Back to Blog
Drinking coffee elsewhere sparknotes6/30/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() She fails to enjoy college and find herself as an individual, which is the thing she covets most.Īlthough Dina is black herself, she fails to associate herself with other black students that attend the university. Her failure to conform to what is going on around her becomes problematic. She barely is able to find her own identity, being that she is now a young woman, and she hates men. She cannot find it in herself to respect others, and this causes her to be unable to respect herself. Rather than cope, and become a better person from all the adversity she had faced, she shies away from interaction, as a child does. It appears that she hates authority figures because of what had happened between her and her father at a young age, which ZZ Packer is vague about. Frequent, unexpected visits from female counselors force Dina to sit in a chair in front of the door naked so that these “unannounced visits ended.” This is a childish attempt to escape the influence of others and it fails. In effect, she cannot find her own identity because all she wants is to be left to her own devices.ĭina dislikes authority in her life and attempts to escape interaction with several authority figures. She doesn’t know how to act around others, and her manners are brash. Her choice of objects is confrontational compared to the other students’ choices. She is an introvert, and is socially awkward around others. The revolver is used as an escape this weapon is dangerous, and would be used to scare others away, or even, in more extreme measures, kill whoever tries to get close to her. She does this by saying she would be a revolver when all the students are asked what objects they would choose to be. Upon her arrival at Yale, Dina immediately starts to escape identity. ZZ Packer shows us that attempts to escape individualism eventually fail in that Dina must ultimately accept reality and many things around her, as well as within her to become truly individualistic. She has extreme difficulty at the university, dealing with authority, relationships and death. She chooses to escape from reality and its perils by hiding out in her dorm room. The protagonist of the story Dina matriculates at Yale and immediately sets herself up as a social outcast. In ZZ Packer’s short story “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” there is a major theme of escape from issues such as identity, authority, death and sexuality. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |