It's hard to get much more isolated than Cath unless you're stranded on a deserted island. And she's not exactly making a big SOS out of rocks for Google Earth to discover, either; instead she's wearing a tea-stained Simon Snow tee-shirt and writing fanfiction in her dorm room on weekends. For our heroine in Fangirl, self-imposed isolation is a form of protection from the world, and Cath prefers the world inside her own head to the real one—even if she is getting kind of sick of Blueberry Bliss bars.
Questions About Isolation
- Are there ways in which Wren is isolated even though she surrounds herself with people?
- Is Cath's self-imposed isolation something she actually wants, or is it something she does to help herself feel safe?
- Does Cath's obsessive online fandom keep her from making actual human friends?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.
Cath has plenty of social life—it's just online, so people don't recognize it as such.
Cath can have all the fans in the world, but until she lets some people she can reach out and touch into her life, she's too isolated for her own good.