Meredith Hall's memoir Without a Map tells her untold story as a pregnant teenager growing up in 1960s Hampton, New Hampshire. She was shunned by her classmates, family, church, and school and for the rest of her life lived in perpetual exile.
What struck me the most in reading this heart-wrenching, despairing story, is the idea of shunning and self-exile. Even after the pregnancy, after she gave up her child and everyone else had given up on her, even when she moved to the city in Cambridge to start a new life, she was lonely. She put herself in the odd position of self-exile as she isolated herself from boyfriend Erik, from girls at her boarding school, and even those that reach out to her like a male classmate that writes to her.
I would like to do a close reading of self-exile in Meredith Hall's Without a Map and how her own chaotic life reflects the chaotic time in terms of world events (referred to in the text), especially pertaining to the 60s and 70s.
What do you mean when you say self-exile? How does Hall exile herself in the text? Also, you say that her life reflects the chaotic times. What events are you specifically interested in? Are any mentioned in the text? I like that you're basing your paper on close reading. At this point, think about which scenes you'd like to close read in order to make your argument.
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