“Ode to Algebra”
Mia’s poem is instantly a thing of beauty to any kid who ever sat slumped in class listening to an algebra teacher explaining things without ever being able to explain how the average person could actually use them in real life. It must be true that algebra is useful in everyday situations otherwise it hardly seems capable of hanging to the curriculum for so long. But will there ever be a teacher who can effectively answer that question in the middle of her imagery:
“Thrust into this dingy classroom
we die like lampless moths
locked into the desolation of
fluorescent lights and metal desks.
Ten minutes until the bell rings.
What use is the quadratic formula
in our daily lives?
Can we use it to unlock the secrets
in the hearts of those we love?
Five minutes until the bell rings.
Cruel Algebra teacher,
won't you let us go?”
Josh
Crushing hard is maybe not the right term to describe the feelings she holds toward him. It would only take Mia becoming a bit more mobile and proactive to turn her from a girl with a crush into a stalker. Her freshman-level view of Josh is truly embarrassing, but one has to start somewhere, of course:
“Josh Richter (agree-six feet of unadulterated hotness. Blond hair, often falling into his clear blue eyes, and that sweet, sleepy smile. Only drawback: he has the bad taste to date Lana Weinberger).”
Lana
Some of the most effectively imagery in the novel is short and to the point, like the above. Also like the above, this efficiency is directed toward characterization. Much of this is unloaded on Lana, but there is really just one very succinctly described moment in the book that reveals all one needs to know about her:
“Lana Weinberger came in while I was there. She saw me washing my shoes, and she just rolled her eyes and started brushing her long, Marcia Brady hair and staring at herself in the mirror. I half expected her to walk right up to her reflection and kiss it, she is so obviously in love with herself.”
Post-Modern Pop Culture Refs
To a great many readers the following paragraph can be easily decoded without a trip to Google. The names of those being referenced will be immediately known and there will also be opportunity for explaining context to anyone who might be confused. This is the power of pop culture in our lives. But pop culture doesn’t live forever and even a mere twenty years after the novel was first published, it is a safe bet that a great many readers are just as likely to be entirely lost within the postmodern labyrinth of this pop culture maze of allusion:
“I'm wondering if maybe this whole thing was a joke, like in the movie Carrie, which is too scary for me to watch but Michael Moscovitz rented it once, and then he told Lilly and me what it was about: This homely girl gets asked to a dance by the most popular boy in school just so he and his popular friends can pour pig blood on her. Only he doesn't know Carrie has psychic powers, and at the end of the night she kills everyone in the whole town, including Steven Spielberg's first wife and the mom from Eight Is Enough.”
[Helpful decoder: Telekinetic powers, not psychic; Amy Irving (still the future Mrs. Spielberg at the time) plays one of the few characters Carrie doesn’t kill; Betty Buckley’s character is killed and totally deserves it, but she actually played the stepmom who married the dad on Eight is Enough after the actress playing the biological mother died while she was the real life older girlfriend of John Travolta who plays the character who actually helps plan the dropping of pig blood on Carrie at the prom which her date—played by William Katt—is obviously clueless about since he gets drenched, too.]
