Lightbox analysis | Short story

Indledning
‘Lightbox’ is a short story that was written in 2015 by an author named Emma Clearly. The theme of the short story is stalking, and that there will always be people with psychological issues. The stalker is an unknown person, that is following a young woman called Elsie, and she has seen him before.

The unknown stalker watches everything Elsie does, and he is up to date with everything she is posting on social media. Elsie is a woman that lives in a big city in the United States, and so does the stalker.

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Uddrag
The language of the short story represents where the short story takes place. Both of them live in a modern time, where the internet, social media, and mobile phones are at its peak. In the short story, there is no dialogue between Elsie and the stalker, which helps to understand how the story should be understood - that the narrator is stalking Elsie.

The story is written out of the narrator’s perspective which describes what Elsie constantly does. In fact, the way the short story is described, helps the imagination in peoples’ minds when they read the short story. It lets them see a picture of the places that are described.

The author uses a lot of poetic devices; he uses a simile in the start of the short story, where he compares bearded men with cartoon lumberjacks: “She likes men with beards. I swear the perfect man for Elsie looks like a cartoon lumberjack.” (p. 1 l. 9-10). In fact, he seems to be jealous of men with a beard - and does not like them, because he does not have one.

The title of the short story is important to look at, because it symbolizes and says what the short story is about. Light and dark is one example of how the two contrasts connect to the title; the unknown stalker can only see Elise when it is a day, but not when it is night - that is why the title is called “Lightbox.”

A lightbox is mostly used to photograph where the light highlights the photo, and often hides all the bad things about the photo. The author uses lightbox as a metaphor. The big windows in high buildings also minimize the concept of privacy, because then everyone can see into the window and see everything - just as the stalker can and does.