Student Question
What does Caitlin hide from the outside world in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes?
Quick answer:
Caitlin hides her PTSD from the world, stemming from witnessing a girl's death at a mall when she was eight. This traumatic event led to her obsession with death and fear of the world. To cope, she plans to create an interactive funeral home aimed at demystifying death, which ironically helps her reconnect with the living. Her project serves as a means to confront her trauma and reengage with life.
Caitlin hides her PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, from the world.
When she was eight years old, she saw a girl fall to her death at a shopping mall. Such a traumatic, tragic event had a devastating impact on Caitlin, instilling in her an unhealthy obsession with death as well as making her want to hide from a world she finds so incredibly scary.
At the same time, Caitlin hopes to deal with her trauma by establishing an interactive funeral home, which she hopes, among other things, will demystify death. In turn, this will enable Caitlin to become part of the world again instead of hiding away from it.
It is ironic indeed that a project involving dead people will give Caitlin the opportunity to reenter the land of the living, a place from which she has been hiding ever since that deeply traumatic event she experienced at the mall when she was eight years old.
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