Case Study: Puffed Rice and Meatballs - Short Story by Lara Vapnyar

Dennys Gaona

ENGL 1102

Mr. Atkinson

October 20, 2015

Puffed Rice and Meatballs – Critical Analysis

        In the short story “Puffed Rice and Meatballs,” by Lara Vapnyar, the main character Katya shares two stories from her childhood in communist Russia.  One story is told as a dialogue to Katya’s lover when he requests that she tells him about the “horrors of Communism” (Vapnyar, 73).  The other story is told in the first person, a story within a story, about another even more personal incident that Katya relates as “her real stories, the ones that mattered, the ones that haunted her” (Vapnyar, 76) in the telling.  Although this story contains elements that are slightly risqué, there is an underlying sadness that runs throughout the narrative as Katya appears lonely, dissatisfied with her life, and also scarred from her upbringing in a communist society.

        Katya tells a story to her American lover about her first sexual encounter that occurred when she was in preschool.  Although her lover wants her to tell a story about communism, Katya does not have any horrible episode that she feels she can tell him.  Instead, Katya seems to think that he really is “simply asking for some entertainment – for an easy, amusing, and preferably sexy story about the exotic world to which his lover belonged” (Vapnyar, 73).  It almost feels like Katya is telling a story to get an easy laugh and to maintain the intimacy of the sexual encounter that she just had with her lover.  The actual incident that Katya tells about was simply the childish game of one child to another – saying “I’ll show you my peesya if you show me yours” (Vapnyar, 74).  Katya drags this story out so long with what seems like irrelevant details of “shrunken meatballs and pale mounds of mashed potatoes” (Vapnyar, 74) to the point that her lover seemed almost impatient for her to get to the part with the sex.  It almost appears that Katya is going to break down and bare her soul to her lover when she speaks of her mother locking herself in the bathroom in horror after finding out about this incident at the preschool.  Unfortunately, her lover looks “mildly horrified” and “even freed his fingers from under the straps of her bra” (Vapnyar, 75).  This all seems like Katya is really lonely and depressed because she cannot tell a simple story without having to embellish and titillate to keep her lovers interest.