'Trick is' essay - Kirsty

‘The Trick is to Keep Breathing’ by Janice Galloway is the story of one woman, Joy Stone, suffering and eventually recovering from depression. The novel is one with a particularly well chosen title. This essay will look at why the title is well chosen, through its links to imagery running through the novel, the irony held in it, and its links to the novel’s conclusion.

Water imagery runs throughout the novel, linking to the fact Joy’s partner Michael drowned. For this reason, the water imagery is usually negative; Joy describes the furniture in her living room as ‘bits of sunk ship’. The image of sunk ships and shipwrecks link water with death, reminding us of its destructive force, just as it has destroyed the man Joy loved.
But by the end of the book, when Joy has began to recover from her depression, the water imagery becomes less negative, she even considers learning to swim. She says ‘I read somewhere the trick is to keep breathing, pretend it’s not unnatural at all’, This is the sentence the title is taken from, and the fact that Joy is now seeing water as something that can be handled by a ‘trick’ shows she sees it less as a force of destruction. She still sees swimming as something unnatural, showing she is not completely free of her fear of it, but this sentence acts as a big change from the constantly negative images of death conjured by water previously in the book.

There is also an irony in the to be found in the title: It can be seen to mean the trick to living is just to keep breathing. Breathing is a natural, easy, automatic process. In contrast, living for Joy is not easy at all. She has reached a stage where she can barely function. She does not eat and is alienated from her own body. She says ‘hands are bastards, so many separate pieces’. This shows how difficult she finds it to use her own body, and reflects the fact she herself is in ‘pieces’. Despite semming to have few physical health problems, she has to ‘haul’ herself up the stairs. ‘Haul’ suggests great physical difficulty. She is so alienated she describes her tears as ‘blisters. Little moon craters on the paper’. She hardly realises she is in fact crying, showing how far detached she is from her own emotions. ‘Blisters’ suggests pain, and ‘moon craters’ great distance, alienation.

But despite this dark irony, the title ‘The Trick is to Keep Breathing’ is also a hopeful one. It suggests there is a ‘trick’ to making life go on after a terrible event like the death of a loved one, and tells the reader that Joy will eventually find it. And she does: Throughout the novel there is negative imagery to both water, as mentioned previously, and light. This negative attitude to light shows Joy is in a dark place, and perhaps doesn’t want the truth of her situation illuminated. But by the end of the novel, Joy is considering learning to swim, and sits to ‘watch the lights’, showing she no longer dislikes brightness. Her recovery has begun.