Response to Paul Vance's "The Day Beverly Lost Jessica

            "The Day Beverly Lost Jessica" focuses on Beverly and her descent into confusion and despair. Beverly takes her daughter Jessica to a company that seems to be a talent agency or something similar. The building itself is modern and the inside is gaudy, covered in stickers and bright colors. The flashiness of the setting seems to create the sense that the company is not the highly successful company it claims to be; in fact, it seems to be almost fake, as if it sells the idea of making teenaged girls successful while never actually making good on their promise. From the very moment Beverly and Jessica set foot in World Wide Music, the hectic atmosphere confuses Beverly, but Jessica is completely comfortable. This is the first evidence of a rift in the mother-daughter relationship. From there, things only get worse. Beverly descends further into confusion, to the point where her twelve-year old daughter moves into the role of caregiver. Jessica’s maturity and independence cause Beverly to worry that she has lost her child forever.

            The confusion Beverly feels is clearly expressed through the dialogue in the latter half of the story. The dialogue itself is confusing, for there are no dialogue tags to indicate who is speaking, thus mimicking the confusion that Beverly feels while speaking. By dissolving into utter confusion, complete with yelling and fighting, the dialogue makes the reader just as confused as Beverly is.

            Though this confusion of dialogue works well in the second half, the first half of the story is just confusing without really contributing much. Throughout the story, there are a lot of run on sentences. Though it is obvious that they are supposed to create confusion in the reader to mimic Beverly’s confusion, it was more frustrating than it was confusing. The run on sentences are hard to read and could benefit from being broken up into more manageable pieces. Also, in several places, the sentences structures and wording was weird. At first I thought it was contributing to the confusion, but after quite a few oddly worded sentences, it became tiring because I was mentally rewording the sentences in my head. However, those things are minor. For me, the big thing was the lack of actual change or motives in Beverly. She was confused from the very beginning and stayed confused throughout the story. It would be more interesting to see her actually fairly calm at the beginning of the story before having her become confused. Also, I had a hard time relating to Beverly because I didn’t understand her motives. Why did she agree to bring Jessica here in the first place? I would like to know more about her and why she does things in order to understand her confusion.