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| Original 1965 illustration for "The Bus" |
With each miniature masterwork, Shirley Jackson gets a little more "under our skin." Here again, we have a tale of displacement: of time, distance, and of the sudden loss -- or acquisition -- of a feeling of familiarity. We've all had those moments of dissociation -- familiar things seeming suddenly unfamiliar, and vice versa -- but what if, after we rubbed our eyes, they still remained reversed?
"The Bus" is filled with the small frustrations of the everyday, amplified since we know that the main character is elderly, and at times confused. She is determined, all the same, to reach her destination. How many time have any of us heard the words "this is your stop" from a bus driver or conductor -- who are we to question them? We begin, indeed, with empathy: what a sad turn of events -- what will happen to this innocent old woman? And then, by slow degrees, we begin to anticipate another fate: is this just some random house, with a faint whiff of familiarity? Or is it, though at first unrecognized, home?
Along with Jackson's story, I'm asking you to view an old episode of
The Twilight Zone, "Mirror Image." It, too, begins in a bus depot with an unfriendly ticket agent, though in this case the protagonist is a young woman, Millicent Barnes (Vera Miles) waiting for her bus to Cortland. The bus is late, the ticket agent is grumpy, but nothing else seems out of place -- until, well, of course, it
does. Directed by the German filmmaker John Brahm, and introduced with his usual stretched-lip panache by Rod Serling, it offers another tale in which a journey by bus becomes a trip to insanity. It's available via
various streaming services, including Paramount Plus, Prime Video, or Apple TV.
The Twilight Zone is a show I used to watch when I was younger and I have actually seen that episode before and remember being confused and creeped out back then. I feel the same watching it this time. It gets more intense every time a new Millicent shows but also explains why the ticket agent and the cleaner in the bathroom were annoyed and told her that they have already seen. I enjoyed the end when the luggage of the man who called the police on Millicent goes missing. Especially after he made it seem like she was insane after she trusted him.
ReplyDeleteThis story was more like a nightmare, Miss Harper is stuck in a time loop where everything happens all over again. At the beginning of the story she's desperate to get home but ends up at the same place all over again. Is she suffering from a mental illness where she just relives events from her past and she's looking for the wrong home?
ReplyDeleteI thought The Bus by Shirley Jackson was a bit of a slow burn, though I found the ambiguous ending to be incredibly fulfilling, and I believe it leaves the audience to wrack their brains for multiple interpretations. Looking at the first paragraph, when Miss Harper expresses her concerns of getting home, and how “...it seemed very close to impossible” This poses the question of what Miss Harper even considers ‘home’ to be, as that is never concrete to the reader, or perhaps not even to Miss Harper. She appears very irritable and “very out of sorts”, giving the readers something is wrong here, and there are multiple barriers in the way of her getting home, the poor weather, and the driver who ushered off the bus not at her house, but at a crossroads. I immediately experienced an eerie feeling at this image, a young woman standing at a vacant crossroads, in the middle of the night. There are lots of myths and symbolism regarding crossroads, but the way I interpreted this as a supernatural occurrence, as in folklore, being at a crossroads represents being between worlds. Symbolically, it could also mean being “in between” places, or perhaps a decision, one that Miss Harper was struggling to make, which caused her irritability in the beginning of the story. She describes herself in such a dissociative state, that it reflects further with my belief that this is a supernatural occurrence, and Miss Harper is trapped between worlds, slowly beginning to lose her memories of the human world as she devolves into the madness of the afterlife. Especially the quote, “The truck seat was dreadfully uncomfortable, she felt clammy and sticky and chilled through, and home seemed so far away that perhaps it did not exist at all.” Chilled and clammy hands is a very common descriptor for a corpse, as well as the phrase “not exist at all.”
ReplyDeleteThis story seemed more like a horror in which Ms. Harper is trapped in an endless cycle of circumstances. At the beginning of the story, she is desperate to get home but keeps running into it. Is she suffering from a mental illness where she merely keeps repeating the same things and is misguided in her hunt for a place?
ReplyDeleteThis story was not one of my favorites. I did not like how one of the characters were in an endless loop of repeated scenarios. But, that could relate to the society we live in today. An endless constant 9-5 work days with tasks that we have to put up with that we may not want to. I just hate that the story had to do with an endless loop, because that is one of my fears. Doing the same exact thing every single day.
ReplyDeleteThe Bus uses a lot of off-putting imagery to make the reader feel uncomfortable if they weren't already uncomfortable with the story itself. The repetition of descriptions of textures, smells, and emotions leads me to believe that this story is an immersive experience where the reader takes the place of Miss Harper. It left me uneasy, not only because of her nightmarish situation but also because it ends open-ended. They are making us sit and ponder what had become of Miss Harper's condition.
ReplyDeleteThis story is really stressful to read. It is so similar to the average Americans life. When you really think about it we really are just living the same day or week or month again and again. Yes we might have spontaneous plans but its quite common to create daily habits that turn into a schedule that never stops repeating. Ms. Harper living in this endless cycle felt like a horror story.
ReplyDeleteThis story gives a big visual of the life of Miss Harper life. She's a sufferer of bus anxiety, Everyone in this story is unhelpful which is rare to have a day like that but I've had nightmares. Perhaps this is why dreams can feel populated by the faceless and nameless? In this story She is taken back to her childhood home after a gruesome string of horrific mishaps, where her old toys scare her.
ReplyDelete-Jamie Chaca
The twilight zone reminds me that sometimes we know just something wrong which is beyond the nature. We know and we feel. Because it's unusual and beyond the ordinary, it's hard to explain and make people get it easily. Ms. Harper gave her trust to a gentleman which she believes he is the one can be trusted other than those people in the waiting room. Instead, she was arrested by policemen who were under requested by that gentleman. Later on, that gentleman found out what Ms. Harper said is existed.
ReplyDeleteIn our daily life, we do the same thing together. However, we have got different memories. For example, one time early in the morning I gave medicines to one of my family. He refused to take it, and I took them back. That afternoon, he told me he took the medicines when I reached him in the morning. He even told me what the scenario looks like, how he hold the mug, how he has got the medicines and the way he put them in his mouth. I can't see any reason he would like to pretend he has taken the medicines. The way he described sounds like he believes he has taken the medicines. I was so surprise about how human's brain works. is it we "believe" first, then we star to imagine...
From a general standpoint, have we all had a deja vu moment? That is exactly what this reminds me of and it's very intriguing. All you can truly trust is yourself about any kind of dilemma you are facing. If you tell people they may think you are crazy. It is hard to validate how someone feels even if it does actually sound crazy
ReplyDeleteThis story quite literally expresses the world that most of us are living every single day. We repeat the same schedules, live the same way each day, and generally have a set way of living. The way the author chose a bus to be almost like a symbol to this way of living is interesting for sure. I think this is because buses are usually known to arrive and depart at the same time every single day. They have a set rotation the same way we do. It makes me want to break the pattern because I don't want to live this way forever.
ReplyDeleteThis story piqued my interest; the Twilight Zone has always been a strange television show, but I found this episode to be interesting and humorous. The main character is led to believe she is losing her mind when, in fact, someone is mimicking her daily routine, and no one notices. She is stuck in a never-ending loop with someone who is attempting to take over her life. This happens because the main character has a set way of living which makes it easy for her doppelganger to move around as she did.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Im in an episode myself everyday. I do the same things everyday, the same routine. I enjoyed it but also made me feel antsy because I related to it. -Prescilla da fonseca
ReplyDeleteThe episode from the Twilight zone was a good representation of "losing your mind" and feeling stuck. She was told multiple times that she was seeing things and her concerns were brushed off, until it happened to someone else. She knew that her routine was off and knew that there was another doppelganger, but could not prove it to anyone.
ReplyDeleteThis story is very open-ended in terms of what happened in the story, whether the old lady is confused about her reality because of her sleeping pill or maybe the story is some sort of dream she is having. I have seen other interpretations of the story say that perhaps the lady was dying and going through the last moments of her life.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting. 1967 is a familiar number. It's the year I was born. We moved here from our hometown carrying our dreams. Sometimes, we inevitable felt sleepy in the car, bus, train, or even airplane. Especially the suddenly we opened our eyes from dreams. Where am I? I haven't figured is it still in my dream. What did I do? Was it right? The feeling is some kind of similar to Ms. Harper's. A Puzzle? Confusion? Where I want to go, pursue, and where I exactly belong.
ReplyDeleteI thought this story was cool to get my mind thinking about what is really going on. I have a few conclusions but I think the best one is the old lady's life flashing before her eyes as she's dying. She is just watching/reliving/dreaming a mirror image of her life before passing on except with details being distorted. It is clear to me that in her later years in life she ended up with her childhood house again ("You'll always find your way back home" ). If her life is flashing before her; her younger self doesn't know she will move back there yet. For some reason she ended up having a glitch in her "dream" and wasn't supposed to be at the house yet to see her older self. Or perhaps she is still young and fell asleep on the bus; she is just dreaming. She might have a fear of growing old and its hunting her in her sleep. Maybe she will just wake up and continue like nothing happened.
ReplyDeleteShe could even be the old lady and astral projecting with out realizing she. Maybe other communications she has is just older souls in that realm. The bus driver might just be delivering her back to her body because she got confused and needs to find herself to wake up.
without realizing she is **
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