Kathy Acker, "I Recall My Childhood," from Great Expectations


1. "I Recall My Childhood" is composed of several different narrative lines: the echoes of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations that open and close the chapter, the memories of the narrator's childhood, the wartime scene, and the intervening material told from the present by the narrator as an adult. What explanations are provided--or can be inferred--about the relationship between these different narrative lines? Why, for instance, does this chapter begin and end with the excerpts from Dickens? Are there direct parallels between the childhood of Philip Pirrip and the narrator's childhood? Or is the relation more broad, drawing upon the place of Great Expectations within the canon of coming-of-age novels? What is the dramatic effect of Acker's decision to change the names slightly in the opening reference to Dickens, and of her sudden return to Dickens's novel at the chapter's conclusion?

2. What is the relationship between the recollections of the narrator's childhood and the scenes of war? Are there specific passages where the two narrative lines merge, and if so, what do those passages imply about the psychological relationship between the two lines? From a stylistic vantage point, what is the effect on the reader of the sudden shifts in time and scene?

3. Is "I Recall My Childhood" a self-conscious text--that is, does the chapter itself contain lines or phrases that provide insight into the shape and dimensions of the narrative? When Acker writes, "one text must subvert (the meaning of) another text," is she describing the relationship between her own work and Dickens's original? The relationship among the different narrative lines within her own chapter? Or the relationship between herself and her parents?

When she writes, "There is no time; there is," and when she writes, "As the dream: there is and there is not," is she offering metacommentary regarding the chapter's exploration of the fluid boundaries between past and present, and the subconscious and conscious mind? When she speaks of "forgiveness that transforms need into desire," is she offering insight into the different relationships in the chapter, and the role of sex and sexuality in those relationships?