Narrative Analysis

By Genevieve M. Nangit
February 27, 2024

Narrative Analysis of “City of Sand”: Gladys’ nature of self through her

concrete physical facts

Gladys’ nature of self through her concrete physical facts was presented in reference of her
physical characteristics and her work in the studio.

Sentences
“…my fingers suddenly went numb. It’s been happening lately. I was playing piano the other
night and nothing came. I never work without rubber gloves in the lab but the chemicals are
stronger now. The damage may already have been done. Look: the nerve ends in my fingers are
practically dead, my hand doesn’t even shake.” (Page 35)

That Gladys was thirty-four years old! — and her life hadn’t yet begun. She’d had three babies
and they’d been taken from her and in a sense erased, and now this eight-year-old with the
mournful eyes, the young-old soul, a reproach to her she couldn’t bear yet must bear, for we are
all we have of each other as Gladys told the child repeatedly as long as I am strong enough to
hold it together. (Page 50)

Norma Jeane was uneasily that other adults, especially men, were fascinated by her mother, the
way you’d be fascinated by someone leaning too far out of a high window or bringing her hair
too close to a candle flame. Even with the streak of gray-white hair lifting from her forehead
(which, out of “contempt”, Gladys refused to dye), and the bruised, creepy shadows beneath her
eyes, and the fevered restlessness of her body. In the bungalow foyer, on the front walk, and in
the street, wherever Gladys found someone to listen, Gladys did scenes. If you knew movies, you
knew that Gladys did was doing scenes. For even to do a scene that made no clear sense was to
capture attention, and this helped to calm the mind. It was exciting, too, that much of the
attention Gladys drew was erotic.
Erotic: meaning you’re ‘desired’
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive. (Page 51)

Analysis
The physical numbness of Gladys’ finger was caused by her work in the studio. Could this
deformity caused also the numbness of her emotion towards her mother Della and her daughter
Norma Jeane? Yet, the numbness did not affect her acting out scenes from movies, it did not
deform her persona towards men. Rather, as she act out scenes in movies in her daily life, she
captivates audience and mostly were men, entranced by her physique.

Reference
“Blonde” by Joyce Carol Oates. 2000. 4th Estate: London, UK