The Girl I Left Behind Me By Muriel Spark

The above sentence is crucial to the short story “The Girl I Left Behind Me” by Muriel Spark based on how the theme of trying to remember the past works through the sentence. This relationship is explored through the sentence's syntax and echoes of it in other sentences in the story.

The chosen sentence effectively conveys the theme of trying to remember the past using syntax. The second part of the sentence, “As I ranked around my mind for some clue as to what I had left unfinished.” (280) suggests that the speaker is trying to dig up memories from their past that they may have forgotten. This suggestion relates to the theme because of the speaker's continuous search for what they haven’t remembered. The author uses the word “ranked”, which

For example, the speaker says: “I was not returning for his sake/ I was doing this to get rid of the feeling of incompletion" (282). This sentence echoes the theme in the original sentence as it uses the word “incompletion”. This word is very similar to “unfinished” in the original sentence, suggesting that the speaker is still trying to fill a gap or an incomplete memory. Also, in this sentence, returning is motivated by a sense of incompleteness, similar to the eerie feeling of aging that drives the search through one's mind in the original. Thus, these connections echo the theme through feelings of incompletion and a constant search for what is lost in their memory. Furthermore, in the last paragraph, the speaker says: “I recognized what I had left behind me, my body lying strangled on the floor.” (283). This sentence's use of the phrase “my body” offers a resolution to why the speaker in the original sentence was grappling around “my mind” to find something. Resolving the earlier question echoes the theme as the speaker comes to terms with the present and reclaims the memory they once forgot. This quote not only echoes the theme conveyed in the original sentence but also brings closure to the underlying