The book under analysis is “Trailerpark” by Russell Banks and the story under consideration is called “The Guinea Pig Lady”. All people have their features and peculiarities that make them special and significant to others. The main character of the story is Flora Pease a retired military woman that was accepted to live in the trailerpark with other people. The most interesting about this woman was the fact that everybody thought that something was not usual about her and this was seen in those little things she made.
First interesting and special fact about her was in the way she greeted everybody in the trailerpark: she never said the same thing to the same person twice in a row. She was always different. However, the most amazing and thrilling thing about her was that she liked to sing songs aloud while walking in the street and looking people right in the face. Moreover, she was not whispering the songs but singing them with all her voice and it was pleasant to listen to her versions of Old Broadway songs. The author mentions this fact and makes it accented for a number of reasons. The first one is that a woman was alone and lived with a bunch of guinea pigs in her trailer and needed some communication. Thus, she tried to communicate her emotions with the help of songs to the world. This makes her unique because people try to communicate rather than sing songs and have little guinea pigs to take care of.
The singing helped her concentrate and filled her life with additional sense when she was singing a song. Furthermore, she made her life interesting and lived the roles of the actors of the musicals whose songs she performed to feel the life differently every day. That is why her manner of saying good morning differently every day and singing the songs make a parallelism intensifying an image of a woman she was. Other characters think that she was kind of fruity and the lady Marcelle said about this that: “We are all a bit fruity but some are just more able to cover it up then others.”
By way of conclusion, the fact of Flora’s singing was used to make her image more specifically different from the others. She was recognizable for this characteristic feature of hers. Moreover it meant that she was an intelligent woman, she knew a great deal of Broadway songs what makes her special and the reader respects her unconsciously thanks to this peculiarity of hers. Everybody has some characteristic features and behavior, like in this case singing of a woman makes her unique. This makes her special and people pay a lot of attention to her and they respect her a lot. Her singing in the story is very important and significant because it influences the whole story in general and creates a specific style for it.