Page 40
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Christmas night breaks open into an argument between the parents, and the child, frightened by the shouting and distance in the room, begins to imagine running away.
The language treats the quarrel as something almost sacrilegious, as if the holiday home itself has been violated by stupidity, noise, and whatever had been silently building all day. The child tries to stop it, cannot, and starts feeling the lonely power that makes escape thinkable.
After grace on Christmas the boy wishes 'I hope everyone will be happy for ever and ever', but soon after dinner his parents argue 'about who was more stupid' and he feels 'there was a sacrilige in the home'. His 'Please stop it, I said' fails, he backs into the hall feeling 'that centered power', thinks about 'runing away', and when told to go upstairs refuses while the quarrel builds again after the guests are gone.
The page turns a prayer into its opposite: the child's wish for universal happiness is answered by a quarrel that he experiences as a violation of something holy. The repeated 'Please stop it' shows how powerless the child is, and that helplessness is what gives birth to the lonely 'centered power' and the idea of escape. The guests' departed 'distance' lingering in the room is a striking image of tension that has no source and no place to go.