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They named it Edgar—that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, “Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!” Then they’d laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity.
The Murdoch girl finds a puppy under a delivery truck and brings it to school. Her teacher lets the puppy stay despite school rules against it and his fears that the puppy will die soon. The quotation shows the students’ unbounded, youthful joy, running and laughing with the puppy. They even name it after their teacher, revealing the close and intimate relationship they share. Readers already know the puppy will die, so the students’ happiness openly contrasts with knowledge of the animal’s inevitable death. Perhaps the students, too, know the puppy will die, but they live in the moment, enjoying it while they can.
They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? . . . We’ve heard so much about it, they said, but we’ve never seen it. . . . They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.
Following the conversation about death, the students ask Edgar to make love to Helen, a request that may be rooted in innocent curiosity. Their request can be taken two ways. Make love can be a euphemism for sex, suggesting a prurient interest in something they have heard about and want to see. However, the words make love also suggest a more innocent interest in romance. As distinct from death, love is associated with life-affirming qualities, such as affection, devotion, respect, warmth, safety, and protection. In contrast to the cold and incomprehensible nature of death with which they have become all too familiar, the students yearn to witness the generative power of love. As the narrator puts it, the students “require an assertion of value” because they are frightened. In rhetoric, an assertion of value is a statement that declares something has worth. The students view the act of making love, whether sexually or romantically, as a declaration that life has value. They are frightened of the idea that death could render life and love meaningless. The students’ language seems absurd, not at all age-appropriate, adding some humor to their weighty thoughts.
