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Crossroads: A Sad Vaudeville, And Nobody Is Ever Missing

Decent Essays

The two stories I'm comparing are Crossroads: A Sad Vaudeville by Carlos Solorzano, and Nobody is Ever Missing (NIEM) , by Catherine Lacey. In Crossroads, the main character, a woman, hides her age by doctoring photos of herself before posting them online, where she meets men, and wears a physical veil when meeting them. Unsurprisingly, none of the men she meets recognize her (at least not after seeing her true face), and so she suffers for her lies. The main character in NIEM, Elyria, is a woman who struggles to maintain a mask of normalcy while around her husband, while her interior life rapidly deteriorates. When her mental breakdown becomes too much for her to handle while maintaining her traditional lifestyle with her husband, she disappears, …show more content…

The main character in Crossroads endures constant disappointment and sadness when she reveals herself to her potential suitors and realizes that they can't accept her as she is. This is shown when the woman walks away from the man, disappointed once more, and throws away the flower she brought, which served as a symbol of hope throughout the book. In NIEM, Elyria struggles to stay connected with her husband despite the internal breakdown she is enduring, which she feels like she has to hide from him, and her changing feelings toward him. She tries very hard to remain the woman he knows, despite her quickly changing identity, because she is afraid that she will lose him if he sees the struggle she is hiding. This is shown when she talks in the first chapter about how she goes on about her daily routine every day, despite her depression and anxiety. And neither of these women are entirely wrong in believing that the men in their lives won't accept them- the man in Crossroads suspects that the woman he is speaking with is the woman he knows, but finds that idea inconceivable once she is revealed to him. Elyria's husband treats her disappearance as an immature whim, instead of considering that there may be graver motives behind her leaving, and that he may have contributed to her desire to escape. When faced with …show more content…

The woman in Crossroads alters photos as an metaphorical veil when she alters her photos, and wears a physical veil in public to disguise herself. Meanwhile Elyria attempts to maintain a veil of normalcy around everyone in her life while enduring a slow mental breakdown in private. The main difference between these two stories is the way that the two women deal with their individual struggles with the reasons behind their feelings that they must hide parts of themselves. Crossroads is a short story, but at the end, when the woman leaves, you get the feeling that she will continue to be held hostage by this cycle of illusion and regret- that though she may be tired from it, exhausted with the lies, her insecurity is such that she can't imagine finding someone who will love her as she is, were she to finally be honest about herself. Meanwhile Elyria, fed up, renounces her exhaustion and refuses to be held hostage- she leaves the life that has broken her and attempts to find herself again the only way she can. Alone and in a strange country, she attempts to get to the root of her dissatisfaction with herself and her life. While the woman in Crossroads is all about pleasing others, often at the expense of her own emotions, Elyria is all about self-preservation, often at the expense of people in her life that she loves. Elyria knows herself well enough to know when

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