The American Nightmare
Zorrie’s story is on one level an account of pursuing the American Dream. True enough, it is the pursuit of the lower level of the American Dream: a home of one’s own and a happy life. The key to attaining the American Dream has always been hard work (which should make one immediately suspicious that this is a concept invented by rich owners looking to pay low wages for efficient workers). Zorrie is the epitome of a hard worker; she literally works herself to death, thus insinuating strongly that the American Dream is really a tragic nightmare.
The Ordinary Is Extraordinary
Zorrie’s story is an ordinary story of an extraordinary woman. She is not extraordinary in the typical sense of fictional narrative. Except for a brief stint working with radium paint that gives her the ability to “glow in the dark” there is nothing about her that is particularly unusual, much less the stuff of superhero movies or uplifting true stories about inspiration women. Zorrie performs no actions that would make a film adaptation of the novel such a story. She just works hard all her life, behaves decently, tries to help others when she can, and never actively seeks to do harm. These days, of course, that would almost qualify her for superhero status, but back in the era in which Zorrie lived, those things were actually the rule and not the exception.
Being Female
An underlying theme running through the narrative which touches upon more than Zorrie herself is the difficulty of being female. Zorrie’s difficulties begin early on when she is orphaned which is, of course, tough for boys or girls, but places an especially undue burden on girls. The thematic exploration of the difficulty of being female reaches a strange height with the “Ghost Girls” employment decorating clock dials with radium-laced paint. Although supervisors and executives are men, notably the most dangerous part of the business is reserved for young women. And then there is the story of Opal who is driven to arson of her own home because of an ambiguously described absence of emotional fulfillment.
Zorrie’s life is pretty much destined to be a lifetime of hard work trying to run a farm once her husband dies in the war; a reality shared by countless war widows in one way or another. And, of course, there is the final imagery of the book in which Zorrie flies to the site of her husband’s death and takes the opportunity to visit one of the most unimaginable examples of the hell of being a female in a world run by mad men: the home of Anne Frank and her family.
