This Could Have Been Me Analysis

Throughout the entire essay three things quickly became apparent; the author did not mean this article to be formal, she felt a real sense of “This could have been me”, and she had a deep understanding of the story behind the murdered girls. The sense of “This could have been me” was very apparent throughout the essay. A prime example of this sense is shown in the following sentence “Behind the tragic elements of Regina's story, like some kind of pentimento, I saw my own.” The author shows many parallels between her experiences hitchhiking in the 1980s and the lives of the various girls that were murdered at that time. Some examples of this include when she was talking about her experience with the truck driver that pulled a knife on her. A common motif throughout the essay was talking about the story of the murdered girls and relating it to her own experiences hitchhiking. As I read through the article I also detected that she didn’t mean the essay to be formal. This was shown by her use of contractions and first person. The final …show more content…
The overall structure of the essay followed the pattern of starting with the historical event, transitioning to the present, and then talks about her experience as a runaway. Later on in the essay, this format changes to the author talking about her life experiences and then to the historical events. By using first person to tell the story of the murdered girls, Veselka was able to give an extensive human aspect to their stories. Throughout the essay, the author maintains the format of using only one idea per paragraph. She opens a paragraph with an idea, explains the idea and then closes the idea. This format is maintained throughout the entire essay. The style of “The Truck Stop Killer” maintains is bouncing between the past, the author’s life experiences, and the present all while maintaining a single idea per