Hiding in Cheesy’s Bedroom Essay Example

and is very careful not to wake her when she comes home late at night.

This particular day Jane’s limit-seeking behavior peaks when she openly breaks her mother’s rule about her curfew. She does not return home from her night out but instead she sleeps with her best friend’s boyfriend, Tommy. She does this to ‘catch up’ with her friend and to show her how treacherous Tommy is. The story is told by a subjective first person narrator from the protagonist Jane’s point of view. Therefore the account is presented in a biased way. This is shown in the narrator’s speech. The narrator uses free direct speech, which blurs the distinction from the narrator’s voice and the protagonist’s speech.

The conversations are presented, as were they Jane’s thoughts. This creates a sense of closeness and connection to her, but at the same time, the free direct speech gives evidence of a reporting voice, which creates distance towards Jane. The story starts in medias res. In the beginning of the plot Jane is in the present and is situated in Tommy’s room, where she has to hide from Tommy’s girlfriend and their joint child. But the story is told in retrospective, so that the actual beginning of the story is told through Jane’s flashbacks of the night before.

This disorder in events creates two parallel stories – Jane hiding in Tommy’s bedroom and what happened the night before that. The order of the plot gives the short story an excitement and keeps the reader wondering in suspense what has happened. Fore instance; it is not until about the second last line that the reader knows that it is Tommy’s

bedroom, Jane is hiding in. The plot thereby keeps the reader’s nose to the grindstone all the way throughout the short story. This is why the story is not called ‘Hiding in Tommy’s Bedroom’. The surprise-ending would not be a surprise-ending.

In a chronological way the linear story begins with Jane getting stood up by her date. In her vulnerable state, she meets Tommy, who is Louise’s, Jane’s friend, boyfriend. She goes home with him in the conviction that she will reject him and then tell Louise how treacherous he is. Jane sleeps with Tommy and realizes that Louise has become the object of her revenge – not Tommy. Jane regrets that Louise had sex before she did. “Louise was a nightmare about the sex … I hated her for what she knew. ’ (p. 11, ll. 31-36). She hated the fact that Louise was ‘ahead’ of her on the way of becoming an adult.

Teenagers often rush into adulthood and wishes to leave adolescence behind as fast as possible. The race to be the most mature often occurs within close friendships. Louise slept with Tommy and knows that Jane is a virgin and therefore acts very didactic towards her. Jane wants to be as mature as Louise and show her that she can sleep with somebody as well, if she wants to. This is why she eventually sleeps with Tommy. She decides not to get back at Louise, because when Tommy tells his child that the girl in the room is a secret, he is really saying it to Jane. She decides to keep a secret from Louise for the first time.

Jane changes, and the reader

feels sympathy with her in the end, because she is trapped just as Tommy is. “We have secrets, you and me. ”(p. 13, l. 38), he says. They are in similar situations where both of them will benefit of this being kept a secret. Jane does not only become more adult in a physical way but also in a psychological way. She realizes that her good intentions were not as good as she initially thought. When she sees what she has done, she decides not to tell Louise about her and Tommy. She lets Louise keep the lead in the race towards adulthood and chooses their friendship over the contest.