When I first finished reading Norman Manea’s “The Trenchcoat”, I felt way too confused. However, after watching the lecture video and reading blogposts of my peers, I realized that confusion – especially regarding the Trenchcoat – was a central theme of the story. For me, the anonymity and lack of description for the Trenchcoat made me read the story with a suspicion; looking back at the notes I have made throughout my reading, there are a lot of question marks.

The start of the story felt rather mundane and perhaps boring. However, one short sentence caught my interest. That is, “The future: small and immediate. Already present, already past, already small, shrunken . . . enormous” (192). I think this sentence explains well the hopelessness of life in Romania at that time. Although this sentence did not explicitly indicate anything about people’s “boredom” and “lack of progressive ideas”, I think it shows an attitude that corresponds to Professor Beasley-Murray’s statement that “Nothing really happens in Romania; all ideas of progress have been abandoned”.

Another interesting part of the story was in the early part of the book, where Iona argues how “dinner parties have been disappearing” and that “it’s the desire, above all, it’s the desire to get together that has disappeared” (193). It was interesting to learn about the context of this book, specifically the Communist Regime in Romania. Although I can only imagine, I think the world people in Romania at the time had to live through would have been characterized by mistrust, suspicion, disconnection, and boredom (or hopelessness). People, full of mistrust and lack of hope for the future, “lost the desire to get together” (193). Perhaps, it is within this life of boredom and suspicion where the Trenchcoat becomes so significant, something that attracted the attention of Dina.

I’m still confused over the numerous hypotheses of the appearance of the Trenchcoat. At first, I thought it was just left at the house by one of the guests at the dinner party. However, that seemed untrue as Dina’s phone calls proved. Then, the possibility that it was left deliberately as some sort of experiment posed a new suspicion. Finally, the constant suspicion between the visitors worsened the confusion, and made the situation look much more serious than it looked at the beginning. Reflecting on my experience as a reader of the various hypotheses of the Trenchcoat, I feel like I always had a strong suspicion towards all the characters; every time a new suspicion was posed, I was attracted to believing it. In this way, I feel like the Trenchcoat was a device that allowed Manea to share the experience of living through a “world of suspicion, distrust, and boredom (hopelessness)” to the readers. At least he certainly did for me.

Question for the author: The appearance of the Trenchcoat was left an unresolved mystery. In your mind, was there an answer to this mystery? Why and how did the Trenchcoat appear?