The mystery (Metaphor)
Jennifer was a lucky woman. In spite of the fact that she had to undergo a sex reassignment surgery to become a woman not only emotionally but also physiologically, she was really lucky. Unlike many other transsexual women, she had a loving family and a pretty large circle of friends. Unfortunately, her story was an exceptional one. “The silence” that “transgendered people cloak themselves with” had “hidden” them even from each other. They were simply afraid to come out, for the consequences could be unpredictable.
Difficulties (Metaphor)
Jennifer knew that life could be both unfairly difficult and cruel. One of his roommates, John Flyte “killed himself with a shotgun.” He “walked up into the mountains and pulled the trigger with his toe.” Jennifer thought about the time they had lived together, “about those dark days” of trying to be a writer, of trying to adjust and not to lose oneself. Jennifer was lucky to get a good job, meet Grace, and many other wonderful people, otherwise she could end up like poor John.
Being oneself (Metaphor)
The nights when James was “alone in the Coffin House,” “being female,” were always “a great relief” for him. At least for a few hours, he felt as if he didn’t have “to put on a show, constantly imitating the person” he would be if he’d actually “wound-up well-adjusted.” Jennifer tried her best to be James and she really did great, but the problem was that she wasn’t happy to be a man. She couldn’t get rid of a thought that her life was faux.
Hearing loss (Simile)
The first time James remember trying to come up with “some sort of solution to the being alive problem” was about 1968, when he was “staying in a summer house in Surf City.” A hurricane was “blowing up.” His parents were away, watching his sister “ride horses,” and James was being tended by his “dipsomaniac grandmother, Gammie,” and her friend Hilda Watson, a tiny woman who was “as deaf as a blacksmith’s anvil.”
Fragile (Simile)
Are we really that different or are we the same? Jennifer starts taking medications to prepare for a sex reassignment surgery and can’t feel happier about it. Her appearance changes but the inner world stays pretty much the same. That makes her question “the line between male and female.” It turns out to be that it is rather “fine.” In spite of the fact that we imagine our genders “as firms and fixed, in fact they are as malleable as a sand castle.”
