Marie Howe
In What the Living Do, Marie Howe reveals the scars from her life and the struggles in her attempt to understand her painful memories. And through her painful memories, there is a continuing theme of sexual trauma and confusion she goes through in her childhood.
Her father molested Howe as a child continuously. The man that she should have trusted strips her childhood away. Her mother never stopped her father. She knew what had been happening as she stood by the attic stairs and heard her crying. But she never said anything. Howe recalls a moment when she was in her room one night. Her brother was in the room beside hers imagining and designing new homes. And her father, who was a drunk and an abuser, crept into her room. Her brother fails to hear the ongoing event until their father leaves and Howe slams the door behind him. Her brother provides her with a comfort “and when he draws his skinny arm around my shaking shoulders, I don’t know if he knows he’s building a world where I can one day love a man…”(29). Through her battered trust and childhood, Howe’s brother is a glimmer a light for her.
Rape appears to be constant in Howe’s mind as a child. She was pushed into the world of sex before she grew up. And when she watches movies, Howe is numbed by all the rapes from soldiers. She notices the way how soldiers rapes women during a victory celebration and how there are always more than one. There is always one soldier that rapes while others hold the woman down and a husband watches from a distant unable to help his wife. The scenarios of what she sees in the movies may parallel all that Howe goes through herself. Her father turns into the soldier that rapes her. Her mother is the soldier holding Howe down because of her reluctance to help her crying daughter. And her brother, who cannot protect her, becomes the husband that must watch her sufferings from afar.
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