Everyone handles traumatic experiences differently. Everyone mourns differently. Some cry, and rely on others to help them through these hard times. Others shrug it off, keeping to themselves. In “The Last Unmapped Places”, the author, Rebecca Zurkewitz, has the main character handling her traumas oddly. Our main character, Rachel, uses this imaginary man, a webbed arm man, to direct her grief elsewhere. The story begins with what would most likely be a traumatic experience for most of us. On a stormy night, Rachel is struck by lightning outside her childhood home. Her parents would have been unaware of this incident if it wasn’t for Rachel’s twin sister, Hannah. “She stops because my sister’s hair is standing on end, fanned out like a sea …show more content…
Rachel had to support Hannah while she suffered from depression during her college years. While Rachel had her mind set on other things, like supporting her sister and her friends, she still felt the webbed-arm man’s presence. Rachel’s seizures didn’t show any signs of slowing down in her teens and twenties. Rachel explained that whenever she had these seizures her brain would always take her back to that incident when she was younger, picking up the scent of the burnt wood, and the presence of the webbed-arm man. At this point in the story, our author has built a lot of tension with this monster. She has been very good at making sure the reader still has the idea of the monster in the back of their mind. She has also made it apparent that her main character, Rachel, uses the monster as her way of mourning or coping. Whenever Rachel is experiencing something traumatic, like seizures, she feels the presence of the webbed-arm man. Leading to their transformation into adults, the twin’s connection never showed any signs of faulting. They would always reach out to each other to eat lunch and just hang out. During this time of adulthood, Hannah had acquired a boyfriend,