Voyage in the Dark Part 3

Part of what this novel seemed to be about was expectations and the fact that none of them were really met. Anna seemed to have a lot of expectations for her life in the beginning, dreams of something better. Then she met Walter--who expected her to be experienced and to fall into bed with him--and when she fell in love with him, she wanted him to love her back. She also didn't expect her friend Laurie to be a prostitute, while Ethel expected Anna to prostitute herself. A lot of these things were not explicitly said, but rather became an undercurrent of character interactions. People did not want to say the unpleasant things, but it often came out in the end, in some of the most uncomfortable scenes in the book. Anna could pretend that these unpleasant things were not there otherwise, and often did until she had no other choice. This is what happened with her pregnancy, though she still waited too long and paid the price for it.