That gets me thinking. Do you think Jackson was criticising our own society's tendancies to be two-faced in her story? I think she might have been at least thinking about it. There's an awful lot of saying one thing and meaning another in our relations with others, and most people keep themselves rather closed off as a necessity.

The distance we keep from others, even friends and family, could be looked at as dehumanizing. At the least, it probably isn't something Jackson thought was an ideal way to live life (or so I felt from what I read in the story).


- Becker, Slytherin.