BEING ILL, SHE SPEWS FORTH VITRIOL
I am not speaking of the child in the passenger seat. I am talking about her mother: being ill, she spews forth vitriol.
The over-the-top anger with which this woman speaks, and actions such as her excessive honking, although both perhaps all too common within the age of road rage, speaks to the fact that there is something wrong with her. She speaks in short fragments, suggesting a disturbed and fragmented mind. Lines such as “What are you doing?” and “Why is this happening?” even though she clearly states that ”I saw that gun go shootin’ out the window,” which would indicate that she knows exactly what they are doing and what is happening, suggests a dissociative state in which she can not make simple connections within her own mind. In short, she is ill.
As the boy who shoots the gun in the van within this same sequence of events is a reflection of his father, so too is the girl a reflection of her mother. She is a symbolic representation of her own mother’s illness. As with the boy who shoots the gun, this is also a commentary on how what we do, the way that we behave, impacts the behaviors, attitudes and lives of our offspring and those around us. This is a common theme within the world of Twin Peaks. Bobby’s look of revulsion at what he is seeing should not be mistaken as a revulsion or a judgment of such people themselves, but rather as the great sadness and revulsion that Lynch feels towards the condition it’s self.
