Authorial Interpretation

Ezra slammed the front door, just as he had slammed the car door, and just as he would slam his bedroom door. Ezra always slammed doors, ever since his mother had been killed by a drunk driver five years earlier. Her death had triggered his transformation from a straight-A student, a friendly teenager, and a polite, responsible son to an aggressive young man who had been expelled from two different high schools in one semester, who spent his days locked in his room listening to angry music, who gave the finger to anyone who even looked as if they might be in authority. The situation had not improved when Ezra's father, unable to see past his own grief, had dragged his son away from the small community and the few friends he had left to live in a concrete maze lined with skyscrapers, but the process had been rendered irreversible when Ezra's girlfriend of two years sent him a Dear John letter.