Even though I've written about her a number of of times, I've never explained the exact motivations for much of what she does. Here, she indulges in a ritualistic purging of her emotions from the previous year, and she gets her boyfriend to join in. Larger questions - like what happened to her parents and why she came to live with her uncle just before entering college - have been left unanswered. Maybe it's best to follow Oscar Wilde's advice here, “Those who go beneath the surface, do so at their peril.”