#642 The King of a Vast Empire- Danielle Evans
This is a story about identity and change. Terrance hears from his younger sister who is changing her major at Harvard so she can work with elephants. Their mother doesn’t like this change, but as far as Liddie is concerned this is a pretty tame shift.
Since childhood there has been a cloud hanging over their lives. With them in the car, their father crashed into another vehicle killing two children. It was deemed a no-fault accident, but there is always fault if you look for it. Something caused something that lead to X.
Now each member of the family deals with it in a different way, and change happens quickly and randomly, like a car accident. It could be change like Terrence’s girlfriend leaving him, or Liddie’s aceemic change, but like a caterpillar being thrown out of a window, change will happen, whether it’s forced or waited for.
“…hoping for redemption through change…”
The identity angle of this story is both symblolic and quite literal. Terrence’s identity has been stolen by Carlos Aguilar, the same name as the other family’s only child not killed by their accident. Under Carlos’ use of his identity, his credit is improving, getting more out of his name than himself.
There is a lot to this story, and it’s put together very well. It could have been overwhelming or scattered, but I wasn’t. There was even some humor that worked:
“I had an imaginary conversation with [my girlfriend], in which she told me this was the physical manifestation of my existential crisis, and I told her to stop talking bullshit and then left the room.”
OK, so maybe not ha-ha funny, but funny enough for a chuckle.
Notable Passage: “We were what we had in life.”
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