It Will Look Like a Sunset

In “It Will Look Like a Sunset” Kelly Sundberg tells her story of domestic violence. A story all too familiar to far too many people. She tells you the good times, and the bad. She then tells you about the extremely bad. She recounts her story with such emotion and description that you feel almost as if you’re there, experiencing both the horrors and the bliss. She explains how she was manipulated into thinking maybe she deserved to be hit, maybe there was something wrong with her, not with him. She explains how slowly and then quickly the violence escalated. Her style of alternating between showing the demons in Caleb and the mask he wore before portraying himself as loving and caring was refreshing. You could see how anyone could have been ensnared in the same trap Caleb set.

Hidden Bruises 6/4/19

Jacob R. Myers

Mrs. Wyatt

English 102

30 May 2019

Hidden Bruises

            “My love for him was real, and I didn’t want to be a single mother.” This is just one of the many incredibly difficult truths that victims of domestic violence face every day, wrestling with the idea that “something may be wrong with me.” In “It will Look Like a Sunset” Kelly Sundberg recounts her experiences in just such a relationship using vivid imagery and intense compare and contrast to share the horrors, and love, that she survived. It’s an incredibly emotional experience and one that’s, at times, hard to read but it’s an important message to people to not stand-by if they think their friend needs help.

            Kelly Sundberg’s use of vivid and captivating imagery in her essay is displayed throughout and used masterfully to truly capture the readers attention and empathy. The title in itself “It will Look Like a Sunset” is a recount of what a doctor describes her horrific injury will look like following her then husband, Caleb, shattering a heavy ceramic serving bowl on her foot. People can instantly imagine the beauty of a sunset but the thought of a marking of that sort on someone’s body fills the reader’s thoughts with sorrow that Kelly experienced something so cruel. Earlier she describes the injury during her dialogue with police following the incident, “When the older policeman saw the swelling, the black and blue, and the toes like little sausage links, his expression turned to dismay. “That’s bad. That looks broken,”” Her continued use of imagery here strikes a cord with readers in the description of her foot being “black and blue” and her toes being swollen and resembling sausage links. Readers can instantly imagine the pain, the anger, and the aggression; from someone you love no-less; that led to the dreadful injuries being described here. Continuing she uses imagery describing the confliction, sadness, or even incoherent rambling in Caleb’s expression following him pursuing therapy and medication to “attempt” to heal his demons: “What are you looking at?” I asked. “Myself,” he said. “That’s me sitting in that chair.” He pointed at an empty chair across the room. “That me is laughing at me.” His eyes were confused, sad.” Her description of his eyes as confused and sad while staring at an empty chair across the room somehow leads to empathetic feelings to be felt for a man who by most accounts is deserving of none. It impacts you in a way that provides some context for why Kelly, and so many people, stay in these relationships.

            In addition to imagery Sundberg uses an intense style of compare and contrast throughout her essay providing incredibly impactful examples of Caleb’s evil actions, his manipulation, his abuse, his anger, and his violence and immediately follows them up with examples of him being loving, tender, caring, and generous. She recounts an experience of cuddling with Caleb and their son in between, the intense love and satisfaction that an act like that provides and immediately follows this happy story with a quote from Caleb, “I’m not the type of person to hit a woman,” he said. “So it must be you. You are the one who brings this out in me. I would not be like this if I was with a different woman.” A little later in the essay Kelly describes being punched in the spine so hard she screamed out in pain and crumpled into heap on the floor, the one time she couldn’t ignore the pain and follows telling the reader how she and Caleb genuinely loved each other and had a strong relationship. How they spent real quality time together and enjoyed the same thing. How they vacationed all over the world and how Caleb would call her just to hear her voice. These abrupt transitions could leave the reader with emotional whiplash but in “It Will Look Like a Sunset” Sundberg masterfully manages the highs and lows of her story again providing reasoning for why she thought she could save the man she loved, save the father of her child, and save her family.

            In her essay Kelly Sundberg strikes many emotional cords, from happiness to sadness, from elation to disgust, and from love to hate using multiple literary tools ranging across the writer’s board. She accomplishes her goal of putting a face to the sad reality of domestic violence and manipulation. She hooks the reader vibrantly describing her world, her emotions, and her pain. She provides examples of people in her life being by-standers as she was suffering this abuse. She shares the story of her struggle, her fight, her hidden bruises, and how she survived making it out the other side.

Works Cited

Sundberg, Kelly. “It Will Look Like a Sunset.” Guernica, 25 Jan. 2018, http://www.guernicamag.com/it-will-look-like-a-sunset/.

6/4/19

The paper we wrote analyzing “It Will Look Like a Sunset” was challenging but was a welcome challenge. It was an interesting exercise choosing two literary elements and “pulling them out” of Kelly Sundberg’s essay. My biggest weakness was relying a little too much on direct quotations however my strength was probably my ability to describ my thoughts.