TOW #13

Elizabeth Wurtzel employed anaphora as a strategy to show how she thought that perhaps her life was turning around and thus how people and small things can significantly improve one’s mood just for it to fall back down again. She did so in her creative nonfiction book, Prozac Nation, which became a national bestseller and a major motion picture due to its profound truths about life with depression and trying to recover from it. In trying to make sense of the different aspects of depression, she mentions an anecdotal story of her short romance with a boy named Zachary; how that relationship elevated her mood just to deplete it shortly after when he broke up with her. She used anaphora by writing, “I start to think, Maybe Zachary and I will be together forever and it all really will work out okay. Maybe I will marry him. Maybe I am Cinderella at the ball. Maybe fourteen isn’t too young to know who’s right for you, especially since nothing ever seemed right before Zachary.” (Wurtzel 101). Through repeating ‘Maybe I will’ and ‘Maybe’, Elizabeth Wurtzel expresses how hopeful she was for the prospect of a better future, likely spent with Zachary. A few paragraphs later though, she breaks the unfortunate news that he broke up with her not long after their relationship significantly impacted how she was feeling. This instance, and this use of anaphora, was used by Wurtzel to show the reader how someone with depression has a fragile mental state that can easily be swayed by a simple interaction. It shows the reader how someone can transition from being a hopeful, loving character to an emotional wreck due to the actions of another person. I believe that her rhetoric helped her prove this idea and supported her purpose by showing how happy and hopeful she felt and how that great mood can be diminished so quickly.