The beginning
It was “the second week of August.” The sun was “heavy, making us slow and irritable,” the tarmac “caught on” sneakers, and apples and pears were “just ripe enough to lie snugly in the hand, the perfect missiles.” The kids looked “neither left nor right.” It was “the first day of school after summer vacation.” The classroom smelled of “detergent and weeks of emptiness,” the windows reflected “clear and bright,” and the blackboard was yet to be “blanketed with chalk dust.” “Class 7A.” This imagery evokes a feeling of anticipation, since it is clear that something is going to happen but we don’t know yet what it is.
Trifles
“Nothing matters,” Pierre Anthon announced. He said that he had been aware of that “for a long time.” Thus, nothing was “worth doing.” “Calm and collected,” the boy “bent down and put everything he had into his bag.” He nodded good-bye “with a disinterested look and left the classroom without closing the door behind him.” The door “smiled.” Pierre left door “ajar,” making it look “like a grinning abyss” that could “swallow” the rest of the class up easily. “The uncomfortable silence” reigned in the room. This imagery leaves readers with a feeling of ambiguity.
Something
They had just started “seventh grade,” and they were all “so modern and so well-versed in life.” Those teenagers liked being in the world they knew that “everything was more about how it appeared than how it was.” “The most important thing” was “to amount to something that really looked like it was something.” And though “that something as yet seemed rather vague and unclear” to them, it certainly had nothing to do with “sitting in a plum tree, pitching plums into the streets.” They refused to believe Pierre! This imagery is an embodiment of nonsense, for even the kids themselves couldn’t explain why Pierre’s words irritated and frightened them so much.
