Summary Of The Meat Place By Kim Chinquee

“The Meat Place” by Kim Chinquee is a story about a girl who visits her hometown to care for her aunt. Looking at the past can elicit a myriad of emotions, especially the farther away one moves from the events. Childhood hometowns are a world unto themselves; it's only once the veil is lifted that we can see the hometown for what it truly is that we understand how it shaped us. Along the way, the places she once knew drag the story’s narrative back into the past, emphasizing a life that has already gone. The story’s setting serves as a gateway to the past, sending a greater message about the present. When the story opens, the narrator rediscovers her familiarity with her hometown. Driving around, she passes “farms with pastures full of Holsteins and green trees”, reminiscent of how she "used to see

Naturally, as she runs, she gets hit by memory after memory because she’s running past the places where she once lived and grew up. As she is "passing the first place" that she moved into after her parents’ divorce, she begins to "run fast and out of breath, imagining how horrible it felt there", signifying how she wants to leave the pain she felt there behind (Chinquee). She does not want to hold those memories close to her any longer, so she runs away from them. Additionally, she runs “by the church lot” where she finds out her childhood crush "shot himself in a closet in his bedroom", and she becomes even more fueled by regret that she wants to leave behind her (Chinquee). However, the further she runs, she acknowledges her headphones and how "the music is not new", as another auditory symbolism for her setting (Chinquee). She is choosing to leave behind some parts of her old surroundings, and keeping the ones that matter most to her. The past can always serve as a looking glass for the future; however, it matters where one looks to see what