Anna Wetherell's amnesic blackout

Anna Wetherell’s amnesic blackout is defined by what she cannot recall and by the moments around it that others help preserve: she woke in gaol, where Cowell Devlin was present and prayed for her. Anna later places the blackout at a turning point in the chronology of her dreams, while identifying January 14 as a date associated with the events surrounding Emery Staines’s disappearance.

The blackout and waking in gaol

Anna recalls Cowell Devlin as one of the people present when she woke in gaol after the blackout. Her memory preserves his presence, though the blackout itself is described as a gap rather than a fully remembered episode. The scene is therefore known through its edges: the awakening and the person who witnessed it, not an account of what Anna experienced while unconscious or unable to remember.

Devlin as witness

When Devlin later approaches Anna with a document he believes will interest her, she recognizes him from the gaol. She also recalls that he prayed for her. In a subsequent conversation, Anna repeats this recollection to explain why Devlin has been praying for her ever since. His role gives the memory a continuing human presence: the blackout is not only a private interruption in Anna’s awareness, but an occasion remembered by someone who cared for her.

Dreams and chronology

Anna dates the beginning of her feelings and dreams to the period after she stopped prostitution and after the blackout. In the conversation, this timing is linked to Staines’s disappearance; Anna identifies January 14 as the date under discussion. The evidence connects these details temporally without explaining the dreams or establishing that the blackout caused them. What remains clear is that Anna treats the blackout as a dividing point in her own account: her experiences before it are set apart from the dreams that followed.