Good Material

“One of our favourite jokes, extinguished along with our relationship.”

What Andy misses the most about the loss of his relationship are all the small intimacies he and Jen shared, like favorite food, movies, and inside jokes, they would understand. The metaphor of the extinguished flame conveys the pain he feels over the loss.

“I’m instantly comforted by Frank Sinatra’s voice, the sound of every December. The kind of voice that lets you believe in an alternate world of luxury and elegance and romance and string orchestras.”

Music is essential to Andy’s life, and his mother plays Frank Sinatra for him as a comfort. The sensory language in the passage conveys the effect the music has on him as it invokes nostalgia, transporting Andy to the comfort of Christmastime.

“I cringed as I watched drunken thoughts tumble out of my mouth like Scrabble tiles and I tried to piece them together into clever observations.”

Using a simile, the passage compares Andy’s social awkwardness when he meets Jen for the first time with a board game, suggesting that Andy is not yet acting authentically as is instead playing by rules given to him. Ironically, Andy struggles with words since his vocation involves carefully constructing words for humorous effect.