Skip to main content

How do you interpret Mrs Drover's psychological state?

Londoners faced terror and devastation from the Blitz.  For weeks straight and over a period of years, bombs were dropped by German planes over London.  Many people fled to the countryside.  The constant fear of hearing air raid sirens and low planes flying overhead caused psychological damage in some people.  People developed anxieties.


Mrs. Drover and her family left their London home because of the Blitz.  She returned one day to her abandoned house to fetch a few items.  Once there, she found a strange letter.  It was supposedly from her former lover, a man who was presumed dead long ago.  He had been an ominous fellow.  He had cut her hand many years before, and she still bore the scar.  Mrs. Drover



instinctively looked for the weal left by the button on the palm of her hand ("The Demon Lover").



In the letter, her former lover promised to meet Mrs. Drover on that day, and she dreaded such a meeting.  She quickly left her house.  She found a taxi cab and got into it.  It began to drive and then stopped.  She saw the driver:



Mrs. Drover's mouth hung open for some seconds before she could issue her first scream.  After that she continued to scream freely and to beat with her gloved hands on the glass all round as the taxi, accelerating without mercy, made off with her into the hinterland of deserted streets.



The writer does not clearly state whether Mrs. Drover was indeed held captive in the taxi cab by her former lover, or if it was all in her mind.  The traumatizing effects of the Blitz may have caused her to enter an altered psychological state.  This state may have led her to imagine the encounter with her former lover.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more