A bruise the size and shape of a door handle 

 

I will present below some thoughts about the last aspect mentioned in the theme namely: e) the title and how the theme of innocence and experience unfolds in this story. 

“A bruise the size and shape of a door handle” is a short story written in 2016 by Daisy Johnson. From the title we can understand that will come a fantastic story with a little bit violence: a bruise. What it’s a bruise? It is “an injury ..” according to the definition from Oxford dictionary.  So, we easily understand from this point at its violence in the story and a lot of fantasy. 

The rest of the title give as a chance to see the size and the shape of the bruise or maybe its show us the author of the bruise: “ a door handle” 

We study in the first Topic: Innocence and Experience. In all that we read before we started from a level of innocence with our character and we end up with a level of experience. Our story is the story of a 9 years old girl go on from childhood until maturity in witch she discovers her own sexuality. 

At the cinema she meets Margot. Margot is bisexual and seems to be rather experienced. Salma is somehow attracted to Margot. 
 Salma hasn’t tried sex or any kind of intimacy with another person. Until she met Margot. Margot takes Selma’s virginity. 
 
 Salma has a weird connection with the house she lives in. She has a feeling, that the house is speaking to her and hurting her. The house reacts to her emotions. The house is jealous on Margot and ends up eating her. Maybe this is just some kind of hallucination. 
 
 Salma ends up being addicted to sex. She brings home boys from the pub, having sex with them to take revenge on the house. 


 

It happened in the house, at the school , at the cinema.

Almost the most important things happened inside the house.

Meet Margot at the cinema and went home together. The house get jalousie and starts to do some strange thing, like moving the thing and trying to hit Salma when she was sleeping so when she woke up she will think that Margot did it to her. The house did a crazy things, turns the tv in the night, the walls get very hot. And the house eats her at the end/ends by taking Margot away inside of it.

-      (The house churned from top to bottom. ached across its spine )

The title refers to a line, where Salma gets a bruise from the house: “She would wake with bruises shaped like curtain hooks” (l. 52). 

The theme unfolds by Salma going through the transition from girl to woman. She starts out as an innocent nine-year old girl, who must live with her father, because her mother dies. Turning 13, the way that Salma thinks about her house changes. 

The house starts to reflect her feelings. For instance, when Salma gets her period, which is a classic sign that the female body is changing from child to woman, the house feels Salma’s physical pain: “the house churned from top to bottom, ached across its spine, made a sound that could almost have been: I. I. I. (l. 23). The house moves and aches the same way Salma would do while having period cramps. 

Salma really goes from innocent to experienced when she meets Margot, a girl that she has a sexual relationship with: “Outside her father’s bedroom she put her hand over Margot’s mouth, felt her forefinger slip between the wide, uneven lips” (l. 62-63). 

At the end of the story, Salma is a very experienced woman.  She brings home boys and uses them to make the house jealous. 

The title is called "A bruise the size and shape of a door handle". It is a reference describing how the house gets back at Salma for doing shameful things. 

 

The short story deals with the theme innocence and experience and it shows throughout the story. Salma goes from being a child, to moving in with her father without her mother’s support. She turns 13 and gets her period.  Salma feels ashamed and alone and wants to be an adult. She seeks sexual experience and gains more independence. Her childlike innocence degrades the further she subjects herself to experience. She is coming of age and wants to be a woman, but it comes with responsibility and pain. She feels alone and also discovers the dynamics of love which both gives her pleasure and pain. She is essentially dealing with the typical problems every teenager is going through. 

The house is probably a metaphor and not meant literally, maybe her feelings of shame, frustration, jealousy and loneliness which manifest as a house in her head. The house and father could be seen as her innocence, which she is trying to break free of through experience, so she can become a woman. 

 
By Mick

 

It takes place in United States of Amerika (U.S.A). the text is from 2016, so it is a modern story.  The story is imaginary, but it feels like a real world.  The story feels so real because in the story, there is a divorced cupel (Salma’s parent’s). It has to teen girls (our main character Selma and other characters the father and Margot). It is imaginary because the house it is alive and gets jealous of Salma. There is the house, the school, the cinema, and when she disappeared inside the wall. So, we have 3 mains physicals. 

The headline and the story fits well together. Because the headline describes the house (the house has a door handle) 

When we read the story, it is almost as we are there, and we can feel Salma’s felling. 

 

a)   Setting:

 Out from what the story is telling us indirect that Salma and her father maybe lives in the suburban, Salma is going on a school with a lot of other people, and go often to the cinema. We don’t here anything about the environment outside, but in the house, which is alive and there is many rooms in the house, so it’s a big house, I think there is a pretty environment. They maybe live in England

 
 c) characterization, Margot 

 I assume Margot is a little bit older than Salma, she has experience and Salma hos no experience she is only thirteen-year-old so maybe Margot is learning Salma to explore things with her sexuality. Margot meets Salma in the cinema

The environment was inside the house; the house is alive. 

I think they are rich, because the live in a big house.

In the school she don´t have any friends. 

Inthe Cinemashe got a friend from there; Margot. 

Salma and her father lives together, when Salma’s mother died and she moved out to her father.

They live in a very big house, and the sound of the house look like alive house. The house love Salma and was very jealous of her and he tries to speak to her, so he was heating Salma at the night, and when she wakes up on the morning and find out the bruises on her body, the house tells her, that is Margot who did that to you.

 At nightthe house felt it worst: the pipes in the walls gurning, the oven burning through and through the dark, the heat of everything else: radiators and kettles and the airing cupboard.

The house did not have the human complication to worry that its love spun often into hate.

Salma brought home boys she found in the pub.

A bruise a size as a door handle. 

Characterizing Salma: 

Salma lost her mother at the age of nine. 

Bad relationship with her father 

Lonely girl, no friends. 

Age 13, in 8 class, gets her period. 

Likes to go to the movie 

Met Margot in the cinema 

She falls in love with Margot 

First time she has sex, was with Margot 

Loses her virginity 

Bring boys home 

 

How the theme innocent and experience unfold in this story? 

The first one is when she gets her period. She turns from kid to a young woman. 

Then she has sex with Margot, her first woman and falls in love with her. 

Brings different boy home. 

The title. 

A bruise the size and shape of a door handle 

 I think the bruises comes from the Rough sex salma has, but the meaning of the title is something else. I think in this case it is her broken love that open a new door for her. 

 

in a big city, near rich people (father has a big house with a lot of rooms) 

in school, in the cinema, in the pub, in the house