Growing Pains

Upon first reading of the short story, Flesh and Mirror, I was confused. This piece reads very much like a stream of consciousness run-on sentence, which, while very fun to experience, ultimately left me questioning if certain events really happened or if the narrator simply imagined them. The narrator seems to disguise her real feelings in flowery language and romantic description. Furthermore, the narrator begins her story by referring to herself in the first person, but at some point in the story she refers to herself in the third person and then switches back again. This disassociation threw me off a little bit and I found myself trying to find my footing, only to be blown around by continuous poetic speeches from the narrator.

Upon second reading, I found that the narrator, herself was confused and questioning what was happening to her. Her romantic descriptions of the world made a lot more sense. She is a character that acts as if she is in a romance film, wishing for the love of her life to find her and sweep her off her feet. She creates her own narrative for her to act in, instead of confronting her true wants and desires. When her own actions deviate from what she perceives as the narrative she is supposed to follow, she loses herself and is unable to see herself in the mirror.

When reading this I found myself swept up in her resistance to change. The narrator seems like she wanted to be someone in a romantic film, but as she gains life experience, she realizes this is not the person she is turning out to be. This is evident when she says, “I think I know, now, what I was trying to do. I was trying to subdue the city by turning it into a projection of my own growing pains.” As someone about to graduate college, I saw myself in this character, afraid that I won’t turn out to be the person I want to be and missing who I was in the past.