Essay Questions

What literary technique does the author rely upon to establish the context of her essay?

The opening paragraph engages imagery to establish the scene leading to the moment that inspired this essay. From the moment she first walks into the dry-cleaning store onward, the story will move in a non-linear direction both forward and backward in time. The point of establishing the epicenter of this chronology is to unify the future with the past. The writer could have taken any number of other different approaches, such as starting with the three short dialogue-laden sentences which comprise a conversation between her and the dry-cleaning lady. Another viable alternative would been to actually start the essay with the very same paragraph which ends it as a way of setting the broader context before narrowing it down to her moment of epiphany. As it stands in its completed form, the opening paragraph illuminates the power of imagery technique with which to commence a short work of literature.

The chronology of this essay can seem a little difficult to follow. At what specific point in her life does the epiphany inside the dry-cleaning store take place?

The essay goes back to a point in time to describe the moment when the narrator is confronted with the existential slap across the face of literally being laughed at for not knowing how to pronounce her own name. From there it will go as far in time as when the narrator was in high school at the height of the popularity of the Brat Pack movies of the 1980’s. The thoughts being expressed in the text obviously take place at a point in time after the event in the dry-cleaning store. The casual reader may well miss the single line that situates her age in the “present day” in which she wrote it as twenty-eight.

All these time-traveling shifts in the chronology can make it difficult to pinpoint when she underwent this obviously transformative moment of being laughed. However, just like her age at the time of writing, the general period of her life is actually explicitly stated in the text, but since it comes literally right after that dramatic image of being laughed at for not knowing how to say her name, it can be easily skimmed over without full comprehension: “Perhaps I was particularly sensitive at the time, having just dropped out of graduate school.”

What subject was the author studying when she dropped out of graduate school and what is explanation for doing so?

It may be equally surprising or not surprising at all to read that the author of the essay was pursuing a Ph.D in English literature. This should not be surprising since she clearly is a writer. On the other hand, the fact that at such a late date in her academic career she suddenly decided to end that pursuit may be surprising since…she clearly is a writer. The existence of the essay being published itself would seem to be evidence that this was not a case of a person dropping their pursuit of advanced degree in literature in order to suddenly pursue a degree in architecture or archaeology. She obviously had an interest in writing that continued to fire her ambition even after realizing that that after five years in the literature program, she had no real passion for it.