Notes on W. S. Merwin's "Tergvinder's Stone"

Take one of your favorite stories from our course text, Sudden Fiction Continued, and comment on its characterization, narrative techniques, or other psychological or circumstantial aspects that make your selected story an evocative one.   60%

Tergvinder's Stone 
by W. S. Merwin

 

In W. S. Merwin's "Tergvinder’s Stone," a man called Tergvinder carries a plain-looking stone from the bottom of his drive. He does not explain much about the stone to anyone. Troubled by the insomnia, Tergvinder thinks that his problem in life can never be solved if discovering that he was still alive. However, Tergvinder does not face the problem rightly in reality. Although people around him take the stone of no use, Tergvinder regards it as his spiritual comfort for he seems to find the fellow-feeling from the stone in some certain attitude.

The protagonist, Tergvinder, perhaps he does not know the illness has been invading him step by step. Here the illness does not what he has got from the physical problem but from the mental illness. As we see in paragraph 3, “their already strained marriage.” Obviously, the relationship between Tergvinder and his wife is pretty nasty for a long period of time. And in paragraph 4, Tergvinder also has another problem, he cannot sleep at night. What cause him not to fall asleep? Probably the factor of his marriage is the main point.

In the latter paragraphs, we can clearly see Tergvinder suffered the pain from breathing. It is not that he has an illness in breathing but for he is alive. However, he knows that he must face this circumstance as he is still alive, which means, he is still breathing. Somehow the breathing leads him to be painful for dealing with the problem in reality. Because “their already strained marriage,” Tergvinder knows he has no idea to deal with and even does not know how to resume their marriage relationship. “…, and for months he had circled the problem, night and day, without apparently coming any closer to a solution.” Tergvinder, a married man, still cares about this marriage relationship though. For them, it somehow causes the mental illnesses which they might not realize. Therefore, Tergvinder does not discover that it has become a stress invisibly leading him to be an insomniac. Furthermore, he even desires something that can support him or give him hopes as he is alive by the minutes. Instead of solving the problem he had, Tergvinder tends to pursue something spiritual before he finds the stone at the bottom of his drive. “He knows its size, its weight, the touch of it, something of what is thought of it.” It seems that he finds such a stone as his actual spirit. For Tergvinder, he states, “The stone had rolled into its present place like a lost loved one falling into arms that had long ached for it.” Tergvinder regards him as the stone, showing that he is a lost loved person and is painful for he cannot save their bad marriage relationship.

The stone Tergvinder brought shows “peace” which he truly considers and desires. The peace, certainly, is also the element that Tergvinder wants to assuage “their already strained marriage.” By listening to the silence in darkness, Tergvinder says, both the silence and the peace become his fellow-feeling. The stone could have be his intimate companion while he was a human, a creature with heartbeat. Nonetheless, he is still unable to solve their marriage problem at length.

The author- W. S. Merwin: 
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-s-merwin

Picture source: http://hobbesdutt.com/blog/reviews/nomad-flute-the-poetry-of-w-s-merwin/


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