Esme and her Particular Branch of Innocence
In class, we talked a lot about what Esmé means to the narrator and why he finds her to be such a comfort. Personally, I believe that Esmé represents a break from the chaos going on around him. Right now, about to go off to war, everything is uncertain, terrifying, and real. Stumbling upon the children’s choir provided the narrator with a small haven of innocence and purity when the world around him is everything but. 1t4 It’s very important to note that the practice the narrator witnesses is a practice instead of an actual performance, and Esmé, who he focuses on, is tired and over the whole rehearsal instead of enlightened and perfectly pure. Normally we associate the beauty of children’s choirs with the beauty of the special connection they seem to have with higher beings when they sing, as well as the fact that they’re all too young to be developing issues and negativity. The fact that the narrator finds the imperfection to be the best thing about the choir shows that there’s ...