What do you think of the ping-pong story?

In an especially resonant recollection, Lucy relates a film she watched as a child, “a blue screen with many white ping-pong balls bouncing around on it.” In her mind’s eye, she sees “the ping-pong balls bouncing around randomly and randomly hitting into one another,” thinking, “that is like people.”
What does she mean? Do you agree with her?

A perfect metaphor for life’s seeming randomness. Could even be considered the author’s viewpoint. A small example would be Bob having seen Katherine as a child at his father’s funeral, only to wait his whole life to see her again… and then as quickly, she is gone from his life. It is a good visual for much of the book.

Lucy saw the bouncing ping pong balls synonymous with people’s lives. No matter who you are, where you’re from or what your education is, life is all about the ups and downs people experience. I think Lucy was just referring to people in general ( blue screen..no visuals to pin point).

I feel those bouncing balls were a metaphor for the randomness of life.

I think the ping pong theory is part of the major question many of us ask about life. Are lives pre-destined or given to chance? Are the scripts of our lives already written or do life choices lead to how our lives unfold? Random or self determined? Strout wrestles with those options in her characters as do many great writers and thinkers. I think we all do.

I loved the analogy of the ping-pong balls all bumping into each other, sometimes repeatedly, sometimes just once. We do have people in our lives, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for a season, sometimes for our whole lives. The other aspect of this analogy is that we are all affected by those ping-pong balls that bump into us. Sometimes we are affected in big ways, but sometimes in small ways that we might not recognize.

I think this is an interesting metaphor for life in general. We humans all bounce off of each other, some long and lasting influences, some brief and transitory. I think Strout gave us this visual as part of her processing of the pandemic; we all seemed somewhat "faceless," even with those closest to us. Being in that "blue screen" of an unprecedented environment, life was harder to negotiate, impossible to predict. Where would we bounce next? and with whom?

It's a fitting metaphor for the way relationships work. We all encounter people who remain in our lives only for a specific period of time, whether because we work with them, socialize with them, or enter into romantic relationships with them that do no become permanent. Is it random? Happenstance? Strout plays with that theory at several points in the book, as have philosophers for many centuries. I think it was particularly apt vis a vis the lockdowns during the pandemic when normal relationship patterns were disrupted and for so many people the future felt tenuous, uncertain, and maybe even too frightening to contemplate. Who would we collide with next? For how long? Would those persons survive? Would we? Without getting overtly politicial in her narrative, the author makes several references to the individual who held the Oval Office hostage during the pandemic and utterly botched the handling of it. The chaos in D.C. contributed to the anxiety felt by so many Americans.