Zorrie is one of those books that takes it title from a character. This is a choice which usually indicates that the book is going to focus on the story of that character acting almost as if it were a biography of a fictional character. And, indeed, that is the case. This is simply the story of a woman named who never did anything of any particular notice, but whose life was nevertheless just as important anybody else’s.
There are no great accomplishments of Zorrie to detail. No fantastically exciting action scenes. There is arson and attempted murder/suicide, but that crime was not directed toward Zorrie in any way. The most interesting thing about her life—from the standpoint of it being unusual—is that she becomes a fictionalized version of one those real-life young women who worked with radium-laced paint, glowed in the dark, and became victims of radiation poisoning. As interesting and unusual as that element of Zorrie’s life is—and as tragic as the long-term consequences prove to—the actual amount of time spent working at that job in that toxic environment represents just a small section of Zorrie’s life overall.
Most of the bulk of that life is spent on a farm working very hard for not a huge return. Zorrie is married, but like many women of her time is quickly widowed by World War II. She gets to know some neighbors of various levels of quirkiness, including a young wife institutionalized after setting fire to her house and refusing to leave. She comes to know the somewhat developmentally problematic husband of that woman even better. Zorrie is, truly, the biographical highlights of Zorrie, but if Zorrie existed as a real-life figure it is difficult to believe any publisher would have faith her biography would even be worth the expenses of printing the books. So, ultimately, the question becomes, what is the point of this tale?
It is a question that will not be answered until almost literally the very last page and even at that, the answer is not one likely to satisfy everyone.
Zorrie has never been very far from the Midwest in her entire life, but late in life—and, as such, late in the narrative—she takes a trip to Holland. And while there, she visit the home of Anne Frank in Amsterdam. Afterward, Zorrie composes a letter to a friend she met on the plane on the plane ride back home. She starts out speaking about how at age seventy or so she is starting to get tired, unmotivated, and often barely even able to keep a hold on her hoe. But then her thoughts turn toward the contemplative and the narrator details where this change in focus leads her:
“She had often thought of Anne Frank, who had stuffed her short life with so much wonder, while here she was, having been granted many more years, just going through the motions like she was a ten-penny wind-up doll.”
It is significant that the narrator relates this information. For while Zorrie is like a biography of a life, it is not an autobiography. Zorrie is not telling us about her life in the first person. Her life is being told to us by a third-person narrator. Were it otherwise, we would be encouraged to take Zorrie’s comparison to Anne Frank at her word, but it comes to us second-hand and therefore it is filtered through the consciousness of the narrator so we do not have to take Zorrie’s words as the author’s words. Zorrie’s worry near the end of her life is that it has been wasted, prompting the question of what is the more tragic: a life cut short without being fully lived or a lived long without being full lived? Zorrie’s opinion might differ. She might see in Anne Frank the supreme tragedy of never having a chance to full experience life while secretly thinking that this would be preferable to living as long as she has while living a life as empty of great experience as Anne.
But she’s wrong. The author is telling us she is wrong by the act of writing about her life. Every life that is lived long is better than any life denied that opportunity.
