Lakunas

I have thought often about the ideas of lacuna's this semester. It has often been a topic of conversation within the confines of the classroom making it a subject of curiosity to me I have come to the realization that all books have lacuna's. The lacuna's can be small like in the Iliad or they can be huge such as the ones in the Bible. These lacuna's make stories fluid and dynamic within the minds of the readers and/or listeners. Sara's presentation in particular addresses this idea of lacuna. She proved that sometimes the lacuna's are the truly interesting part of the story. These parts allow the reader to insert images that relate the story to the reader's personal life thus making the story more interesting.
The Slave has several different lacuna's that have caught my attention in the past few months. But one in particular is the time period of when Jacob takes his son and runs and the time between him coming back to fetch his wife. What exactly happened to him during this time? Who did he become? We get to see the end result of his life but we do not get to see what shapes him into that? Was he a good father? Did he find out the answers to all of the questions that he often asked as a teen or ones that he tried to answer for Wanda/Sarah? The author gives us some ideas to where he wants us to go but allows us to fill in the cracks with our own details. Sometimes this seems almost like a professor giving guidelines and then expecting the student to go and write the paper from the prompt. Every time that I consider the answers for the above stated questions, I come up with a different answer. This ability of changing my answer is the greatest thing about lacuna's. Lacuna's allow all stories, fables, and mythologies to live in the imagination as a malleable entity.