I'm having some problems with your interpretation:
Noah (recollecting his feelings about his own mother's passing AND giving us insight to the entire arc of Season 3): "I'm sure you did, but that's not why he died." *
You're speculating that Noah was recollecting his feelings about his mother passing away, as well as giving us any insight to the arc of S3, as well as ignoring several things that don't fit your speculations.
Do you think that Noah only imagined his father chasing him into the lake, saying "What have you done?" which was repeated by Imaginary Gunther? What about his real father, who clearly had a great deal of animus towards him (the scene when he went to Nina's with the kids, and the way both his father and Martin treated him, was painful). Do you think that came from nowhere but Noah's guilt? If anything, Noah should have felt anger towards his father, and his father felt guilty -- IF Noah was blameless in his mother's guilt -- not the other way around.
What about Nina? She knew something, and exactly what, had happened between Noah and their father. Noah was grateful to her for forgiving him. For what, if he wasn't guilty of anything? Nina told Helen their father wasn't merely an a$$hole -- not to her -- and that
something had happened. She said "Yes! Something happened!" and was blown away that after 20 years of marriage, Noah never confided in Helen what it was. She blamed Helen for that, but should she have? Wasn't it up to Noah to confide any deep dark secret in his wife of 20 years? Even at this point Nina said it wasn't up to her to divulge Noah's secret, and as maddening as it must have been to Helen, to be told yet not told, I agree with Nina.
Do you think Noah's confiding in Alison about his mother's death during Block Island 2.0 was merely Noah's imaginings completely manufactured out of guilt, where he really bore no guilt except a vague feeling of wanting his mother to die so he could go and accept his scholarship unhindered? How does this explain what an enormous impact it made on him and his life, to the point of a psychotic breakdown?
That makes no logical, psychological sense to me.
with Noah's "after someone dies, I think we want to tell ourselves a story of how it was our fault, because at least that gives us some control" quote.
[written by another poster, but you agreed with is] I can see how this would support your views, and I thought about it, but taken on the whole, with all of the rest of the info we've been given, it doesn't make sense.
Noah has to have, at a minimum, carried out his mother's wishes to commit suicide -- mashing up the pills in the yogurt, spoon-feeding it to her after spending the day with her, reading to her, etc., and writing out that letter for her. If that's
all he did, I can see the rest (with Nina and his father) playing out the way it did, and them blaming him for her death, knowing that neither of them were around, and Noah carrying guilt, knowing that somewhere he'd wished her to die too, so he could take his scholarship, get out of the town he'd always wanted to escape, and make something of his life.
But his guilt is so extreme, as was his sister's, and especially his father's, animosity towards him, it's also very possible that he did exactly what Imaginary Gunther accused him of, and nudged his mother into believing suicide was the best answer, for both of them. Unfortunately that was completely ignored by the finale.
and just like Juliette, Noah was probably praying for her to die also.
I see a big difference between the two situations, although some similarities as well. Etienne was an old man with dementia. Noah's mother was still relatively young -- probably his age now. Juliette was praying for him to die because he was no longer even himself, unlike Noah's mother. Etienne had made it clear to Juliette, throughout their marriage, somehow, that he never loved her as he did his first wife, Bridget. Noah's mother obviously loved him, a great deal, no matter how you slice it.
the second statement was just icing on the cake to tell the audience--hey, you guys aren't following a manipulative,exploitative, Machiavellian killer, but a man who was torment by the fact that he directly and personally benefited from the death of his own mother, whom he alone was tending to and caring for, and whose passing he had prayed for when she finally, ultimately, and in cruel bit of timing, passed by virtue of her illness.
I don't agree. It's not that I think Noah is likely (although who knows, maybe) a manipulative, exploitive Machiavellian killer, although he could be some part of these things, if most likely not not in the main. I don't believe he's a cold-hearted killer, and I think it's unlikely he prayed for his mother to die, as Juliette did her husband. (Even that, frankly, doesn't ring true with her saying she didn't think he'd ever die.)
But why would Noah be THIS tormented, so many years later, if he had no hand in his mother's death? That makes no sense to me at all.
IMHO, the writers told the audience that Noah made himself into the villain in his own life story
But there's no
reason for that, or his father and sister behaving the way they did towards him, if all he did was take care of his mother until her natural end, all by himself, as a teenager. Noah showed no remorse or guilt about his affair with Alison, until he went into the hospital after having passed out while running in Central Park, at which point he confessed to Helen, even after Max paid him the money to pay off Oscar and told him to not be stupid and tell Helen out of guilt. He did it anyway.
The time, silence and isolation that came with being in prison allowed for Noah's buried guilt and shame for having benefited from his mother's death to manifest as it did. Though cast as her caregiver, as is natural to teenagers, he had thoughts of his own dreams and desires and felt shame in seeing them come to fruition almost by virtue of his mother's death. IT was, for him, a betrayal of the role of son and of caregiver.
Yeah, sorry, I just can't buy that. He was going nutty before he was in prison, and his benefiting from his mother's death when he was 17 just isn't enough to account for his extreme guilt after so many years had passed, unless he had something to do with it. Nor does it explain, as I said, the reaction of his father and sister, and his father chasing him into the say saying "What have you done?" and Noah imagining chasing his own son into the lake.
I look forward to your thought on this, even if we don't agree :)
* To me what this meant was that her husband's death was not due to her prayers, as she thought and felt guilt over, but he was going to die anyway, in his own time. She could and most likely would feel guilty about it -- at most anyone would -- but it wasn't his actual cause of death.
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Cotton-mouth
8 years ago
It still leaves the haunting possibility that he actually crushed up the pills, at his mother's request, so that she ends her life by her own wishes.
My original post in this thread leaves open the possibility that young Noah did oblige his mother, believing it to be an act of mercy and not the selfishness that his guilt later made it out to be.
That being said, look at my posts in the other thread (Idyllic Ending)--I feel this self-absolution is something of a mirage.
Noah literally has perhaps a perfect Trip to Paris. He is with Juliette, he's in Paris, he walks throughout the city, reads in cafes, dines with his current "squeeze" who is a sophisticated, educated, complicated, and sexy woman (not to me personally but on the show). Noah has a non-confrontational meeting with Furkat, no judgment, no hostility. In fact, Furkat seems almost happy to see him and tells him where to find Whitney. He meets Whitney and while she blows him off at first, later on they reconcile in about as gentle and emotional a way as the two can muster. Noah's this nurturing, caring father. He's a man of patience with Furkat, and chose to console his daughter rather than confront Furkat, which would have sated his own anger. He chose to take Whitney home over his great adventure in Paris and this romance with Juliette. He even provides Juliette a way to unburden herself of the guilt of having wished for Etienne's death. He delivers Whitney on Christmas eve to his family. The one he had forsaken.
In
this rendition, Noah did NOT do anything to accelerate his mother's death. I think we the viewers are supposed to take Noah at his word in this version and go along with him on this ride to peace and quiet resolution. He isn't perfect, but he's making amends and softening out his rougher edges and his past isn't this foreboding avalanche of selfishness, mistakes, and regrets. I think that exchange btw Juliette and Noah is supposed to be about him freeing himself of all that. In the same way, his comment to Whitney that she can do better than someone who is like him is a way of him overcoming his past. I felt Noah's POV was a bit of a mirage.
Because if it isn't, I truly don't believe that Whitney would be so readily forgiving, that Noah himself would be so patient, so well attuned to meeting the needs of others. IF how Noah's POV is where Season 4 pick up, then how can they possibly explain the the neat pat ending.
As you noted Nina's exchange with Helen, Arthur Solloway chasing young Noah ("What did you do?), Noah's conversations with Alison about the death of his mother, the letter he shared with Martin, would have just been abandoned threads in Noah's tapestry.
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centrd
8 years ago
Do you think that Noah only imagined his father chasing him into the lake, saying "What have you done?" which was repeated by Imaginary Gunther? What about his real father, who clearly had a great deal of animus towards him (the scene when he went to Nina's with the kids, and the way both his father and Martin treated him, was painful). Do you think that came from nowhere but Noah's guilt? If anything, Noah should have felt anger towards his father, and his father felt guilty -- IF Noah was blameless in his mother's guilt -- not the other way around
.
Yeah, but Nina basically told Helen that this wasn't the truth. That Noah was *beep* up. So we have no idea if his dad had "animus" against him. All we know for sure is that this was a husband who didn't stray from his sick wife and made a living on the road. So he may not have been running away from responsibility as much as exercising his only option for a decent income in a no-opportunity town.
Noah's guilt has been eating at him for a long time, until the stress of his affair and subsequent prison sentence pushed him over the edge.
I do not believe that he plotted his mother's death. I assume he assisted her because his guilt over wishing her dead wouldn't have been great enough to send him into the downward spiral that assisting her did.
Damn right we're snowflakes! Winter is coming!
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centrd
8 years ago
Oh, and his success would have been another stressor, also contributing to his guilt that he got it at the expense of his mother.
Damn right we're snowflakes! Winter is coming!
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