{"id":406,"date":"2019-10-28T22:44:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T05:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/?p=406"},"modified":"2020-10-10T17:20:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T00:20:22","slug":"alice-isnt-dead-ep-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/2019\/10\/28\/alice-isnt-dead-ep-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Isn&#8217;t Dead Ep 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Episode 2, simply titled <em>Alice<\/em> continues the protagonist\u2019s journey on the road, though there are no hints as to how much time has passed since the previous episode with her encounter with the mysterious man. The protagonist tells the radio that she is driving through a town called Charleston, though she mentions that she had already passed through the small town earlier, notifying the same stoplight, fields, and even a \u201ctiki motel\u201d on the side of the road. More notably, she describes the inhabitants in her immediate surroundings behaving oddly. A girl, parked in a muddy, white car at a gas station with her face pressed against the windshield, facing away from the protagonist, an old man across the street behaving similarly, though with his face pushed up against a street light, as well as a woman and her son with their faces pressed against the outside side of a door to a room of the motel, all while being completely still as though frozen in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tA very distinct style of story-telling that <em>Alice Isn\u2019t Dead<\/em> uses is one that switches between two unrelated narratives; where the protagonist is in some point in time, jumping back and forth in time recent to the events she is experiencing, and expositional dialogue as the protagonist talks about (or more specifically, \u201cto\u201d Alice). In this episode, the protagonist reveals through narration that she was a part of groups and circles, presumably to help her get over the death of her wife, however, she then talks about the news and how there was frequently stories on tragedies; strangely, she mentions that she would see Alice in the background in all of them, noting where the tragedies took place with her on scene and making a map of America using them, leading her to come to the conclusion that she isn\u2019t actually dead, provoking her to take action and search for her. Additionally, she says that she still joins circles occasionally to tell her story, but more so that she tells them through the radio as well in the hopes that Alice herself would hear them, the first mention of why the protagonist is talking into a radio and adding sense to the odd narrative-switching story-telling used in the episodes as she explains where she is and her feelings towards Alice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tThe narration once again returns to the present, describing the events taking place in Charleston. Now, the gas station is on fire, chaos abrupting throughout the scene as the protagonist tries to describe what is going on, getting caught up in the heat of the moment (pun intended, sorry). A figure walks away from the station, their body ablaze; it is the old man. In one moment, the protagonist describes his eerily calm walk despite being on fire, the old man disappearing for a second only to appear in the passenger seat of her truck the next. Terrified, she asks him what he wants, the old man simply pointing to the road leading away from the town, the protagonist understanding, driving off, the old man disappearing unprompted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> The narrative style of <em>Alice Isn\u2019t Dead<\/em> makes it difficult to follow along with the story at times (and even more difficult to explain, sorry again), but does so in a way that adds to it. The jumbled switching and contrast\u00a0 between multiple narratives being told at different points in time creates a sense of anxiety and confusion, leaving the reader disoriented yet with enough information to understand the story being told. Just as the protagonist had experienced in Charleston with the old man, reality does not seem to make sense in this universe, the reader experiencing such disjunction themselves through the way information is conveyed.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Episode 2, simply titled Alice continues the protagonist\u2019s journey on the road, though there are no hints as to how much time has passed since the previous episode with her encounter with the mysterious man&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-engl200c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}