Original artwork, not a still
Lives of Girls and Women • 1971
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors, they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The speaker compares their astonishment to that of a kidnapping victim discovering an unexpected value in their captors’ eyes. That value has no connection with their own understanding of themselves. The comparison captures the unsettling experience of being important for reasons imposed by someone else.
Context reviewed
