All the Little Raindrops

“[S]he wondered how long it would be before she began losing her sanity […] But the stronger part of her rejected giving up one of the few things she currently possessed: her will to live.”

This line indirectly characterizes Noelle as strong and resilient. Although she is caged, starved, and incredibly frightened, she refuses to give up or give in to despair. Her will to live and survive this traumatic experience overwhelms even her fear.

“Women. What petty creatures they could be. So ruled by emotion. It could be their strength, too, of course. But most often, it controlled them.”

Here, the Collector’s misogyny indirectly characterizes him as judgmental and proud, as he implicitly considers himself superior to the women he dismisses. His thoughts also foreshadow what happened to his mother and sister at the massacre, as this is what shaped his belief in women’s susceptibility to emotions: Both died because they were not “brave enough” to seize the chance of escape. More broadly, the quote develops The Concurrence of Humanity’s Good and Evil by establishing the Collector’s deeply flawed character.

“She felt like she was underwater, trying desperately to surface, to shrug out of her own skin rather than face this reality. Rented.”

After Noelle learns that she’s been “rented” for the first time, the narrator uses a simile to compare her feelings to the sensation of drowning. The language suggests that The Psychological Impact of Trauma is not, in fact, purely psychological; Noelle’s dread and panic, both during and after her captivity, manifest as heaviness weighing on her whole body.