Essays
Written for a contemporary art history course, this essay examines four illustrations by Vee, “Metamorphosis,” “Winter Castle,” “Red Library,” and “Starry Bonnet Shop.” By drawing inspiration from animated movies, wanderlust photography, and pandemic fashions, Vee taps into a girlish fantasy ripe for women—especially Millennial women—seeking nostalgia or escapism. This made me wonder: what, exactly, are Vee and her fans escaping from?
When “magic” appears in a story, it can fall into one of three literary categories: the marvelous (where magic is treated as one with reality), the uncanny (when the “magic” can be explained through other means), or the fantastic (where there is no proof as to whether it is really magic or not). This essay, winner of Lake Forest College’s All-College Writing Contest, 2014, analyzes Foer’s first novel through the lens of the fantastic, especially as a way to fill in gaps to stories lost to the Holocaust.