Hey everyone! Norman Manea’s The Trenchcoat was certainly an interesting read. Reflecting upon the reading, I am still not entirely sure what I read. I recall starting the book and thinking how descriptively their world was painted. It was easy to imagine the extravagance illustrated by the book. While the party painted a very extravagant lifestyle, it also drew the relationships between the characters as superficial and unforgiving. The food and the luxuries were portrayed pleasantly while the interactions between the people were illustrated as awkward and merciless. Each character did not allow room for comfort for any of the other characters and there remained a mood of tension and gossip.
The focus then very quickly changes in the book to about a trenchcoat. At first, it was simple inquiries doused with slight worries about who left their trench coat behind. Soon however the trenchcoat starts to become a central theme. This was an especially confusing concept to me because it seemed random. There is lots of talk about this trenchcoat and lots of emotion surrounding this trenchcoat as well. One of the biggest questions I had was regarding the hesitance surrounding what to call the trenchcoat. I am not sure if I was interpreting this correctly but the characters seem to be struggling to decide what to call the coat. They often switch between calling it a raincoat, trench coat, and overcoat. It seemed to me as if they were preferring to call it one over the other and they often seem to correct themselves with the different terms. I found this especially peculiar and kept thinking that it was meant to signify something. This brings up my question of, what do the different terms for the coat imply, and what is the significance of calling it one versus the other? The secondary question I had along with this and the more obvious question that the text brings up is, what is the significance of the trenchcoat? In the lecture, our professor briefly discusses the possibility of a secret meeting being held in the house without the knowledge of the people living there and the coat representing the anxiety surrounding the secrecy behind that. The way the characters describe the coat also depicts a resentment towards the appearance of the coat rather than just the implications the coat could potentially have. The coat seems to leads a story of its own as an extended metaphor which is not explicitly said.
ross mosher
March 14, 2022 — 3:38 pm
Hey, Really liked you blog post. I definitely think that there is an almost devious quality to the way they refer to the Trenchcoat. I think we could be missing some key allusion that doesn’t have the same cultural relevance as if we were living in 1960’s Romania.
patricio robles
March 14, 2022 — 5:49 pm
“the possibility of a secret meeting being held in the house without the knowledge of the people living there and the coat representing the anxiety surrounding the secrecy behind that.” Right, it seems a plausible explanation, and remember that the story starts when the Guileless one is told that the government is using “people’s apartments” (191) for interviews with the informers.
suroor mansouri
March 14, 2022 — 6:08 pm
I feel that the trench coat had a different meaning but then Professor also encourages that we abandon the need for meaning completely. As for the numerous names it had such as “raincoat” and “overcoat”, I looked over as a means of preventing repetition. I think with this text it just best to look at the puzzle pieces we were given and accept them as they are rather than flipping, twisting and turning them around to make them fit in ways they aren’t supposed to.
Aquila
March 16, 2022 — 11:55 pm
Hello! I really enjoyed reading your post. You brought up a really interesting point where they couldn’t decide what to call the coat. I felt like they also did this for a few other things, especially people’s names? They would switch between Vasile and Basil etc. and they kept changing what they called the child/kid/learned one as well. I definitely felt like this happened for a reason but I couldn’t really work out why, I was also wondering whether translation may have had an effect as well? Super interesting to think about.