What Men Want
A big deal is made early on in the novel about the big night of the narrator’s defloration. And why wouldn’t it be a big deal. The experienced mentor guiding her toward that fateful appointment spells out through imagery exactly what is expected and precisely what men from a virgin:
“When a man buys your defloration, he wants your innocence, some hesitation, and cries of pain as proof that he is the first. At the same time, he does not want the awkwardness of a girl’s inexperience and screaming all night long.”
The Spanish Flu
Part of the story takes place against the backdrop of the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic. One of the most memorable examples of imagery is the way it is utilized to literalize the flu. In just one brief passage, the danger of the threat is made abundantly clear:
“He inserted a bulb syringe into one of Edward’s nostrils. When the doctor looked at what he had withdrawn, his expression changed to dark puzzlement. It was thick and tinged with blood. He reassured me that it was not serious. Edward coughed up sputum. It, too, had streaks of red. The doctor babbled on as Edward coughed violently and tried to catch his breath.”
The Epigraph
The novel commences with an Epigraph, a quote from Walt Whitman’s poem “Quicksand Years.” Whitman’s imagery of “quicksand years” are those sections of life that whirl a person from one place to another without warning or consideration or hint of the destination. Also included in the excerpted quote are references to remaining true to “One’s-Self.” Many novelists choose to add an Epigraph before the story begins as a way of priming a thematic pump, but few of those choices are as spot on as this. Chapter 8 of the book is titled “Quicksand Years” and philosophical search for the narrator’s “true self” will be directly addressed at various points in the narrative.
Extra Fingers No Longer There
One of the central images related to the narrator’s search for her True Self are superfluous extra pinky fingers which are longer there and that she has no actual memory of regardless. She is eight years old before she learns that she was born with an extra pinky finger on each hand which were subsequently amputated before she ever left the hospital for the first time. An extra pinky finger would likely be of only limited practical use, not to mention the likely cause of tortuous teasing, but it is not being involved in the decision making process to take something away from innate True Self that nobody else had the right to decide which is the driving point behind this use of imagery.
