Before he burns himself out, EPICAC writes, “I don't want to be a machine, and I don't
want to think about war. Relate this statement to EPICACs’s earlier unsatisfactory
performance and to the plot of the storty

as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

sadly it cannot chuck wood

to not go near anything hot

femininity is conveyed through bernice's personality. she doesn't act how the other girls act and everyone thinks she is weird. she learns how to act in a way that was considered femininely appropriate at the time. she becomes so popular but her attempts to be liked end up backfiring when she is pressured into bobbing her hair. the author wrote that bernice cut off her cousin's hair in revenge for tricking her to cut her hair. this was the authors way of trying to change the way feminine is defined and the way women are expected to act.