Help me understand the words

[gxnn]

The author describes what happened when he was to leave his own house after his parents divorced,as follows:
I suddenly became aware of the coldness of the garage, but I didn’t want to go back inside the house, so I made my way through the boxes to the couch. I cleared a space to lie down and curled up, covering myself with my jacket. I hoped my father would return soon with the truck so we could empty the garage and leave the cryptic silence of parting lives behind.

What does "cryptic silence of parting lives" mean? Can you tell me your understanding or paraphrase it?
Thank you from a Chinese English learner.

 

[Wanderer0327]

"Cryptic silence of parting lives"

There are two ways I read "cryptic" in this passage. The first way is more literal in that it might mean puzzling, perplexing or disconcerting. But I think the better way might be to read it as "like in a crypt or tomb."

The marriage is dead. The father is not present. No word about the mother. The boy is there all alone. The house would be silent like a tomb is after it is sealed. And perhaps the boy feels the finality of the divorce.

I could see it go either way: describing the silence as perplexing; or, describing the finality of the death of the marriage.

 

[NotHisLady]

"Cryptic silence of parting lives"

There are two ways I read "cryptic" in this passage. The first way is more literal in that it might mean puzzling, perplexing or disconcerting. But I think the better way might be to read it as "like in a crypt or tomb."

The marriage is dead. The father is not present. No word about the mother. The boy is there all alone. The house would be silent like a tomb is after it is sealed. And perhaps the boy feels the finality of the divorce.

I could see it go either way: describing the silence as perplexing; or, describing the finality of the death of the marriage.

A clever author would have chosen the word for its duel meaning. That way it is both the quality of silence as unable for him to understand or grasp AND that of a cold dead house.

I'm assuming a clever author but it's what I'd have done.

 

[stickygirl]

Is the word 'cryptic' really necessary? The metaphor should be obvious enough to provoke a question in the reader, rather than have it spelled out like this. It feels like an awkward use of language to me

 

[sunandshadow]

I like the reading of cryptic as "encrypted" - the house will keep the lives of those who lived there (which they themselves do not understand) a quiet secret; even if someone new buys the house and lives there, the new person won't intrude into the secrets of the previous owners.

My guess is that the narrator feels the divorce or events that triggered it as traumatic or bizarre and impossible to understand on an emotional level. He hopes that by leaving he can forget it and start a new simpler and more understandable life.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I agree with sticky, I think it's awful.

Yeah, if it was my story I'd have left out "cryptic", it just feels like trying a little too hard.

 

[sethp]

cryptic silence of parting lives- I like it.

Purposely confusing non communication between people getting a divorce and going their separate ways.

 

[Wanderer0327]

A clever author would have chosen the word for its duel meaning. That way it is both the quality of silence as unable for him to understand or grasp AND that of a cold dead house.

I'm assuming a clever author but it's what I'd have done.

The problem with dual meanings is that they can easily confuse the intent. I agree with sticky and Rain, this was a very awkward choice of words which I would have avoided.

My money says the author used an electronic thesaurus, saw "cryptic" as a possible synonym, and jumped on it. I remember doing that back in my early years of writing... sans teh electronic part that is.

 

[Wanderer0327]

I like the reading of cryptic as "encrypted" - the house will keep the lives of those who lived there (which they themselves do not understand) a quiet secret; even if someone new buys the house and lives there, the new person won't intrude into the secrets of the previous owners.

My guess is that the narrator feels the divorce or events that triggered it as traumatic or bizarre and impossible to understand on an emotional level. He hopes that by leaving he can forget it and start a new simpler and more understandable life.

Interesting take on the phrase. It would be interesting to see the entire manuscript to understand the author's word choices.

 

[Hypoxia]

I'm on the "sloppy language" side. Cryptic, crypt, encrypted -- all based on the Greek kruptos, hidden, but with rather different flavors. "Cryptic silence of parting lives" IMHO implies a void that hides the reason(s) behind the parting -- a mystery. Need it be solved?

In way too many decades of reading, I've never seen 'cryptic' as an adjective describing a graveyard crypt except satirically. "The grave robbers pursued their cryptic endeavors," et fucking cetera -- about as subtle as an icepick. Or an encrypted (not the same as encoded, but a similar idea) message may be cryptic, mysterious -- but so might a plain-text message that's just confusing or nonsensical. If the author intended readers to suspect a hidden message in the empty garage, I would hope they would be more obvious.

So I'll go with "sloppy language" and "thesaurus misuse" here. Cheers!

 

[gxnn]

Dear all, thank you for your help. The text comes from an author, which I will show you as follows. So you can go on with the discussion. And the text has been used as the original material of a nationwide translation contest in China, the deadline for submission of which ended two days earlier.

Limbo

By Rhonda Lucas

My parents’ divorce was final. The house had been sold and the day had come to move. Thirty years of the family’s life was now crammed into the garage. The two-by-fours that ran the length of the walls were the only uniformity among the clutter of boxes, furniture, and memories. All was frozen in limbo between the life just passed and the one to come.

The sunlight pushing its way through the window splattered against a barricade of boxes. Like a fluorescent river, it streamed down the sides and flooded the cracks of the cold, cement floor. I stood in the doorway between the house and garage and wondered if the sunlight would ever again penetrate the memories packed inside those boxes. For an instant, the cardboard boxes appeared as tombstones, monuments to those memories.

The furnace in the corner, with its huge tubular fingers reaching out and disappearing into the wall, was unaware of the futility of trying to warm the empty house. The rhythmical whir of its effort hummed the elegy for the memories boxed in front of me. I closed the door, sat down on the step, and listened reverently. The feeling of loss transformed the bad memories into not-so-bad, the not-so-bad memories into good, and committed the good ones to my mind. Still, I felt as vacant as the house inside.

A workbench to my right stood disgustingly empty. Not so much as a nail had been left behind. I noticed, for the first time, what a dull, lifeless green it was. Lacking the disarray of tools that used to cover it, now it seemed as out of place as a bathtub in the kitchen. In fact, as I scanned the room, the only things that did seem to belong were the cobwebs in the corners.

A group of boxes had been set aside from the others and stacked in front of the workbench. Scrawled like graffiti on the walls of dilapidated buildings were the words “Salvation Army.” Those words caught my eyes as effectively as a flashing neon sign. They reeked of irony. “Salvation—was a bit too late for this family,” I mumbled sarcastically to myself.

The houseful of furniture that had once been so carefully chosen to complement and blend with the color schemes of the various rooms was indiscriminately crammed together against a single wall. The uncoordinated colors combined in turmoil and lashed out in the greyness of the room.

I suddenly became aware of the coldness of the garage, but I didn’t want to go back inside the house, so I made my way through the boxes to the couch. I cleared a space to lie down and curled up, covering myself with my jacket. I hoped my father would return soon with the truck so we could empty the garage and leave the cryptic silence of parting lives behind.



（From: Patterns: A Short Prose Reader, by Mary Lou Conlin, published by Houghton Mifflin, 1983.）

 

[gxnn]

Latest news is that the text was used as the original for a translation contest hosted by a well-known English language magazine of China, where contestants were required to put the original into Chinese. Now the contest was concluded, but the result was not satisfactory, more like a farce, the first prize winner producing a lousy work, and the jury was thought to be low in understanding and unfair in their judgment, one of the reasons being misunderstanding of the original. For example, words "two by fours", which obviously meant the wood used to build houses in North America, were misunderstood as there were a pile of such woods placed at the corner of the garage.