"Like a convert to a new religion, I overdid it at first. Somewhere near Gary, Indiana, I adopted a swagger. I rarely smiled. My expression throughout Illinois was the Clint Eastwood squint. It was all a bluff, but so it was it on most men. We were all walking around squinting at each other. My swagger wasn't all that different from what lots of adolescent boys put on, trying to be manly. For that reason it was convincing. Its very falseness made it credible. Now and then I fell out of character. Feeling something stuck to the bottom of my shoe, rather than crossing my leg in front of me and twisting up my shoe. I picked correct change from my open palm instead of inside my trouser pocket. Such slips made me panic, but needlessly. No one noticed. I was aided by that: as a rule people don't notice much."
Page 449, Chapter 3, Book 4
This passage makes great use of simile and metaphor to help the reader to gain a foothold in a decidedly unconventional situation. The narrator is making the transition from female to male, and encountering resistance. This situation is sufficiently awkward enough to alienate the reader if the author doesn't handle it correctly. As such, the narrators predicament is related to a new convert to a religion, his/her idea of a male expression being related to Clint Eastwood's famous scowl. The author's tone is one of detachment and ambivalence, created by use of short sentences and small alliterations. The final sentence of the passage also demonstrates one of the authors main themes, that no one notices what is right in front of them.
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