Picasso Assignment!

My first reaction is one of confusion. I have never read a work structured quite like this and on a first read it really threw me off. Yet where the plot was twisted, I feel like certain themes and ideas came through bright and clear. Picasso's loneliness and sense of being outcast is clearly demonstrated. She feels distanced from her family, and I think from the language her brother used to abuse her. There is a feeling of pain within her that painting helps to rectify. Art is her form of healing and dealing with the world around her.
Whereas everyone else in her life may use the public staircase and live as everyone says they should, she lives by her private staircase. It is her perception of the world around her that struck me the most. The way the story goes is confusing, but I think it more closely reflects her thoughts and mind. It is a rare case when the mind thinks in linear, storylike fashion. Instead it shows how she perceives things, how she takes the drab black-and-white world around her and paints it in color. She takes an unbearable, painful life and uses are to make it livable and to allow herself to flourish. I feel like the scene where she is incredible pained from the family gathering and she "paints" all of them while they sleep is really powerful. It gives a sense of her taking control of things she previously could not.