Something I noticed after I read “Stop Your Women’s Ears With Wax” was the intense factor of leaving a lot of information to the reader’s imagination. The story follows a band’s video producer, Mona, who works to capture videos for the band, but witnesses the extreme fan-girls that frequently affront the band during their tour. The story was in third person point of view, which prevents the reader from being in Mona’s head and seeing and knowing everything that she would know. This gives readers an overall vision of what is going on in the situations. The author was very reserved in information about the characters, only offering the bare minimum of details about them.
Interestingly, while the story doesn’t offer up many details about all of the characters, it does scarcely allow us into the life of Mona. It is as if the readers are getting character information from Mona’s experiences. There was also a large amount of delay where he readers are left not knowing much of anything about Mona or any of the other characters until the middle of the story when the details are added about Ava and Mona’s relationship. It also waits to include information about Mona leaving home to pursue a job.
Overall, at the end of the story, I was left wondering about a few details, such as who the band is. The band name is not mentioned, but certain details allude to the author’s trend of the color orange. The fans of the band wear the color orange and it seems to be a recurring theme throughout the story. An example of this is the normality that comes with the strange events that occur where the band is concerned.
“Someone is reading aloud from a day-old newspaper–venue manager from a previous city found asphyxiated in his office, clot of orange halfway down his throat.”
While I would have also liked to have seen more character development, the missing details just make the story much more interesting.