Even with her conflicting feelings and the men in her life might treating her as just a pretty face, Juliana does her own little bit to fight the Nazis-just like Tagomi saving Baynes. So, she may have a mental breakdown here-getting into the shower with her clothes and getting out a razor to kill herself (13.88-9)-but she still manages to save Abendsen. Like Frank and Tagomi, Juliana realizes that she's caught up in something larger than her: "I'm in something I don't understand" (13.45). Frank Frink might think that Juliana is dumb (1.76), but she puts together all the facts pretty quickly once Joe starts acting extra-special menacing. (Here's a question we wrestle with: Do all these mixed feelings make her feel more real and human? Or does it make her seem like a less developed character?)Īll of these mixed feelings come to a climax when she confronts the truth about Joe Cinnadella and his plans to kill Hawthorne Abendsen. Because of the "POV," we get to see Juliana's thoughts and feelings, but those thoughts and feelings aren't always clear. For instance, Joe kind of scares her at times, but she still agrees to go on with him for some reason: "You petrify me, she thought, with your hatred of life. She's got a lot of mixed feelings like this. But she still felt cold and sad, and she still did not know quite why" (6.136). When Joe proposes a road trip, here's what she feels: "She nodded, cheered a bit. She's not just here to fix Frank and be used by Joe-she has her own feelings. But Dick doesn't seem to be aware of Zooey Deschanel (who was two when he died) and he ruins this trope by showing us what Juliana thinks and wants. If that's all we knew about her, we might roll our eyes-all at the same time-about this trope. So we hear a lot about Juliana from men, who seem to find her beautiful but a little crazy-damaged-annoying. And yet, even with that, Cinnadella has plans to spend more time with her, even proposing a road trip with a healthy side of clothes shopping. When Juliana picks up with "Joe Cinnadella," Joe gives his own interpretation of her, which is that she's "scared of men" (6.131) and has "Worry, fear and suspicion, about me and everything else in the world" (9.67). And yet, he's still interested in her, and even plans to send her some of the Edfrank jewelry to get her attention (9.30). We hear of her first as "Frank Frink"'s ex-wife, and he has a very clear picture of her in his mind: she is very attractive, with her "Mona Lisa smile," and she has a "I'm-on-a-mysterious-errand way of coming and going" (1.76) that Frank ultimately finds annoying. It's real easy to imagine Juliana like a manic pixie dream girl, that character who comes in and shakes up people's lives with her quirkiness. It's not because we think she looks like Zooey (yeah, we're on a first-name basis), but because she gets treated by male characters a little bit like Zooey gets treated in some movies. We like to picture Juliana Frink as Zooey Deschanel, but with a razor blade that she can use to kill.
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