The Mathematics of Banana Trees: The Inconsistency of Memory in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy

Memory is an aspect of the human mind that can be terribly inconsistent. Two people can witness the same event yet have two completely different recollections of it. In one’s own mind, memory may be manipulated again and again until what is perceived as the reality of what actually happened is, in reality, very far from the truth of the actual event. A variety of techniques may be used to alter memory and then firmly believe that what has been invented is now actual fact. In Jealousy, by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the shortcomings of memory are employed to fuel jealous rage of a husband; however, it is the repetition of constants (numbers, shapes, and objects), which convinces the narrator that these new memories are fact.

In the narrator’s memory, as described in the book, there are two major events that are constantly repeated and changed: the day of A... and Frank’s return and the discovery and crushing of the centipede. The narrator relates the event one way, but later returns to it with a slight alteration of details, each time making the idea of an affair between his wife, A..., and his neighbor, Franck, more likely. However, there are details, even concepts, within the retelling of each and within the setting itself, which serve to allow the narrator, and the reader, to believe that these retellings are the truth. These objects and concepts lose their original utilitarian value and become something else entirely: markers that what the narrator is remembering actually happened. They begin to signify where they may have never been signifiers before. The narrator makes reference to his belief in his own memory and the idea that whatever he remembers must then be the truth when he states, “It’s no use making up contrary possibilities, since things are the way they are: reality stays the same” (75).

The narrator spends ample time describing the layout of his plantation, including the shape in which his banana trees are arranged and the number of trees per row: “There are thirty-two banana trees in the row...instead of being rectangular like the one above it, this patch is trapezoidal...In the second row, starting from the far left, there would be twenty-two trees...” (51). This description of trees goes on for multiple pages. The number of trees, their geometric shape, and their arrangement by row are all certainties in the memory of events that are very uncertain and which consistently change. The narrator returns to the trees again in his story, and they are always the same shape: “...the corner of a rectangular patch where the bare earth can still be distinguished... the second patch, in the shape of a trapezoid...” (91). This description comes in the midst of much confusion about the narrator’s memory. It is unclear which past event he is referring to in the paragraphs surrounding this description. A... is first “...standing in front of the door,” at a point the reader can only assume is before her trip with Franck and is looking through the entire house and out over the banana trees, which are then described by the narrator with the exact same details as in the beginning. This is followed by a jump in the narrator’s memory when “A... is just coming home” (91). The banana trees are the one constant in an otherwise murky memory of A...’s trip with Franck and serve to assure the narrator and the reader that if this myriad of specific details are remembered correctly, the rest must also be true.

The centipede recurs more than any other portion of the narrator’s memory and becomes the most distorted of all the recollected events. At first, it is an afterthought. The narrator simply mentions that “...a blackish spot marks the place where a centipede was squashed last week, at the beginning of the month, perhaps the month before, or later” (47). It is of no importance; however, as the narrator’s obsession with details grows, the metaphor of the stain being on his house, and then on his marriage, or even on the narrator himself, and the idea that Franck is the cause, becomes a reality. The narrator imagines the scene over and over again:

Franck, who has said nothing, is looking at A...again. Then he stands up, noiselessly, holding his napkin in his hand. He wads it into a ball and approaches the wall...the wadded napkin falls on it...Franck lifts the napkin away from the wall and with his foot continues to squash something on the tiles against the baseboard (65).

This is replayed again as: “Frank stands up, picks up his napkin, approaches the wall, squashes the centipede against the wall, lifts his napkin, squashes the centipede on the floor (89).” There are more descriptions of the event that follow this one, each changing slightly. In the first, there is a much longer, drawn out description, and A...’s “...left hand gradually closes over her knife” (65). In the second, the description is terse, and A...’s hand, “...has clenched into a fist on the white cloth” (89). The only constant is that there was a centipede, and it was squashed at some point.

In the final retelling of the squashed centipede, the original facts have become completely distorted. The centipede is now “...enormous: one of the largest to be found in this climate” (112); however, for the narrator, it is not the size that matters, but that there was, in fact, a centipede. It has become a signifier of the alleged affair. It is this concrete fact that he holds on to, until, finally, the story becomes: “Frank, without saying a word, stands up...with his foot, he squashes it against the bedroom floor. Then he comes back toward the bed...[A...’s hand] has clenched into a fist on the white sheet” (113). The narrator has used the repeating image of the squashed centipede, which began as just a stain, to fuel his jealous rage and convince himself that A... and Franck are indeed having an affair.

Memory is completely subjective unless there is another party to compare facts with. In the narrator’s case, he is lost in his own thoughts and so the reader only has his telling and retelling of the events. Key facts—colors, objects, numbers—are held on to in order to be sure that the memory of an event is correct. They reassure the memory and give it credibility because there are concrete facts relative to some that might not be much more vague. They have the ability to convince and to turn a fictionalized memory into reality.


Works Cited

Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet: Jealousy and In the Labyrinth. New York: Grove Press, 1959.