The Falling Girl, Is She Really Falling?

This short story encompasses the very essence of life and death. On the surface the author reveals a female character jumping off of a 150 story building. If you have any concept of gravity you know she will be falling very fast and will not survive the fatal impact of face meeting concrete. It will be a sad tragic death of aerial suicide. This would be the first layer of death being portrayed in the essay. the easy concept to comprehend.

If you dive deeper into the story you get a sense of class and society murdering the female and she is in fact a victim from the bi-product of that society. Making her death no longer a suicide but a crafty way to get away with murder. What's most interesting about the story is that the act of free falling is physically a fast process. If a person sees any object falling from the air it is most likely gone when you open your eyes from a blink. How is it that this woman was able to see and interact with people on different floors as she free falls? Also, how is it that she starts at the top as a young girl and by the time she reaches the bottom she becomes very old? This really has no logical explanation because the activity of fall is figurative language in this essay. It is meant to symbolize speed.

In group discussion we came up with the interpretation that no one in this short story is actually falling but rather moving through life to fast, taking short cuts and not caring about the consequences. One comparison that was brought up was the devastating fascination with being skinny and the quickness of weight loss that comes with it. Many females have died or became very close to dying because society says they need to be skinny to fit in. While being skinny isn't bad, it can actually be healthy, giving the fact that you don't go to far. It is actually the rate of speed that people lose the weight that is deadly. An almost identical approach to the falling girl trying to reach the party.

It's a very powerful story, one that really connects with society and its issues. Not just by expressing a suicide but by the strong language that makes you feel what the girl feels and think what she thinks. Each paragraph is carefully crafted to raise now questions but to provide previous answers. As a reader your constantly interpreting the langue to put together the puzzle that makes the most sense in your mind. A quality that makes a good story great.