The New Girl
Most of the characters in the story are familiar with each other, having attended high school together. If not exactly friends or enemies, they are at least aware of each other in a generalized physical sort of way. This is true of all high schools and tat sense of familiarity is wat makes the “new kid” always a thing of some extra interest even when otherwise quite ordinary. It is when the new kid who is a bit out of the ordinary shows up, however, that it seems the whole school almost crackles with electricity:
“A shadow appeared against the puckered glass window in the office door, and when the door opened, Jamie saw a tall, dark-skinned girl framed in the entrance. Tiny silver stars, linked together like paper chains, dangled, glittering, from her ears; a matching star, even tinier, glittered from her left nostril. A bright red cape, fastened at the throat with a huge hook and eye wrapped in black silk thread, was draped casually over her otherwise standard clothes—jeans, long-sleeved scoop- neck T-shirt.”
Conservative Dogma
A local low-level politician is a catalyst to the narrative. She is also the foil to the progressive protagonist, Jamie. Her campaign spiel will certainly sound excruciatingly familiar to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to conservative candidates fighting against progressive policies. And the reason behind that familiarity is that the imagery used in her spiel is taken from a reality that changes. It sounded tired and cliché in the 1990’s, so imagine how hearing almost the same exact imagery almost verbatim twenty or thirty years later feels:
“I think you’ll all agree that it’s definitely time for a change, for a return to traditional values. Now, I’m not sure that anyone here in Wilson, except perhaps for a few misguided but still good souls, has seriously departed from the values we all cherish. But I do feel we need to put the brakes on here and there, and be vigilant. It’s our children, after all, who are at stake, our most precious and most impressionable assets. I think we need to re-examine our priorities, and if I’m elected, I’ll try to help do that. Thank you.”
Title Sequence
The book’s title suggests that that the most iconic demonstration of oppressive fascistic authority that causes no bodily harm takes place and it would be a major disappointment were book burning not actually to occur. The horror is mostly conveyed through imagery with the most basic verbal discourse distilled down to the elemental to provide the utmost effect:
“Jamie smelled smoke as she and Tessa hurried with the others to the door. When they were all outside, most masks off now, sniffing, looking anxiously at the roof, at the houses on either side and opposite…And then they turned down the last street, tore through the parking lot, where there were, Jamie saw, several cars; they burst onto the beach … And stopped. Black silhouetted figures swarmed like demons around a blazing bonfire, feeding it logs and small oblong boards … No. Not boards at all, Jamie realized. `Books!’ Tessa’s horrified whisper echoed Jamie’s. `They’re burning books!’”
Y2K-1
The astute reader modern reader will likely take note that while publishing is mentioned several times, the one single occurrence of the word “desktop” literally refers to the top of a student’s classroom desk. The book was published in 1999 by which time Windows 95 had revolutionized small-time publishing. Despite being just a year from the millennium, the imagery related to publishing that school newspaper is completely old school:
“Trying to see the office through Ernie’s eyes, she scanned the two battered green file cabinets with old issues piled on top of them; the scratched layout table strewn with scissors, X-ACTO knives, and rubber cement jars; her desk and Matt’s, with scraps of paper, pens, a dictionary or two, and photos waiting for captions scattered around their computers; the long table where the reporters occasionally worked, lined with old typewriters and edged with uncomfortable stools.”
