The lame shall enter first

This was an extremely long story, but a great one. The references to the Johnson’s clubbed foot was a symbol to the boys short-comings. Johnsons always seemed like he has a glimpse of brilliance, however it was only Sheppard that saw it. For that reason, Sheppard thought he was the only one that had the chance to save Johnson. This was symbolically represented in the purchase of the prosthetic shoe. Sheppard was trying to make up for the boy’s clubbed foot by purchasing the shoe, just as Sheppard was trying to make up for the boy’s moral short-comings. However, the boy refused the help of Sheppard, as well as the specially made shoe.

When the crimes were committed, I had actually suspected it was Norton doing the crimes to get attention from his father, sort of like an attempt to frame Johnson. So the ending did surprise me a bit, especially the final actions of Norton. It was very sad to think of Sheppard’s little boy hanging in the attic near the telescope, all because Sheppard wanted to try to help someone. This presented a lesson to the reader, that you must look after your own before you try to look after others. Sheppard was guilty of constantly putting the hooligan child before his own, and he paid dearly for it. Even when Norton showed an interest in the stars like Sheppard wanted, he was still ignored.

Everything that Rises Must Converge

This story originally put me to sleep, like some others have this semester. Although I do blame part of that to do with the fact I tried reading it at 4 in the morning. It was not a terrible story, just somewhat lengthy and preached about a subject that I particularly did not find all that enthralling. O’Connor was a white female from the south, so naturally, during this time, they thought about racial equality, and the tension between whites and blacks. However, this story seemed very much so geared toward the tension between a mother and son.

The common recurring things I found in the story were the weird hat, Julian secretly did not like, and the house that Julian’s mother used to live in. The connections I drew from each of those, was that the house represented her former glory, and with time it became old and run down. And the hat represented her in her present state, needed awkwardly gaudy things to disguise she is no longer realistically at the same stature she once was. Julian’s constant harshness to his mother was very confusing. The author made it a clear point that Julian owed a great deal to his mother because she was very kind to him, but all Julian had to offer was hatred for her ignorance. This was perhaps symbolic of how the North had a lot to owe to the South, but now that they thought themselves more educate and superior, they treated the South like they were dumb kids. Another major symbol would usually be the transportation, indicating transition, or growing of some sort, but I could not make the connection in this story how the bus was symbolic….any ideas?

A Pair of Tickets

Let me first start off by saying, this was the longest short-story, I ever have read. While I understand this was an excerpt from a longer story, I find it incredible that is still ran on as long as it did. I understood that the author, Amy Tan, was trying to create emotion and paint a background for the reader when she wrote about how her mother had to give up the baby. However, it seemed like for a short story it dragged on longer than it needed to. The main idea of a desperate mother could have been made in a few sentences.

June-May’s struggle to identify with her Chinese roots is what the story is centered on. She declares that ”even without makeup, I could never pass for true Chinese.” While her journey to discover that she actually was Chinese took 14 pages, she eventually sees the connection, not through her mother, but through her estranged sisters. The pair of tickets is symbolic in that she is paired with her sisters, or Chinese roots, no matter what she thought previously. And at the end, she declares, “It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go.” Finally accepting her heritage.

A very Old man With enormous wings

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ story of an angel with wings was very confusing to me. I am not sure what the writer was trying to convey to the reader, because to me it just seemed like he tried to make a somewhat interesting tale. I got the use of imagery at the beginning of the story with the rain and the wind and the stormy skies making the surroundings very gloom, and that added to the effect of the possibly dying child, or something ominous to come. When the “angel” actually did get spotted, the reader is never led to know whether or not he is truly an angel. It was the neighbor woman who led them to believe it was an angel, but it still seems rather suspicious that the title even does not call him an angel, just “an old man with enormous wings”

There was some sense of a message presented in this story, which was the human capacity for thinking of themselves. When the population started to become aware an “angel” was present, they went over to try to get something from him, whether it was cured of a disease or possibly wealth. When the half woman-half spider came into town, no one else cared about the angel anymore because there was someone else to give them the attention they craved on themselves. And once no one really cared about the angel anymore, the family that was taking care of him let him get pushed to the back of their minds too. Most religious families would be amazed if an angel graced their presence, let alone their home, but this family was just irritated. The woman described it as hell living with him.

How much land does a man need by Leo Tolstoy

I liked this story very much, it kept my attention, and kept to teaching one lesson it set out to teach. The beginning dialogue between the sisters about how the rich will always end up being tempted “with card, wine, or women.” The poorer sister believes that while the rich are easily swayed by the devil, the simpler, poorer people are unable to be corrupted. Her theory is that the reason the rich are swayed is because they are allowed to be idle, where as the poorer people are constantly working and never have time to partake in the evil things.

The overall message is that greed is in everyone, even in the poor. Pahom is the individual that represents the lower class that is supposed to be incorruptible. However, his journey throughout the story clearly shows, that given an opportunity, we can all be corrupted quite easily. While Pahom’s motives were never completely selfish, he was mainly getting this land for his own greed, and as the title would indicate of his attitude, no amount of land seemed to be enough. The story ends up representing the power of greed, and how no one can easily escape it. The final message from the author being that material possessions are not what life should be about, being laid out in Pahom’s death, leaving him not with the land he struggled to acquire, but just enough to be buried in.

The Loons

Piquette, the young “Indian” girl with tuberculosis of her leg, is the character the author tries to create the symbolism of the loons with. It is apparent right from the start that the Tonnerre family do not fit in, as Vanessa describes them:
They did not belong among the Cree of the Galloping Mountain reservation, further north, and they did not belong among the Scots-Irish and Ukrainians of Manawaka, either. They were, as my Grandmother MacLeod would have put it, neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring. (1)

This being said, it is not hard to imagine that there is prejudice towards the Tonnerre family. While Vanessa is sitting near Diamond Lake with her father, her father tells her to listen to the Loons while they are still there, because once other people move in near the lake, they will all go away. The loons are symbolic to the Tonnerre family, once the European families moved in around the area, they could not continue to live they way they once had. At the end Vanessa says Piquette might have been the only one that actually heard the crying of the loons, being symbolic in that she was the one that identified with their struggle to find a place to call home.

Among the symbolism of the Loons, the author also made mention of Diamond Lake numerous times, I am not sure what the symbolism is there, but considering it is water, and the insightful part at the end is also at the lake, I would say it symbolizes reflection.

The author also alludes that something may have happened between Piquette and Vanessa's father beyond a simple act of kindness, however it is never made clear what has happened. In my research online it said there were three stories and "The Loons" was just a part of it, so I suppose one of the other two would help to explain the inklings left in "The Loons"

Sonny's Blues

The beginning of the story seemed somewhat slow, and literally put me to sleep last night. However, as I read this morning, the story started to develop into something more interesting and enveloping.

I do feel this story, being a short story, could have come to its point a little bit quicker, but the attention to detail the author provided was important to his or her point.

The overall message I found dominant was love for family, mainly that of brothers. However, the story also touched on drug addictions, the struggle black people experienced at the time, as well as loss of innocence.

For some of the story when the author was talking about the kids in the schoolyard, it made me reminisce of Holden from “The Catcher in the Rye.” The narrator could did not want to face that the kids in the school could possibly be using drugs, he did not want to face that his younger brother had been using drugs. And when he was driving past the projects, the symbolism of light and dark the narrator was using to describe the souls lost to the evil present in that environment, also seemed to reflect straying away from the light, and losing what is good inside oneself.