Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

She closed her suitcase, clicking shut the old-fashioned locks. “My mother is dead,” she said again, this time reminding herself. She set her suitcase upright on the floor and sat on it. She looked like someone waiting for a train.

“Fine,” I said. “And she’s going to be dead for a long time.” Though it sounded stupid, I felt good saying it. As though I had my own locks to click shut.

Through similes and metaphors Z.Z. Packer cleverly engages the reader’s imagination to continue reading and to look beyond the first-person encounter or situation at hand.

In this chapter, an angry, lesbian Yale student attempts to transform her pessimist thinking into a more thoughtful and open state of mind. Z.Z. Packer uses a large amount of dialogue to outline what she is thinking in comparison to what she is saying. The girl curses and yells, and shows little compassion through her words, but internally is hiding the emotions and feeling she internalizes.

…With this she put a jovial arm around my neck. I continued walking, a little stunned. Then, just as quickly, she dropped her arm and stopped walking. I stopped too.

“Did you notice that I put my arm around you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Next time, I’ll have to chop it off…”

In the cold air, her arm had felt good.”

Without these dialogues, as well as the use of comparisons and descriptions, the emotions and attitudes of the characters would not be as easily identifiable or as effective.

Word Count: 253