, Norah’s dissatisfaction with being a stay-at-home wife, her perception of David’s lack of support for her new job, and her accusation that David is self-centered.

Analysis: May 1970, Parts I–II

Norah’s depression deepens into a sense of the world as a hostile place. Drinking throughout the day takes the edge off her anxiety. Norah’s profound discontent with the status quo develops into an escapist mentality. She begins to obsess about travel. She takes frequent day trips down the interstate to stand on bluffs overlooking the moving waters of the Ohio River. Norah drives at high speed as if she is flying, reaching Louisville or Cincinnati in two hours before returning to Lexington.

Resentment at David’s silence about Phoebe’s death tips the balance of Norah’s inertia, and she looks for ways to change things. Her friend Kay Marshall leads the charmed life Norah envisioned for herself. Kay gave birth to Elizabeth a week after Paul and Phoebe’s birth. They were on the same lifestyle trajectory before death knocked Norah off course, and now Kay has the second child that David denied Norah. Untouched by grief, Kay moves through her ordered days in elegance and style. At the other end of the spectrum from her socially circumspect friend Kay, Norah’s bohemian sister Bree makes her own rules with freedom and confidence. Bree’s activism in the Vietnam War protest on campus adds social responsibility to Bree’s catalog of life experiences. Norah feels her escapism to be superficial in comparison. When Bree pressures her to take the travel agency job as a way to develop independence, Norah reacts defensively by attacking Bree’s choices as promiscuous.

With this spirited exploration of choices still running through her mind, Norah decides to take down a nest of wasps. The act symbolizes her taking control of her life. Dealing with the resistance of the wasps requires energy, persistence, and ingenuity. The fact that she does it successfully without David’s help reinforces the moves she’s already made toward independence. Norah looks forward to accepting the travel agency job with confidence and hope for the future.

David’s path takes him away from his family into solitary pursuits. When Paul interrupts David developing film, David’s enraged reaction is disproportionate to the offense, indicating that his hobby of photography has become an obsession. He prioritizes his photos over Paul’s feelings. When Paul breaks his arm and David treats him at the hospital, David’s reverie about seeing hidden structures reveals core motivations and organizing principles to his thinking.

In Paul’s six-year-old life, the experience of being severely reprimanded in an act of reaching out to a parent imprints deeply on the psyche. Soon after one such moment, Paul falls and breaks his arm, an event that typifies the strife in his family’s life. Then he will listen to his parents argue bitterly about his safety and about his mother taking a job. When he hears his mother accuse his father of thinking the world revolves around him, the accusation must resonate with his experience of being belittled. The tensions of his parents’ sorrow and guilt are already forming Paul’s careworn response to the world.

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