The Roaring Girl

The young protagonist is referred to as “the boy” rather than Jim for most of the story, and Lyn is referred to as “the girl.” What is the effect of this lack of names on the tone of the story? 

The family members deeply love each other but fail to communicate clearly. Does this help or hinder their love?

Although it seems as if the family is middle class, the family has anxieties about exhibiting markers of a lower class. How does anxiety about social class inform the story’s themes?

The cover of the 1997 hardback edition features a woman wearing a provocative tight red dress, as if to suggest she is the Roaring Girl and connecting her roaring to her sexuality. But in most of the story, the girl is usually described in androgynous ways. Then, in the final description of her, she wears “scuffed pumps flashing out from under the hem of her cotton dress” suggesting that she put more effort into her physical appearance (74). This suggests a sexuality that the boy cannot understand. The “scuffed pumps” also recall the worn-out heels of the woman from the pornography magazine. Why connect the image of the girl with the image of the woman staring out from that magazine?

How would the story change if the point of view shifted from the boy to one of the adults? How does the boy’s limited point-of-view contribute to the work’s themes and the way in which the author presents the narrative?