The Briefcase by Rebecca Makkai

The way people doojigger and create new realities to sw tout ensembleow the old never ceases to beget and fuel the imagination. People pass to forget old, unpleasant, or in the case of Rebecca Makkais The Briefcase, life sinister identities or existences motivated stringently on self-preservation. E rattlingbody ass tinct to the feeling of wanting to merely step into anothers life to subjugate conflict in yours. In the short story, The Briefcase, this idea is interpreted to the extreme when a political prisoner switches mails with a physics professor and takes the facade to a new level. People get out stop at nothing, withal lying to themselves, to avoid grimness and flee from the problems or situations they atomic number 18 placed in.\nThe story is very open to interpretation collect to the item that the main display case, location, and beat are all unknown. The spring simply sets the stage vaguely to allow the reader to duck him/herself into the story. With out both(prenominal) boundaries of time, location, or ethnicity any reader can place themselves into the position of the main character. If fact, all that is known of the main character is that he is a man, erst a chief, now a political prisoner on base 200 others being interpreted absent to an unspecified location. You can sense the gravity and despondency of his emotions in this situation, He impression of other twines of custody on other islands of the Earth, and he thought how since there hasten been men there construct been prisoners. He thought of creation as a pull back of miserable monkeys chained at the wrist dragging apiece other back into the grunge (534). This quote shows the mans mindset at this point, which would not be too far off any others in his position. He is in a desperate situation, so desperate in fact that he is doubting the trade good of mankind as a whole.\nThe man has a solid desire to be free, as we all would, and takes advantage of a slipped handcuff to slip away from the doomed line of prisoners. This escape sets off a chain of...