Student presentations on “Flashlight” by PVA alum Susan Choi
Presentation 1: Preston Lim
Summary
The story opens with the main character on a beach with her father. Her mother is in a beachside cabin they’ve rented out, but she can’t come because she is sick. Her father tells her he never learned how to swim and says he wants her to act thankful to her mother for teaching her to swim. Those are the last words her father spoke to her.
She goes to a “child psychologist” who goes over her record in school as well as her past. In the office is a dollhouse, which reminds her of her father, who built one for her. The psychologist, Dr. Brickner, snaps her out of it. She notices a flashlight on his desk, which reminds her of her last night with her dad on the beach. She asks Brickner to turn off the lights and he obliges. Brickner brings up her records, which include larceny. She seems to find nothing wrong with theft, and, as she leaves, steals his flashlight.
What makes it compelling?
I think the complexity and mysteriousness of the characters is what makes it interesting. Particularly Louisa, but also her mother. Though this might not be a common craft tool, I really think it’s what makes the story stand out. The use of flashbacks is also really interesting in this story and gives backstory on why the characters are the way they are.
Louisa’s character is really complex and has gone through a lot more than she should’ve at the age she’s at. One thing I noticed is her contempt for adults- she seems to not really see a reason they should be superior to her. This is shown in the lines ““Close it all the way, please,” Louisa would say in a sharp, grownup tone.” (Choi 3) as well as “The hidden side of her contempt for adults was this pity: that they imagined they understood her and then blundered so proudly, while she had to pretend to be caught.” (Choi 10). Another thing that I felt was really interesting is the way that her father’s death impacted her. He is described as so cautious on pages 17 and 18. The line “He’d been particularly cautious, her father. Full of strange fears.”(Choi 17) stands out. The way that scene was so vivid in Louisa’s mind leads me to believe that that’s what made her so carefree and morally ambiguous. Her father was so cautious, and she sees that as what lead to his death. If he had been more carefree, he might still be alive. This is what made her the very opposite. She steals and defies authority with no regrets. She throws caution to the wind and does what she wants.
Louisa’s mom is also a very odd character. It’s obvious that she loves Louisa, but Louisa is also sure that she doesn’t need the wheelchair. This could just be Louisa being pessimistic, as she is shown to be throughout the story, but I also think it holds some weigh since she is so sure she doesn’t need it. Another thing that’s confusing about the mom is how she tells everyone that Louisa’s dad was kidnapped, whereas Louisa insists it’s not. Does her mom know something that she’s keeping to herself? Is she somehow involved in his death and is using being in a wheelchair as an alibi?
What can I imitate?
Something I noticed about Flashlight is how much foreshadowing there is, combined with vivid flashbacks that let you learn a lot about the characters. The first page and a half is a flashback, but it doesn’t feel like a corny flashback. It’s written in the present tense, which I never really thought of doing for a flashback. I think it makes it feel a lot more real and puts the reader into the flashback, which is definitely something that I could try to do more. Her method of characterization is also something that’s really interesting. It ties into the flashbacks, but it shows you what happened to make Louisa the way that she is via her memories and experiences. I really like that, since it doesn’t describe the characters or even really show you through what they do in the story- it shows you through their experiences and I really think that’s a great way to show the ins and outs of a character.
Discussion Questions
- On page 19, Louisa’s theory that her mother doesn’t need her wheelchair is confirmed. Why does the author add this detail that confirms Louisa’s suspicions?
- Why did the author start off the story with a flashback and then revisit the same moment later?
Presentation 2: Lila Mankad
This story starts with a flashback in the present tense, with Louisa, a ten year old girl, taking a walk along the breakwater with her Father at sunset, the Father carrying a flashlight in his hands. The mother is unable to come because she is sick, which Louisa believes she is faking. They have a conversation in which the Father says he is glad her mother took her to swim lessons, and she belligerently insists that she hates swimming. Her father chides her, telling her to be respectful, then the story tells you that this was the last thing he ever said to Louisa and cuts to Louisa lying in bed at night. There is a description about how every night, the mother comes into Louisa’s room with her wheelchair, and Louisa sharply rejects her care and pretty much tells her Mother to go away.
Then, the story describes Louisa’s visit to a child psychologist that morning. There is a dollhouse that reminds her of the dollhouse her father made her. Dr. Brickner(the psychologist), tries to have a conversation with Louisa to explore her feelings about her father’s death, but Louisa is resistant, and shuts down when he gets to anything “real”. She won’t play with any of his toys or take any of his compliments, but latches onto a seemingly insignificant flashlight, that reminds her of her last walk with her dad. She requests that Dr. Brickner turns off the lights, and when he does she plays with the flashlight as they talk. Dr. Brickner continues to try to talk about her father to no avail, then talks about Louisa’s behavioral problems such as larceny, which Louisa doesn’t understand are wrong. Louisa steals the flashlight, and as she is lying in bed with it that night, comes to an epiphany as she fully realizes that her father is dead. Her aunt and mother discover that she stole the flashlight, confiscate it, and leave her alone in the dark with her realization.
What makes this story compelling?
One thing I found very interesting in this story was how the author created the atmosphere, specifically how they utilized light and darkness. The whole story has a sort of dim feeling throughout, and I think that the descriptions of light or the lack of light contribute to that.
The story starts out with Louisa and her father walking at sunset during her flashback, and right before he dies, we are given this description:
‘Far out over the water, far beyond where the breakwater joins with a thin spit of sand, the sunset has lost all its warmth and is only a paleness against the horizon.’
The sunset losing it’s warmth and becoming pale gives you an almost melancholy feeling, and the reader may subconsciously apply it to Louisa and her father. After his last words are spoken, it is revealed that the scene was a flashback, and Louisa is lying down in bed in the dark.
“Louisa lay awake, staring into the dark. The ceiling showed itself in a narrow stripe of light—first sharp like a blade and then becoming softer and softer—which began at the doorframe, where the door was very slightly cracked open. ”
This passage shifts the atmosphere slightly to uncertainty and fear. It doesn’t come as a surprise when you learn that Louisa is (recently) afraid of the dark. Another thing worth mentioning is how this is our first description of Louisa after her Father’s death, which starkly contrasts with how we saw her at the beginning.
Then, later on in the story when Louisa is in Dr. Brickner’s office, light plays an important role in setting the atmosphere as well. Louisa asks Dr. Brickner to turn off the lights and close the blinds, and when he does, we get this beautiful description.
“The dust, dissipating, glinted erratically as if flashing a code as it crossed the slim rays of afternoon light that were streaming in through the gap where the blinds did not quite meet the wall. When her eyes adjusted, Louisa could see everything, but it was pleasantly dusky, so long as she didn’t look straight into the needles of sun.”
This gives you a calmer sense of atmosphere that seems to match a child psychologist. It makes sense when Louisa finds herself saying the truth about her being scared of the alien movie.
My last example about the atmosphere is at the very end. Louisa is playing with the stolen flashlight in her bed, when she has her realization that her father is truly dead. Then, her mother and aunt burst into the room after they finished their conversation about Louisa and expressed sympathy. Louisa freaks out and they attempt to calm her down, then discover that she has stolen the flashlight.
“Then they did let her alone, though she didn’t see which of them yanked the door shut, leaving her in darkness. ”
This picture gives me a sense of hopelessness, and is the first time it describes Louisa being completely and totally in the dark. It is an unhappy, almost tragic ending to the story.
What can you find to imitate or use in your own writing?
The first thing I noticed when this story ended was the particular feeling/emotion it left me with. However, the author never directly tells you the character’s emotions- they show them not only through their thoughts or actions, but how they are perceiving the world around them. I think this is definitely something that I could learn from, because it really gives you a deeper understanding of the characters and the world.
As I described in my analysis, I think that the atmosphere of the poem is interesting. I had honestly not thought a lot about how to create atmosphere in my writing consciously, so that is definitely something I will try. Subtle details changed how I perceived the whole story which I really loved.
Discussion questions
Why did the author add the uncertainty about Louisa’s father’s death?
The dollhouse was given a lot of time in the story. Why do you think that is? What did it symbolize?
Presentation 3: Luka Neal
Highlighted element: Description
“Flashlight” is a beautifully written story about a young girl who is in shock due to her fathers’ passing. The story is mostly in a third person perspective and centers mainly around the young girl, Louisa, her mother, father, aunt, and psychologist.
In the beginning of this story we are treated to a flashback of a conversation Louisa had with her father, in which she reveals to us that she despises her mother but also that her mother is sick and in a wheelchair. This immediately brings up the question of why she hates her mother rather than feeling sorry for her, a topic that will be brought up later in the story. The middle of the story focuses on an appointment with a child psychologist that Louisa’s aunt took her to. Throughout this appointment, much more is revealed about Louisa. For example, it is assumed that her father passed away because he drowned, but the first person that found Louisa on the beach said that she told them he had been kidnapped. Louisa denies this statement to the point where we are as unsure who to trust just as much as she is. The appointment also focuses on the titular item: a flashlight. There are doll houses and toys of all sorts riddled throughout the office that the psychologist encourages Louisa to play with, but she focuses on the flashlight and only the flashlight that he has on his windowsill. Afterwards, we find out she was drawn to this because her father, a nervous man, always carried one with him in case of emergency.
As mentioned before, Louisa strongly dislikes her mother because according to her she makes up everything, including the fact that she said her father was kidnapped. For most of this story you assume that this is just Louisa being in shock and being unsure of what is real and what’s not. However, at the very end of the story it is revealed that Louisa’s mother was, in fact, lying about having to be in a wheelchair.
The element I chose to highlight was the fairly vague element of description. I chose this because all of my life I have thought that description is one of if not the most important element in building a fictional environment. Not dialogue, not exposition scenes that put you to sleep using boring narration, description. This story uses description in a third person limited way. Instead of describing literally what you see, it describes what you see through the eyes of Louisa, the ten year old protagonist. I like this alot because the whole point of the story is to not know a lot about what others are thinking, and only see things through Louisa’s point of view. I realized a lot while going through this story and highlighting all the descriptive elements, but the main thing was just how biased a description can sound simply by adding words like: “Seemed”, “Believe”, “Thought”, “Wanted”. By using these words, the author very clearly establishes the main character’s perspective in a way that isn’t just outright telling you their feelings or thoughts. Not only does this help convey thoughts in a third person limited perspective, it also clearly shows who is on who’s side.
This story has an extremely eerie tone that clouds your judgment and makes you unsure of who is telling the truth and who is not. Not only that, but it conveys adults as the very clear villains in a very interesting way, showing them not as reasonable and organized, (although they think they are all those things) but as overpowered people who constantly think they are right. I would also like to make a comparison to “Joker”, a film made in 2019 about a man who is metally ill and constantly fantasizes. I compare the two because both constantly have you asking yourself the question: Did that really just happen? Overall, I would love to implement this air of uncertainty into my stories as well as the despicable way the parents are portrayed.
In conclusion, this story, although short, is extremely moving and the way it shows the main character’s psyche is not only confusingly eerie, but also kind of endearing. It gives a look into just how uninformed you are as a child and how that can influence your opinion about not only the adults around you, but everyone around you.
Discussion questions:
- Who do you think the author had in mind as an audience when she wrote this? Would it be kids or adults?
- Why do you think the author used the structure she did? What effect do you think the flashbacks had on the plot as a whole?
Presentation 4: Zella Price
The story starts off with a young girl named Louisa recounting the last conversation she had with her father, who drowned when they were walking along the seaside. Now she lives with her mother, aunt and uncle. Her mother is sick and has to use a wheelchair, but Louisa believes that she is faking it. One day they take her to a child psychologist but tell her it has to do with school. She is very reluctant to talk with him and quickly figures out that it has nothing to do with school. He tells her that she has counts of defiance, disruptive behavior, deception, peer-to-peer conflict, tardiness, and truancy. It is also revealed that she has a history of stealing. As she leaves the appointment, she steals a flashlight off his desk and is later confronted by her aunt and mom about it. In the end, her mom stands up which reveals that she is in fact faking it.
The plot of the story (including the way its set up) is extremely interesting, and pulls you in right away. The fact that it starts off with a conversation helps to get you interested, and then when its followed by the fact that the conversation was the last she had with her father, it pulls you in even more because you want to know what happened to her father. The fact that her fathers’ fate wasn’t revealed until quite late in the story gives you motivation to keep reading.
The dialogue also played a very big part in how interesting the story was. Not only did it add depth to the characters, but it also helped to greatly advance the plot. A lot of important information is revealed through dialogue, helping to deliver it in a very interesting way. But if I’m going to mention dialogue, then I can’t forget about dialogue tags! Dialogue tags are extremely important when it comes to adding more detail to a scene and can also deliver important information. They help to add context and give you an idea of how the dialogue was delivered, as well as detailing any actions done along with the dialogue. For example, the dialogue tag in the line “’Louisa,’ Dr. Brickner said, coming around his desk toward her and propping his rear on the edge, so that his suit jacket, which was already rumpled, bagged up at his shoulders and looked even worse, ‘do you know what ‘shock’ is?’” helps us visualize the scene and adds context. In the line ‘“Well, let’s see what they wrote on your form. ‘Defiance, disruptive behavior, deception, peer-to-peer conflict, tardiness, truancy, larceny—’”, Louisa’s behavioral problems are revealed through the dialogue, rather than them just telling us at the beginning of the story “Louisa has had problems with defiance, disruptive behavior, deception, peer-to-peer conflict, tardiness, truancy, and larceny.” (which would’ve been bland and off-putting) This set of lines also reveals important, new information that progresses the plot, as well as helping us understand Louisa’s character more.
I would love to be able to recreate how amazing the author is able to make the dialogue sound. In some stories, the dialogue is just quite bland, or sounds out of place. I think the reason that the dialogue in this story is so good is because the author makes it sound very natural and real. I also really love how real the characters feel, particularly Louisa and Dr. Brickner. I also feel that the author was able to almost perfectly capture the out-of-place feeling that a mentally ill child almost constantly has. I think they did both of these things using dialogue and actions. For example, the way Dr. Brickner complimented Louisa and called her a smart girl and “buttered her up” is a thing lots of people tend to do to younger children in an attempt to make them warm up to you. They were also able to encapsulate the awkward feeling of talking to an adult about mental health, as well as the way some adults talk to you as if you’re a dog, or a toddler. I think one way they achieve this is by not trying to cram too much information into the dialogue. When you do that, the conversation tends to sound unrealistic and stiff. She also avoids using bland and overused dialogue tags, which also tends to make the conversation stiff and boring since you have no idea how the lines were spoken, or if there were any actions delivered along with the lines. In addition to that, she avoids using commonly overused words, and instead uses vivid and sensory ones. Overall, I think that the story was very interesting, and there were lots of techniques that you could take away from it.
Questions:
How does the author attempt to make Louisa a likeable character?
What are some ways the author reveals important information without directly stating it?
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