Author Lorrie Moore spends much of the novel describing protagonist, Zoe Hendricks, through physical attributes (or lack there of) and a series of student reviews and explanations from kids she teaches history to at a college in the dreaded Midwest. Zoe thinks herself higher than her students, a point she emphasizes through the use of jokes, which plays a larger role towards the end of the story. She calls them "...complacent...purchased...[and] armed with a healthy vagueness about anything historical or geographic," (Moore, 353). As Zoe's life is set up, we, knowing this is the "Love Me Not" unit, assume that she will be the one rejected in love. But, in the last scene, it is Zoe who scorns a potential love in Earl, probably thinking him also too shallow and beneath her level of understanding of the world. She again uses a joke to put him off, a defense mechanism that she uses when her level of intelligence and eccentricity cannot be matched by those around her. Her social awkwardness masks a desire to find love, but an unwillingness to step outside her comfort zone to meet it.
Friday, January 25, 2013
You're Ugly, Too
"You're Ugly, Too" by Lorrie Moore
Author Lorrie Moore spends much of the novel describing protagonist, Zoe Hendricks, through physical attributes (or lack there of) and a series of student reviews and explanations from kids she teaches history to at a college in the dreaded Midwest. Zoe thinks herself higher than her students, a point she emphasizes through the use of jokes, which plays a larger role towards the end of the story. She calls them "...complacent...purchased...[and] armed with a healthy vagueness about anything historical or geographic," (Moore, 353). As Zoe's life is set up, we, knowing this is the "Love Me Not" unit, assume that she will be the one rejected in love. But, in the last scene, it is Zoe who scorns a potential love in Earl, probably thinking him also too shallow and beneath her level of understanding of the world. She again uses a joke to put him off, a defense mechanism that she uses when her level of intelligence and eccentricity cannot be matched by those around her. Her social awkwardness masks a desire to find love, but an unwillingness to step outside her comfort zone to meet it.
Author Lorrie Moore spends much of the novel describing protagonist, Zoe Hendricks, through physical attributes (or lack there of) and a series of student reviews and explanations from kids she teaches history to at a college in the dreaded Midwest. Zoe thinks herself higher than her students, a point she emphasizes through the use of jokes, which plays a larger role towards the end of the story. She calls them "...complacent...purchased...[and] armed with a healthy vagueness about anything historical or geographic," (Moore, 353). As Zoe's life is set up, we, knowing this is the "Love Me Not" unit, assume that she will be the one rejected in love. But, in the last scene, it is Zoe who scorns a potential love in Earl, probably thinking him also too shallow and beneath her level of understanding of the world. She again uses a joke to put him off, a defense mechanism that she uses when her level of intelligence and eccentricity cannot be matched by those around her. Her social awkwardness masks a desire to find love, but an unwillingness to step outside her comfort zone to meet it.
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