Indledning
Carolyn A. Drake’s short story “Pill Pusher” begins with the tired narrator working her usual work shift as a pharmacist and reminiscing about her job satisfaction which only gets worse when she instructs a very impatient woman to wait in line.
The narrator gets irritated and creates negative assumptions about the woman based on her behaviour and clothes categorizing her as a typical “soccer mom”.
Uddrag
An example of this would be the anxiety she expresses when thinking about paying back the 70.000$ student debt or her irritation with the customers which leads to her thinking about Bug Eyes as a “Self-entitled bitch” (l. 25)
The writing style in the short story consists of a generally low language and an informal writing style with examples of slang and contractions throughout the text.
However, she has a formal tone when speaking to customers representing an appropriate relationship between customer and employee.
But apart from those short conversations the writing style and tone is filled with a pessimistic and ironic tone:
“Customers waiting for their prescriptions pretend to check their phones while observing the exchange between irate customer and jaded millennial pharmacist from their peripheral vision. Everyone loves a goddamned train wreck, after all” (l.31-33). She uses certain slang terms such as “nice guy or soccer mom” (l.21 and l.39).
The text also uses a bunch of irony with examples such as: “fantastically important (l.6)”, Such vital things” (l.7) or “But that’s not all! Billy Mays’s voice interrupts my thoughts with orgasmic enthusiasm” (l.12).