Article Analysis: “I Was Caroline Calloway” by Natalie Beach
This piece was written chronologically; the story begins at the beginning of the author’s relationship to Caroline Calloway, but also introduces the comparison of herself to Caroline that is the underlying point of the story. I wouldn’t say there’s much of an outstanding “thesis” in this piece, and more so that it unravels itself over the course of the story. Essentially, the writer of the essay, Natalie Beach, attended a semester at NYU with now Instagram-famous Caroline Calloway. At the time — or arguably still — Calloway was a certified It Girl. She was confident and had the irreplaceable arsenal of endless good luck; she snagged the attention of every boy she laid eyes on and was coveted by every girl around her — including Beach. But as the story unfolds, we find that Beach, as her so-called best friend but more of a personal assistant, played more of the conductor’s role than we may have thought — than she may have thought, as well. At the end, Calloway is not only left with an Instagram account she doesn’t know how to run, but a crumbling book deal and a hollow sense of who she really may be.
The author is a main character in the story. It is focused around herself and Caroline Calloway, and written in the first-person perspective of the author herself. I think the best tactic that the writer uses is the way she compares herself and her own timeline to Calloway’s. While Calloway was off exploring Europe, Beach was back in Brooklyn in a cockroach-infested apartment, working on Calloway’s picture captions and memoir chapters. This makes the ending more powerful as it all falls to pieces. This essay is most definitely literary; it is written like a condensed memoir of her own story, focused around her friendship with Caroline which spanned over several years. The kicker is affective in this story. It adds another scene in which we can understand the depths of Calloway’s complex personality.
