Theme : Loss of Innocence

Throughout the story, the main character is innocent and naïve, when her first love breaks her heart,
it is the beginning of her loss of innocence. The narrator discovers the pain of unrequited love, the
judgement of others, and the consequences of naivete, but ultimately she learns that it’s all a part of
growing up.

Evidence:

“One night I had an impulse to swallow all the aspirins in the bathroom cabinet, but stopped after I
had taken six.”

“The extraordinary publicity which attended my first debauch may have made me seemed marked
for a special kind of ill luck, like the girl whose illegitimate baby turns out to be triplets: nobody
wants to have anything to do with her”

“But there was a positive, a splendidly unexpected, result of this affair: I got completely over Martin
Collingwood.”