Free Essay

Smashed

In:

Submitted By duzai
Words 956
Pages 4
Smashed

A teenager’s journey towards reaching adulthood involves various obstacles and challenges. Most essential among these that every teenager will stumble upon is the quest of finding your own identity. When embarking onto this journey, it often results finding your own identity which might become evident by reaching a conclusion to an essential problem in your life. Furthermore, the final destination of this journey towards reaching adulthood can be marked in different ways, granting you an elevated status in regards of maturity. This is the case in the extract of the novel called “Smashed” written by Koren Zalickas in 2010. We follow a young girl narrating as she reflects on several events in her life, the social patterns relevant to her and most important of all - finding a solution to her awkward presence.

The narrator is a girl attending eighth grade who has been living under uneasy circumstances. This becomes evident as she describes herself withdrawing from her own family (p. 88 ll. 31-p. 89 ll. 2). This part of the extract not only tells us how the narrator is partly shunning her own family, which indicates confusion in this context. It also gives the reader the impression that the narrator is an insecure girl judging by her own description of her closet along with the usual challenge every morning regarding the narrator being unable to decide how to dress herself depending on the mentioned factors. This correlates well with the narrator being insecure as she is struggling with identity problems (p. 86 ll. 29-30).
The narrator believes that drinking will be the solution to her self-described awkward presence (p. 89 ll. 14-16). The narrator refers to the bottle being a sacra, which is a materialistic piece symbolizing a new elevated status granted to you in the completion of an initiation ceremony by being given this sacra. She considers drinking as a completion to her own initiation ceremony which grants her the status as a drinker, known as a rite of passage, which in this case is an elevation towards adulthood.

The style in this extract can be characterized as formal yet simple. The usage of contractions is limited and story is easily understood without having to look up many words. However, there are parts of the extract where this is taken use of. A given example could be this sentence “they seem to understand who they are and who they’re supposed to be” (p. 86 ll. 29-30). The usage of limited contractions benefits to the ability of the reader to visualize the narrator and thereby gives a more precise impression of her as well as the ability to interpret events unfolding in the story. It gives us a better impression of the narrator as she narrates the story from her own point of view. It is the narrator’s personal opinions, thoughts and experiences that are being expressed in this extract (p. 88 ll. 29) (p. 86 ll. 23). Having these contractions adds a less formal touch to the extract which correlates to the age of the narrator. It would easily be expected that a young girl attending eighth grade does not have the ability equivalent to a professional writer to narrate or write stories.

The story primarily takes place at a surprise party in a basement. It could only have been taken place after 1989 as the video game console Sega Genesis is mentioned as a description of the basement (p 85 ll. 5). This video console was released in 1989, hence the statement regarding the year. Another indication of this is the VCR being in the basement (p. 85 ll. 2). Judging by the description of the items available for the girls to use in order to entertain them, these girls are coming from a more or less wealthy environment. That is an interpretation of course, not a premature judgment. Other descriptions of the setting are given as well; however, those descriptions are given in flashbacks. An example of this is when the narrator gives a somewhat accurate description of her room (p.88 ll. 34-p. 89 ll. 1).

The main theme in this short story is growing up. The narrator elaborates on reasons for herself beginning to drink alcohol. It is evident throughout the story that the narrator is struggling with insecurity and is having a hard time being a girl and finding her own identity (p. 87 ll. 1-2) (p. 88 ll. 40-41). Perhaps that is why she has an aggressive and unfriendly attitude towards boys (p. 86 ll. 23). The narrator characterizes her identity problems along with her struggles (p. 89 ll. 5) in general as being in an awkward period (p. 89 ll. 5). As previously stated, it is because she considers the status as drinker as a rite of passage between the gap of being a child and to something above that with an elevated status (p. 89 ll. 14-16).

The teenage girl narrating this story considers herself having passed a self-proclaimed initiation ceremony after which she will be granted the status drinker. The narrator considers this as a rite of passage from being a child to something elevated above that. She has reached her own conclusion to the most essential problem in her life stretching over 2 years. She believes to have been granted a new identity through this initiation ceremony by drinking from the sacra, the bottle. She has found a solution to her awkward presence which involves being insecure, confused and having identity problems. The narrator has perhaps made a premature judgment call by considering the act of drinking alcohol being the solution to the processes a teenager will undergo regarding identity and reaching adulthood.

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Koren Zailckas Smashed: An Analysis

...The word excess is something Zailckas refers to heavily throughout the book by outright stating it or giving underlying messages throughout the text.  Koren Zailckas describes her experiences with excess in the book, Smashed, by including life stories, lessons, and a mature review of her life from her present self. Koren had always been one for overdoing it since early childhood with alcohol or relationships. These trends ultimately following Koren throughout her life and plague her mind as something she used to depreciate herself. As life progressed further her trusting of extremes had brought her to an impasse, in which she must choose her excess or a more moderate lifestyle for someone of her age. These alcoholic and relationship fails were brought with her love for the excess and the absolute trust that...

Words: 928 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

To Find Out ‘How Accurately People Can Remember the Details of a Complex Event.’

...To find out ‘how accurately people can remember the details of a complex event.’ Abstract: This study is a replication of Loftus and Palmer (1974) original study on how a different verb in the question used to ask for the speed of the car affected the participants’ estimate on the speeds of the car crash. In this experiment, three videos were shown to them and they were asked a series of questions including how fast the car was when it smashed/contacted each other. The participants are teenage students from an international school in Hong Kong. It is hypothesized that the word ‘smash’ would cause a higher estimate in speed than the word ‘contacted’. Speed estimates for ‘smashed’ were in fact slower overall than ‘contacted’, a discussion on why the results were not replicated is included. The results from this experiment did not conform with the original study so they are inconclusive. (136) Contents: Introduction 1 Design 1 Participants 1 Procedure 2 Results and Conclusion 2 Discussion 3 References 4 Appendix 1 4 Appendix 2 6 Appendix 3 7 Appendix 4 8 Introduction: Loftus and Palmer (1974) believed that our memory depended on the reconstruction of an event in our mind when we try to remember. So they created an experiment where participants were asked to view videos of car crashes and recall the speed they think the cars were traveling at time of collision. The aim was to find out how accurately people can remember the details...

Words: 2337 - Pages: 10

Premium Essay

Eyewitness Testimony

...participant’s speed estimate and the dependent variable in the second experiment is whether the participant believed they saw glass. In the first experiment 45 students from the University of Washington were shown video clips, short excerpts from safety films made for driver education, which were 5 to 30 seconds long. They were split into 5 groups, with 9 participants in each group. After each clip the students were asked to write a report of the accident they had just seen. They were also asked to answer some specific questions but the crucial question was ‘about how fast the cars were going when they _______ each other’. Each group was given a different verb to fill in the blank. The independent variable was the verb used, which were ‘smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted’. The whole experiment lasted about an hour and a half and the films were presented to each group in a different order. The results showed that the critical word...

Words: 1683 - Pages: 7

Free Essay

Saving Grace

...adviser. I wasn't kicking myself because I missed out on an affordable Banksy. I was kicking myself because I missed out on a whopping profit. And seeing all those flash silver cars from Frieze art fair chauffeuring VIPs around London to yet another champagne reception, one can readily see his point. Contemporary art has become the purest expression of modern capitalism, embodying that irritating amoral dictum: something is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. Over at Tate Britain, they are staging an exhibition of British iconoclasm. Beginning at the Reformation, the exhibition tells the story of art under attack, of smashed statues and defaced paintings. Originally, of course, iconoclasm was a religious phenomenon. Abraham's father, Terah, was an idol-maker from Ur. One day Terah left the young Abraham in charge of his shop, whereupon he smashed all the idols with a stick. "It was terrible," Abraham explained to his father. "The small idols got hungry and they started fighting for food and finally the large idol got angry and broke them into pieces." Terah didn't believe him. "Idols don't get hungry, they don't get angry, they don't speak – they're just idols." Abraham smiled, knowingly. "Then why do you worship them?" he replied. This famous Jewish midrash is not in the Bible, but explains something of the...

Words: 639 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Interpersonal Communication

...Police Report University of Phoenix CJA 363: Interpersonal Communications Police Report 2 Introduction Police reports serve as a valuable information gathering tool. They are heavily relied upon for their accuracy and accountability of all events that took place at the incident. The report is taken as soon as the responding officer arrives at the scene. There are several pieces of information that must be gathered in order to produce a report that will be used to account for the incidents that have taken place. Who Upon my arrival to the Marquette Market it was obvious that a burglary had taken place. I observed that the rear door had been smashed in and it was severely damaged and upon my entrance into the store the cash register had also been damaged. In the cash register there was $7.83 in cash and two checks with one being $10.00 and the other for $5.80. I also found the instrument that was used to commit these acts but, it had been wiped down and free of any fingerprints. Mr. Waters stated that he had seen Ronald Riff in the area around 12:20 a.m. He was carrying a money bag. He dropped two dollars from the bag also. At this time Ronald Riff was wearing blue jeans and a blue band jacket. What At the seen there was a hammer and Riff had been known to frequent the market and due to this. The evidence was able to make Riff a person of interest for the burglary that had...

Words: 544 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Psychology Internal Asessment

...Introduction Cognitive psychology contacts with mental processes such as memory, researches have indicated that his particular cognitive process is not an exact replica of experiences, but is reconstructive. In light of this new research, experiments have tested and shown that memory may be influenced by certain units of knowledge that we have about frequently encountered people, objects or situations called “schemas.” The Schema Theory suggest that all new information interlinks withhold information represented in a schema and can influence memory. Bartlett Developed the Schema theory, which eventually became crucial in understanding how reconstructive memory works and the reliability of eyewitness testimony. He suggested that how a person remembers an event is subject to change depending on the person's cultural background and what values they were taught. Therefore, when a person remembers an event, any missing piece of information regarding that event is filled up based on their schema. He tested this in his famous „War of The Ghosts‟ experiment. This was supported by Allport and Postman, in 1947, which aimed to test the reliability of memory and the effect a person's schema has on their interpretation of an event. Loftus and Palmer Tested their hypothesis that language can alter reconstructive memory in an eyewitness testimony. Their aim was to show that leading questions can alter memory depending on its phrasing. Loftus and Palmer formed an opportunity sample...

Words: 1116 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Stella's Sexual Desire In A Streetcar Named Desire

...wedding night. Within the evidence provided, Williams symbolizes the absence of innocence through the absence of light. Stella mentions Stanley’s violent behavior on their wedding night to Blanche: “Stanley’s always smashed things. Why, on our wedding night—soon as we came in here—he snatched off one of my slippers and rushed about the place smashing light-bulbs with it.” This statement symbolically addresses Stella and Stanley’s position on their marriage. As Stanley, through brute and animalistic force, smashed all of the lights with Stella’s slipper on their wedding night, he symbolically broke Stella’s light as well. Stella’s light, prior to her marriage to Stanley, symbolizes her innocence, in other words, Stella’s purity. Stella’s statement relieves any thought in the reader’s mind that Stella’s marriage is built on a loving and chaste relationship. Therefore, Stella and Stanley symbolically launch into their erotic marriage with an absence of innocence and a presence of lustful experience. Stella’s passionate tone while revealing Stanley’s aggressively erratic, and deviously sexual tendencies supports the idea that the Kowalski’s marriage is centered-around sexual desires. She tells Blanche, “(Arranging dressing-table chair to face mirror, as she sits in it.) He smashed all the light-bulbs with the heel of my slipper! (Laughs.).” Stella confirms her husband’s uncontrollable actions to Blanche as she looks back upon their wedding night. Stella’s tone, which is supported through...

Words: 826 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

How the Universe Works Video Critique

...Video Critique - How The Universe Works In this video, we were treated to a visionary description of how the solar system and planets were formed. The producer and director of this feature did an excellent job in explaining and depicting the theory of how our solar system was formed billions of years ago. As an amateur astronomer, I truly appreciated the detailed facts because they were easy to follow; there was not a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo that only astronomy professionals could understand. My favorite element about this documentary was that there was such detail and color in the graphics that I felt like I was actually in space, close enough to the stars and planets. The images of the Eagle nebula and the Horse head nebula were remarkable; the image from the Hubble telescope of the Orion nebula with the spinning disk of dust and debris spinning around a young star was so extraordinary. It blew my mind how that tiny image was indicating that a solar system was being born. The only thing that left me a little perturbed was the narrative about how eventually Earth will collide with another planet and it will be the end of humankind as we know it. I understand that it is a cycle and obviously our solar system was created by the resulting violent chaos from billions of year ago, so it is likely that in the future, Earth will be destroyed in the same way. It was just a little scary and depressing to hear that in the film and then see a powerful simulation of a...

Words: 803 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Bernice's Loss Of Innocence

...American psychologist and memory expert Elizabeth Loftus has spent decades proving how eye witnesses reconstruct their memories after accidents or crimes. In one of her experiments, two groups watched a film of a car accident. The first group was asked how fast the cars were going when they smashed each other and the second group was asked how fast the cars were going when they hit each other. The first group, estimated much higher speeds than the second group. Smashed was the leading word that altered the witnesses’ memory. This is why Bernice’s testimony was not enough. If the prosecution said assaulted rather than pushed, it could have altered her...

Words: 721 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Great Gatsby: Claims And Questions

...Answer: Tom and Daisy left town because they didn’t want to deal with the situation of Gatsby at all and wanted other people to handle it. Since Daisy was the one who actually ran over Myrtle and Tom was the one who said Gatsby ran her over which lead to his death. They use their wealth to hide from their messes and problems so they won’t have to deal with them. Evidence: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”...

Words: 491 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Luddites

...of the labor market? The impact on supply and demand was critical in the Luddite revolt. It all begins in 1779 when the failure of a Bill to regulate the frame-knitting industry had resulted in 300 frames being smashed and thrown into the streets. This is where the shortage of the supply begins. Then, by 1810 the Orders in Council and a change in fashion had led to deterioration in the standard of craftsmanship required in stocking making and a consequent cheapening of the trade. It was the attempt to intimidate some masters who brought in the new machines that caused Nottingham stocking knitters to smash the machines. (http://www.victorianweb.org/history/riots/luddites.html) Then the impact on the demand of Stocking knitting became predominantly a domestic industry, the stockier renting his frame from the Master and working in his own 'shop' using thread given to him by the Master; the finished items were handed back to the Master to sell. The frames were therefore scattered round the villages; this cause the demand to increase it then became easy for the Luddites to smash a frame and then disappear. Between March 1811 and February 1812 the supply of frames had been affected. About a thousand machines at the cost of between 6,000 and 10,000 were smashed. This had a damaging impact on the supply and demand (http://www.victorianweb.org/history/riots/luddites.html) Explain the factors that affected labor demand and labor supply in the chosen historical example. The...

Words: 400 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Zombie Narrative Essya

...WE NEVER NOTICE THEM Dusk had fallen and we were surrounded. I stared out the window out onto the fields of corpses; they stared back up at me. They were swarming and pushing forward, pressing from all sides against the tiny cottage we were sheltering in. Our time for running had come to an end. A cry from downstairs snapped me out of my stupor. I rushed downwards, gripping my shotgun with sweaty palms. The noise down here was horrendous; the dead groaned and screamed and smashed endlessly against our barricades. They would not hold out much longer. Tania turned to me with a panicked look, “How does it look out there?” She asked desperately. She looked closely at my expression and turned back to the barricades, her answer didn’t need words. There was a loud crack as the one of the window barricades smashed and fell uselessly onto the floor. Through the hole a man’s face appeared and looked at us with a white glazed eye, his cheek was torn and hung loosely off his face. I dropped the shotgun and rushed to take a crowbar off the kitchen table. I reached the window just as the intruder attempted to climb through the gap and swung the crowbar at his head. There was a sickening crunch and his body sank to the floor. Behind me I heard other windows cracking open. They swarmed into the house. I hit another zombie as he tried to get through the gap and spun around to grab the shotgun. There was an incredibly loud bang as Tania’s gun went off, demolishing the face of a zombie...

Words: 494 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Don't Drink & Drive

...Jacqueline Saburido. This was the young lady that was involved in a car accident and practically burned alive due to a drunk driver. She was on her way home from a birthday party with some of her friends. Just then a young 17 yr old boy who was headed home from a party with his friends smashed into her car due to alcohol. Two friends died on the scene and two were rescued, but poor Jacqui was pinned in the front of the car unable to move. The car caught fire in just minutes after the impact. Over sixty percent of her body was burned and to this day she has gone over fifty operations in order to survive. To begin with, I will explain a personal story. Next, the statistics that go along with drunk driving and accident are remarkable. But there are ways that you can help prevent it. I. An incident happened just this year on the night of Halloween. A. Sitting at home that night watching the movie Halloween with my family and girlfriend. 1.Just minutes after the movie ended there was this loud bang out front. It literally sounded like someone had ran into one of our cars in the driveway. We look out the front window and see that across the street there was a Jeep Cherokee that had smashed into a tree. We all ran out to see if everyone was ok and my mom was calling for an ambulance. The two people in the car were a complete mess. They were so freaking wasted that 15-20 minutes after the accident the firefighters found out that there was a child in the...

Words: 540 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Exhibition Review

...that really caught my attention (partially because it’s the first thing you see in the Kurt exhibit) was Hadley and Maxwell’s sound booth. It was an interesting set up to give the feeling of being in Kurt Cobain shoes. I was slightly confused by the studio-feeling of the booth combined with the sound of a cheering crowd playing, but nonetheless still a cool feeling piece that gave the impression of what Cobain experienced when he went onstage. As I moved through the exhibit I came across a smashed-apart drum set covered in stalagmites. The piece was titled “Deathstar Memorial” by Banks Violette. This piece was the perfect epitome of what Nirvana was all about and the dark feelings that they conveyed to their fans and the feelings that were present (even still today) about the tragic death of Cobain himself. The piece was cool because it gave the impression that it had been broken apart for a while and the stalagmites had grown onto the drum set, as if when Cobain died Nirvana was smashed apart and then the set was left to let nature takes its course. Then, moving forward I came to Sam Durant’s “Upside Down and Backwards Completely Unburna” which was a series of speakers surrounding a platform each playing a different Nirvana song simultaneously. This completely reminded me of Hadley and Maxwell’s installation based on “Sympathy for the Devil” that had the Rolling Stones playing simultaneously with a garage band. When I heard the idea during their artist talk I was very skeptical...

Words: 511 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Making Your Own Organic Shampoo

...* Making Your Own Organic Shampoo Once you have chosen your castile soap base, you can add your essential and/or fragrance oils to the mixture. Different oils will affect the hair in different ways depending on what you are looking for in a homemade shampoo. For instance if you are looking to control dandruff and to sooth an itchy scalp, then you would add Tea Tree oil and Chamomile to your shampoo base. If you wanted to add extra shine to your hair with a great scent, then you would add Lemongrass and Rosemary. Here are some oil and herb combinations that you can used based on creating a shampoo that begins with 4oz of castile soap for placement in an 8oz bottle. * Dandruff Control: 1/2oz Tea Tree oil and 2 1/2oz strained Chamomile Tea. * Extra Shine: 2 1/2 oz strained Lemongrass Tea and 1/2oz Rosemary oil. * Control Oily Hair: 1/2oz Lavender oil and 2 1/2oz strained Sage tea. * Thicken Hair: 1oz Rosemary oil and 1/2oz strained Nettles. Once you have created your at home organic shampoo, you'll want to store the bottle in a cool and dark area. Because you are creating something using natural and organic ingredients, the product must be used and cannot have an indefinite shelf life as the chemical additive shampoos that are on the market today. * Making Your Own Organic Conditioner To create your own organic conditioner at home there is no need to use a base of castile soap. Along with mixing different ingredients for your personal preferences...

Words: 503 - Pages: 3