Love

Dangerously in Love: Eighteen-year-old girl No One's a Mystery

There are three characters in Elizabeth Tallent's "No One's a Mystery" (Beaty 5-8), but only two speak, Jack and the no named eighteen-year-old girl. The other character happens to be Jack's wife who is only spoken about as she drives by Jack and the hidden girl. Jack portrays her as being irritating; this occurs in second the paragraph. He makes this accusation because "she keeps the light on in the daytime"(referring to her car lights), Which to him serves as a pet peeve.

The eighteen-year-old girl serves as the narrator for this story, but she is far more valuable to us for her aspirations and attitude undoubtedly make the story flow.

In the first statement that she makes, we find out that she recently had her eighteenth birthday, and from Jack she receives a five-year diary with latch and a little key, which she describes "being as light as a dime." From there we see our first example of how much Jack actually cares for her. She states that he "pushes my head down onto the dirty floor of the pickup and kept on hand my head while she inhaled the musk for his cigarette in the dashboard ashtray." This occurs along side of the fore mentioned passing by of his wife. From the past happenings you can see that she is easily submissive to Jack.

We are not granted with the privilege of knowing any accurate facts about her past. The knowledge we do obtain are of her current (riding in the car with Jack) and future situations as she and Jack view them or we are forced to assume. However, their views of the future are drastically different. As if Jack was to be living in the present, compared to her dreamy futuristic thoughts.

When speaking of what she'll write in her diary she states "tonight I'll write, 'I love Jack. This is my present from him. I can't imagine loving anybody else more than I love Jack.'" Which leads to you to