What You See in the Dark: Has Anything Changed?

From everything we've read so far as a class, Manuel Muñoz's What You See in the Dark is my favourite. I have to say, I'm a bit bummed that our class discussions of this book have for the most part, come to an end. I thought this novel was engaging and such a fun read, and I loved drawing comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). However, after last Tuesday's discussion, I'm a bit conflicted about the end of the book.

I'm not sure how to feel about it. Part of me expected more, like witnessing Dan get found by authorities and arrested for murdering Teresa, or for Arlene to have more of an eventful ending. I understand why some of the class found it underwhelming, especially considering how much there is in the rest of the book to talk about and dissect. When I finished the book, I initially thought to myself, "What, that's it?" However, with time, I started to understand the ending a bit more and had more of an emotional reaction to it. I was left with a really strange feeling of melancholy, primarily related to change or a lack thereof.

The big question for me is: has anything changed? Change is such a persistent theme in this book, with Arlene often contemplating change and the lack of it in her life. As I mentioned, I really expected something more eventful to happen to Arlene after Dan left. I was particularly struck by the moment in the book that describes how "she looked up from the counter [and] it was 1968" (215). I do think that things have changed, but not in the way that anybody expected. I kind of think as Arlene as something of a ghost, something forgotten or faded, someone people had stopped caring about. We can argue that the people of Bakersfield didn't care much about Arlene in the first place. Everybody knew of her, but few people knew anything substantial. She was simply Mrs. Watson, the woman who poured their coffee and ran a motel and had a husband who left her. People didn’t know Arlene. In the years after Dan leaves town, whatever little ways that she felt she had a purpose or place in Bakersfield dissipated. With the construction of the highway, the motel doesn’t get any business and the café "[slips} right through the town's fingers [...], it not being "the center of anything" anymore. Arlene, ultimately, exists in the same way she always has but everything around her has changed. She realizes that "things change, but she wasn't ever going to" (214).