Commemoration and Numbing

"The fact remains that there was no one then to listen... so too a new silence." (p.291)

In this passage, Balakian comments on the silence that has taken over his family ever since he can remember about their Armenian past. He mainly focuses on his grandmother and her reasons behind her silence, because she had eventually come to terms that "there would be no justice, no condolence, no reparation", there was nothing to do but remain silent. I think that Balakian not only speaks for his grandmother and for himself when he talks about grief in this way, but he touches on a universal emotion that many others can relate to. Alike to many previous passages in The Black Dog of Fate, Balakian mentions that some times "unfathomable grief" can only lead to silence, because there is simply no other way to cope with it, but to numb oneself to the sorrow and pain of the past, and thus, silencing themselves. In the next chapter, Balakian discusses this numbing of emotions in the context of his grandmother:

"Was there a space behind the space from which she saw you, a space where no one was permitted? Did she ever go there?... I've come to see my grandmother's numbed response to the Armenian Genocide as a necessary way of survival."

With his newfound knowledge, Balakian can now begin connecting the fragments and scattered pieces of his past to make up this history of his grandmother and to piece together her emotional past that lay behind her strange stories and tales. I feel like this passage is particularly significant to the novel as a whole because Balakian is finally beginning to see his grandmother in this new way that had can only be attained after having grown up and learned about the genocide and having seen the real proof of his grandmother's survival and tragic past.

What struck me as interesting in the chapter "The Open Wound" in which both these passages are found, is the idea of both commemoration and numbing as processes of healing. Balakian notes that "Commemoration is an essential process for the bereaved and for the inheritors of the legacy of genocide." and that his grandmother's "numbed response to the Armenian Genocide" was necessary to her survival afterwards. It is interesting because commemoration and numbing seem to be slightly opposing ideas. Commemoration calls for the remembrance of the event, while numbing calls for the storing and hiding of these events, though they may be revisited in the future. However, at closer inspection, they are alike in that commemoration and numbing both allow the victims of the genocide to cope with the past and to heal. Commemoration comes after the numbing process has passed and only when the survivors have been given an outlet to speak about their unforgettable past.