This is the fourth part of the overview to Monica Wood's short story "Disappearing" which covers the story's themes: body image, assistance, silence, and acknowledgment. If you want to read an introduction which includes a link to the story, a short biography of the author, the setting of the story as well as the characters that interact in it, click here .  Part two deals with the plot and the "growth" process through which Wood intimates how destructive others can be and how -- as traumatizers -- they can permanently stunt development (to read that, click here ).  Part three about the story's point of view and symbolism can be found here .

This is part three of the overview to Monica Wood's short story "Disappearing". It covers the story's point of view and symbolism.  If you want to read an introduction which includes a link to the story, a short biography of the author, the setting of the story as well as the characters that interact in it, click here . Part two deals with the plot and the "growth" process through which Wood intimates how destructive others can be and how -- as traumatizers -- they can permanently stunt development (to read that, click here .)

This is the second part of the overview of Monica Wood's short story "Disappearing". Before reading, please take a look at the introduction I've written here which includes a link to the story itself, a short biography of the author, the setting of the story as well as the characters that interact in it. This second part will cover the plot and deals with the "growth" process the story describes. Through this process, Wood intimates how destructive others can be and how -- as traumatizers -- they can permanently stunt development. In part 3 ,  the point of view and sym bolism are discussed.

People's cries for help often go unnoticed because as a society we have either become immune to other people's plight or we have become too self-centered to notice others at all. Monica Wood captures this feeling of insignificance, a kind of nullity of human existence imposed by others by dint of their disregard for their fellow man (and woman, naturally), in her short story "Disappearing".  The title says it all. The passage from one existence to a non-existence is depicted in a matter of pages. Twenty-eight paragraphs is all it takes to erase one's physical identity. Yet how much longer it takes to erase an individual's entire existence -- both body and mind -- is what lies at the heart of this story. The answer to this question is a terrifying "few people, a few comments, several reactions" rather than a specific time period. In fact, I would contend that this is not a story just about anorexia --  anorexia is simply a by-product of a great...