"Special Topics" Post 4b

Marissa Pessl, in this section of the novel, does an excellent job of two things: conveying Blue’s voice accurately and adding clues to support her conclusions in the end of the novel that are subtle enough only to be picked up upon the second reading. Firstly, as to Blue’s voice, I imagine Blue as a girl with two conflicting voices: a more academic, stylized voice which tends to reference things endlessly and add figurative language like no other “Cleopatras on the brick wall now, their wide faces sweaty and rainbowed like oil puddles in the parking lots” (164). Even in formal phrases like these, Pessl includes the more modern side of Blue “Or perhaps, due to a certain relationship she had with the incandescence, her face exerted a gravitational pull on 50 percent of all the light in the room” (160). Her wit is definitely evident “I wanted to slap the smile off his face” (162), “as if there was always an unmistakable, thin black line drawn around her, or a YOU ARE HERE arrow discreetly floated in her reading, SHE IS HERE” (160). I really enjoy this part of the book. Additionally, Pessl drops some pretty significant clues in this section: lines like “She held his left hand as if it were expensive, something she couldn’t afford to lose” (160) and “She smiled, somewhat shyly, and then… she squeezed, tightly, Smoke’s bicep” (162). Although these lines seem nothing out of the ordinary, these along with sections about her extreme disapproval over the Bluebloods arrival all figure in to support Blue’s theory in the end.