Fiction Packet #3

The Falling Girl
At first glance this story seemed very intriguing in that the first paragraph really catches your attention. It's in depth description of the beautiful city and glamorous life style draws you into thinking the story is going to have a very happy tone. Then once we find out that she jumps off the top of the building everything takes a turn for the worst and the story sort of takes on a depressing tone. The author did a great job of transitioning the two contrasting themes by using examples of them by who she sees when she is falling. The higher floors are the young rich people partying and drinking their "cocktails and making silly conversation." She continues to fall past millionaires and beautiful people, they keep stopping here asking why she is falling so fast, or asking her to stop by for a minute. This part really interested me because the know she is falling, yet they want her to join them, adding on to the original problem that this women is just going through the motions trying to be this certain somebody. I feel like she is falling deeper and deeper until she eventually has just wasted her life on these superficial things and people. To see all the people who just stood by and watched almost parallels into real like when a person is slipping into a lifestyle that is not good for them, yet no one helps them, they just become the bystander who does nothing. As she falls closer and closer to the ground the author also creates a sense of time going by, it is getting darker and darker until it is morning again at the bottom. The classes of people also go from highest to lowest as she makes her way down. At one point a lady says to her, "You have your entire life before you, why are you in such a hurry?" She tries to stop but the gravity keeps pulling her down. She is too far into trouble that she cannot pull herself out and turn her life around. It is truly a sad story about unchangeable fate and the effects that society has on women. It puts this social norm and expectation on us that we feel we need to fulfill to be successful and happy. And when this women spent her whole life doing everything she could to be that "it girl" she realized that it wasn't really her, and she still wasn't happy. So she jumped.