Individuality
As the speaker sits in the dentist's waiting room, she observes a wide swath of humanity—familiar people in the form of her aunt and the patients in the room, and unfamiliar people in the pages of the magazine she reads. Confronted with this range of people, Elizabeth becomes suddenly aware of how strange her own individuality is. She feels that it is bizarre, and somewhat random, that she should exist and that she should exist specifically as herself. Moreover, even as she becomes aware of the specificity of her own identity and experience, she also begins to sense ways in which her seeming uniqueness is actually determined by a web of relationships outside of her control and conscious awareness. She understands that her place in the world, as a child in Worcester in 1918, is a product of forces that have little to do with her choices. She also understands that she will grow up to resemble her family, especially her aunt, whether she wishes to or not—her individual characteristics are also familial ones.
Loss of Innocence
As she explores the outside world through the pages of National Geographic, the speaker is rapidly confronted with scenes from outside her familiar childhood milieu. She confronts the unpredictability of nature through photographs of a volcano, and violence through images of a dead body. She is impacted above all, however, by photographs of women with naked breasts. These are described as "horrifying" and "awful," suggesting the speaker's ambivalence about her femininity and oncoming adulthood—an ambivalence echoed in her horrified realization that she and her aunt have similar voices. Surrounded by the trappings of the adult world and specifically of adult womanhood, the speaker feels overwhelmed by the inevitable prospect of growing up.
