Patriotism as Performance
Miranda is a theater critic for a newspaper. She is twice accosted in overly theatrical ways pressuring her to buy Liberty bonds which helped to fund World War I. The first time is in her office at the newspaper where government agents bully her for refusing to buy any bonds and the second is during an intermission at a show in which a sales presentation intended to convince the public to buy bond verges into dramatic presentation itself. The conflating of Miranda’s job with these two events serve to transform the idea of patriotic fervor during wartime as a kind of performance that is lacking in emotional authenticity and instead just becomes the easiest way to handle all the conflicting emotions that going to war naturally bring to the surface.
The Delirium of Disaster
Two disasters are taking hitting the world at the same time: World War I and the devastating flu epidemic. For much of the narrative, Miranda lives in a state of alienation as if slightly removed from the reality around her. Even her feelings toward her brand new lover is one of disaffection caused by uncertainty: he is scheduled at some unknown time to ship out to Europe to fight in the war while she is hounded by the certainty that something bad is going to happen her. All around her life is going on, but it seems to be doing so in a dreamlike way not just for her, but for everybody. Nobody seems capable of expressing authentic feelings about what is going on and instead seem to be merely expressing pre-programmed generic representations of actual feelings.
