Cheat Sheet

Sparknotes:

This Trip & How To Deal: Eat

Content:

Liz started her blog on the first of January 2010, and has since then updated (semi-faithfully) her blog every day. Sometimes she will share deep thoughts or personal feelings that she has or just funny things that had happened to her that day. During the post Eat (posted March 18th, 201o) she wrote about her feelings she had about her trip.

Plot Overview:

Liz's whole post is about Arizona (a topic she has been writing about for the past week) and how it feels to her. Her father (being an amateur photographer) had been obsessed with his camera the past week and was constantly taking pictures which interests Liz. She also thinks she came upon something to fix one of her friends problems.

Major Characters:

• Liz is a 15-year-old girl who took a trip with her family to Arizona She blogs about everyone and everything. She can recite the states in alphabetical order in 18 seconds.
• Liz's father is a shy man living in a house with three women, he needed a hobby to keep him from going crazy so he took up photography. Liz and him share an unusually close bond for a father teenage-daughter relationship. He can do a very nice scottish jig.
• Courtney is never far from Liz's thoughts. Courtney's life is the complete opposite of Liz's. Liz tries to understand her friend, but can't. So to make it up she is always on the look out for solutions to Courtney's problems. Courtney's favorite word is 'goodness'.
• Meghan is not mentioned in Liz's post Eat, but is always commenting on her blog, (which Liz is very grateful for) but sadly Meghan can't understand anything without the help of sparknotes. Meghan owns one of Liz's favorite movies, Jennifer's Body.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols:

• Religion - When Liz says "being a human I tend to only trust the things I can see" she is referring to many human beings who don't believe in what they can't see. Many scientists don't believe in God/Jesus, and Liz is agreeing with them because she can't quite believe she lives in Minnesota after all of the time she spent in Arizona.
• Photography - Time exposures show the paths of moving objects in one photo. Liz shows a deep liking towards them possibly because she enjoys spending time with her Dad. She seems to think about then a lot because of her 'life exposure' idea.
• Photo of a Church - The photo in the post Eat is an example of a time exposure there to give us the idea of one. The photo could have deeper meanings, but we can't be certain.

Summary & Analysis:

• The post's title is Eat, what for we aren't told and there is no reference towards any food in the post.
• In the first paragraph, Liz begins talking about how the trip to Arizona with her family seems like a completely different world compared to her real life in Minnesota. The more time she spends in sunny Arizona the harder it is for her to remember cold, dreary Minnesota. She refers to 'being human' and how many humans can't believe in things they don't see. The people who don't accept things tend to be more aggressive and slow to trust. Liz states that because she is one of them, it puts her at a disadvantage because she just can't believe.
• In the second paragraph Liz tells us a little bit about her father and his favorite pass time, photography. She explains to us about time exposures and tells us about her 'life exposure' idea. Liz wonders what her's (or anyone else's) would look like.
• The third paragraph can't really be called a paragraph, it's one line. It's a message for Courtney, one of her best friends. Liz has apparently come upon something that would help Courtney, but the message is quite vague, which might tell us that she doesn't want to tell Courtney the idea just yet, or that it's a bit too personal to publish on the internet.