Pryor has a B.A. from the University of Michigan and twenty years experience in professional and creative writing with special interest in fiction. In this essay, Pryor compares the characters Aaron Shapiro and Beale regarding how they communicate with others.

Aaron Shapiro, the protagonist of “Someone To Talk To,” has a communication problem. From the opening of the story—an awkward farewell with his longtime girlfriend—to the final scenes of the story outside the concert hall, Shapiro is alternately unable to communicate or prohibited from communicating. When in the course of the story, he is interviewed by a journalist who cannot stop talking, Shapiro's inability to speak up is dramatized literally. In fact, through juxtaposition with Beale, the journalist, Aaron Shapiro's sense of being eclipsed becomes more obvious.

It begins with Caroline's departure. In the opening scene, Aaron is watching the woman with whom he...