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.

Blog number one, Owl Creek Bridge

This was an interesting read, the beginning was a little bit slow however. There was obviously an effort to describe the surroundings in detail, so it allowed me to get a clear image of what was going on. I am not sure what the moral to the story was however, I noticed the main character was in favor of the South, so I tried to make notice of some criticism of the north. The author had the soldiers be really bad shots, which could have been accurate considering most of the northern soldiers were not as experienced as some of the southern soldiers. The twist at the end was interesting, but I am still not sure what the author was going for. If his purpose was the make the reader really surprised the whole thing was a hallucination, it was moderately successful, but for some reason it does not seem like that would be all an author would be going for.