“the lights are going out”
All My Puny Sorrows“The lights are going out” is the phrase Yolandi Von Riesen recalls from her father, Jake Von Riesen, shortly before his suicide. Spoken in an ordinary daylight setting, it becomes a remembered image of approaching loss, connecting the family’s earlier bereavement with Yolandi’s present fear for Elfrieda Von Riesen.
The remembered words
Yolandi recalls that the day before her father killed himself, he took her hand while they sat beside a fountain in a park at noon. He told her that it felt to him as though the lights were going out. The setting places the words against the brightness of midday; their force lies in the contrast between that visible day and the darkness his phrase anticipates.
Recurrence and significance
The phrase returns while Yolandi is alone with Elfrieda and the sun is disappearing. Its recurrence brings her father’s death into the present without making the two moments identical: the remembered words give shape to Yolandi’s fear as she faces her sister’s grave crisis. The image of light fading thus carries both personal memory and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
