The Permanence Of Cheating In The Short Story 'Permanent'

In short story Permanent, the author introduces a storyline in which a young girl chooses to cheat on a math test that she was unprepared for instead of taking the failing grade she knows she will receive. The student decides to scribble notes onto her palm with a permanent marker, and later discover the consequences of cheating. The short story presents a metaphor–the permanence of cheating is similar to the permanence of a marker. The permanence of the marker is made more into a metaphoric meaning when the author writes, “Later, in the girl’s bathroom, you scrub the palm of your hand in the sink. When your hand is raw, you turn off the faucet, but the permanent marker remains” (Irvin, 1). The phrase ‘the permanent marker remains’ suggests