Week 4 – Dr. Masters – “Don’t Look Now” by Daphne DuMaurier

 

John and Laura have been to Venice three times, the first was for their honeymoon.  The third is to help Laura get over the death of their daughter.  The progression from good reasons to go, like a honeymoon or a vacation, to trying to get over bereavement, may reflect how things decay in Italy.  In Italy, you can be lost and scared easily surrounded by the Gothic architecture.  Venice is where Gothic was born, the drowning city as a setting for sinister plots.   

 

Things happen in Italy that may not happen anywhere else, at least according to a Brit, like premonitions of the future and seeing ghosts.  Back in England, in might not take such things seriously; one might not believe it as a possibility, but In Italy, it seems natural.  In the story, these strange things did happen and the characters responded to them as being in Italy, not England.  John’s reaction to meeting the twin sisters is different than Laura’s reaction.  Laura is comforted, John is in denial of his feelings as he tries to help her get over the loss of their child.  He has his own feelings but is not in touch with them.  He follows a red caped murderer thinking perhaps he is seeing his daughter’s ghost.  He feels guilty for not protecting her from disease and wants to make up for it in some way or to ask forgivness.  Instead, because he’s in Italy, he dies at the hand of a weird dwarf character with a knife.