Essay Questions

Why does Angela react with such an extreme and abrupt stoppage to her dancing upon the sight of woman staggering down the sidewalk and around the corner?

Fairly early on in the narrative, August is describing Angela dancing on the sidewalk, paying special attention and describing in detail the sight of her graceful hands which she so admires. She is by this time used to her friend’s sudden energetic compulsion to just begin showing off the dance moves which will eventually be her ticket out of poverty. Angela is usually exuberant enthralled during these moments, but on this occasion she just completely changes character in an instant: “eyebrows twisting with such ferocity” that August instinctively backs away from her. Desperate to discover what has caused this unprecedented behavior, she inquires as to what’s wrong but is met only by a silent shrug.

All four friends watch the pathetic woman staggering down the sidewalk and around the corner, but the mystery of the connection will not be solved until later when it is revealed that the woman is Angela’s mother who used to be dancer herself until she fell into drug use that eventually led to becoming the pitiful junkie on the sidewalk. Angela’s mother will eventually wind up dead on a rooftop, becoming yet another to long list of mothers in this story who fail their daughters.

How is Gigi’s tragic fate foreshadowed?

Gigi’s decision after the entire theater breaks out in laughter when her voices cracks during her solo in the play may overly dramatic in light of the stimulus behind it. Neither being humiliated on stage nor stood up by all your friends seems like quite enough to stir someone suddenly to take such drastic measures. But that complaint assumes two things. One, that anyone can ever really know what is going on inside the head of a person who does Gigi does. Secondly, and more to the point, is that Gigi does take that action on the spur of moment. The track of her narrative has been laid down in full view through subtle bits of foreshadowing that ultimately make Gigi’s fate tragic, but hardly unforeseeable.

The first clue is planted in Chapter 5 when Gigi muses out loud to her friends, “What keeps keeping here” in response to the sexual assault by the soldier in the basement. Already at that point Gigi is considering at some level taking control of fate. The next instance of foreshadowing is the first line of Chapter 10 when August links her closing thoughts in Chapter 9 about the gang breaking up: “Gigi was the first to fly” literally applies—as metaphor—to the fact that she is the first to break free from the group. The terminology will eventually prove to be a metaphorical reference to Gigi’s fate which is connected to August’s rhetorical thought to herself: “Who was there to see Gigi lift her heels up and fly?”

What is the significance of seeing Angela in the movie on TV?

Although the time that has passed since August last saw Angela is not really that significant chronologically, in thematic terms it represents a chasm between what is essentially two different lives. Merely a girl transforming into maturity when last they saw each other, August has grown up, changed her name to Auggie, embarked on a road to rebellion against her father and brother and yet is still haunted by the loss of her mother. It is a haunting shared with Angela, but with the significant difference that Angela has seized the reins of moving on and getting past it. The sight of Angela dancing with abandon and power and confidence moves her to whisper to herself how proud she is that Angela “made it.” The implication here is that by making it, August means letting go of the past so that it isn’t still dragging her back from meeting her future. It is a sight capable of giving August hope of doing the same.