How Benna in Anagrams Creates Her Own Reality Essay Example for Free

How Benna in Anagrams Creates Her Own Reality Essay In the novel Anagrams by Lorrie Moore the main character Benna bounces back between reality and the reality she creates. At times is hard to tell what’s what. Benna is a widow that lives alone and has an on and off relation with Gerard. She has also created an imaginary friend Eleanor and a daughter Gorgianne. When she is talking to the people she created it is hard to tell that their not really there. Bouncing back between created reality and what’s actually going on is at times hard to follow. This false reality she created plays a big role in â€Å"The Nun of That†. Benna creates her own reality in a few different ways. She imagines a daughter and a friend that she has full conversations with. The daughter she creates name is Gorgianne. She was named after Benna’s husband George that committed suicide. â€Å"Georgie has dinner and a bath, and Mrs. Kimball comes over and I say good night and drive over to Gerard’s apartment. † (Moore 118). This quote shows that Benna treats Gorgianne as a real daughter. Benna gave her dinner, and a bath; she even hired a baby sitter. Now if these things actually happened there is no evidence. With Benna talking like it’s actually happens it makes it hard to tell that her daughter is imaginary. â€Å"She holds up a little soap chunk she has broken off the bar. She is crying. â€Å"I put it up my nose,† she sobs. â€Å"I wanted to be all clean for tomorrow for school but now it won’t come out. † (Moore 74). This is another example of how Benna creates her own reality. She goes in complete detail of how and why the soap is stuck in Georgianne’s nose. Now clearly this did not happen because she in not real but the next day in class Benna tells them that was the reason she did not momorize there names. Eleanor is Benna’s imaginary friend. She is another example of how Benna creates a false reality. â€Å"Eleanor puts her pen down, all histrionics, and gazes out the lounge window, at the parking lotand the one tree. â€Å" You know, I just hate it when I lose my composer,† she says. † (Moore 65). Here Benna and Eleanor are grading tests I the lounge at FVCC. His is clearly one of Benna’s fabricated realities. Benna talks with Eleanor quite often. Their conversations are just like any other friends would have. This makes it hard to tell that Eleanor is not really there and just imaginary. There are a few reasons that Benna has this false reality. One reason is that she could be lonely. She makes up her daughter and friend so she doesn’t have to be alone. After her husband she had no one to live with so she probably thought she could imagine someone. Another reason could be that Benna always wanted to have a kid. Benna at times mentions that she would like to have a family, so she imagined that she had a daughter to have one. Also Benna could have imagined Eleanor just as someone to talk to and as a part of a life that she would have wanted to live with a friend like that and a daughter as well. Benna, the main character in the novel Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore goes back and fourth between reality and a reality she creates. She imagined a friend and a daughter. They have full on conversations with each other like they are actually there. At times her reality seems so real that it is hard to tell apart from what is actually going on. This makes it hard to tell what is actually being said and at times if the Imagined people are actually imagined. The main reason Benna creates this false reality is because he is lonely and wants people to spend time with and talk to. Moore, Lorrie. Anagrams: A Novel. New York: Knopf, 1986. Print.