Dave Eggers, “Accident”, explores how traumatic events can crack people’s individualistic shells. Individualism can create a shroud of loneliness that thickens over time developing into a thick shell of sorrow caused by the lack of community and friendship. Dave Eggers suggests the way to crack the shell of loneliness is by a traumatic event like a car accident. Community and friendship develop once the shell of loneliness falls apart, opening the individual up to other’s care and love. An example of my own lonely shell cracking wide open happened on a trip I took a few months ago. The event itself was not as traumatic as a hurricane or house fire, both of which I have experienced, but the loneliness I felt in the event was viciously painful.…show more content… I was forced to sit for hours in my seat since I needed to guard all of my valuables from the potential thieves which in my mind were everybody. Gradually a strong sense of melancholy swept over my entire being. Anger, frustration, distrust, desperation all bubbled up in me. These toxic emotions were caused by my anger at Greyhound for messing up the connection I needed forcing me to wait nine hours in a shabby bus station, my distrust for the Greyhound employees and my fellow passengers, and my desperation for family, or someone I knew. I felt tortured by the blue florescent lighting, the ugliness of the station, and being about a thousand miles from home. I was alone and selfish even though I was so close to potential friends, my fellow