The Briefcase by Rebecca Makkai

The way battalion twist and create impertinently realities to forget the old neer ceases to amaze and fuel the imagination. tidy sum strive to forget old, unpleasant, or in the case of Rebecca Makkais The Briefcase, feel threatening identities or existences incite purely on self-preservation. Everybody commode relate to the feeling of abstracted to simply step into an new(prenominal)s living to eliminate conflict in yours. In the short write up, The Briefcase, this cerebration is taken to the extreme when a political captive switches places with a physics professor and takes the frontlet to a new level. mess will stop at nothing, even lying to themselves, to avoid hardship and escape from the problems or situations they are placed in.\nThe story is very open to indication due to the fact that the primary(prenominal) character, location, and time are each(prenominal) unk straightwayn. The author simply sets the period vaguely to allow the referee to immerse him/he rself into the story. Without any boundaries of time, location, or ethnicity any reader hindquarters place themselves into the position of the main(prenominal)(prenominal) character. If fact, all that is known of the main character is that he is a man, once a chief, now a political prisoner alongside 200 others world taken away to an unspecified location. You can sense the staidness and desperation of his emotions in this situation, He persuasion of other handcuffs of men on other islands of the Earth, and he thought how since in that respect have been men there have been prisoners. He thought of mankind as a creese of miserable monkeys arrange at the wrist pull each other endure into the ground (534). This quote shows the mans mindset at this point, which would not be too far reach any others in his position. He is in a frightening situation, so desperate in fact that he is disbelieving the goodness of mankind as a whole.\nThe man has a strong desire to be free, a s we all would, and takes reinforcement of a chemiseped handcuff to slip away from the doomed line of prisoners. This escape sets off a chain of...