Essay depends on "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"

Depends on "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" - Essay Example Packer’s characters also learned to change their perceptions in relation to the people and the world with those experiences. The theme of loss of innocence indicates how the increase in knowledge about the world impacts the character and his/her personality. Packer has used Loss of innocence as the central theme in her short stories ‘Brownies’ and ‘Speaking in Tongues’. This paper will analyze how the author has characterized loss of innocence in these stories to influence the readers. The selected two stories based on loss of innocence are ‘Brownies’ and ‘Speaking in Tongues’. In ‘Brownies’, the author wants to show that anger and hatred that developed in the black and white races had no origin rather each of them did not even know why they hate others. They just show to the world what they see, observe and experience. In the story ‘Speaking in Tongues’, the author has shown how the main character lost her innocence due to pressurized sexual experience at a very young age. ZZ Packer projected loss of innocence in her stories as a transition from childhood to adulthood without any relation to gender, religion or culture. ‘Brownies’ is a story focusing on racial segregation and prejudice that existed between white and black Americans. The author showed that the girls in both troops were innocent but when they watched the behaviors of others around them their perception changed, and that’s where the loss of innocence is applied in the story. The black girls’ troop identified that the white girls’ troop called them names based on racism. The author showed in her text that the white girls did not even know why they hate the black girls or abuse them. It was rather their surrounding that made them think negative and misbehave with the black Americans. Similarly, the black girls found out that the troop of white girls also consisted of some ‘delayed learners’ who were