Red Bow Redder

George Saunders is a freaking weird author. Not going to lie. But, the story The Red Bow was very interesting to say the least.

The story is about this guy whose daughter is killed by a dog. His uncle goes nuts trying to kill all the dogs and cats and animals in the town. The weirdest part of this story is how eerie it becomes. The whole story starts to revolve around how the uncle starts using the daughter's red bow as propaganda to try to control the entire town.

Basically Uncle Matt is becoming a dictator in this story. The whole time, even the narrator seems cautious about what he is saying and he glosses over the fact that he isn't okay with what Uncle Matt is doing but he is just going with it. Uncle Matt plays the sympathy card the entire time and ends up forcing everyone to do what he wants.

Another thing that was weird about this story was how the red bow played a role in the story. The narrator's daughter was wearing a red bow when she was killed and he carries it around with him the entire time. Uncle Matt uses a fake bow as a tool to get people to support the cause. As his campaign grows, so does the bow. The bow gets larger, and redder, and the people get more and more brainwashed.

This whole story just seems like it is set in the twilight zone. It seems very resemblant of some eerie other world that isn't even real. The thing that makes it feel that way the most is the fact that the whole time the narrator seems very detached from what he is saying, as if he has no opinion on any of it or he doesn't agree with what is happening. He is just going along with it all.

This story I think was one of the least weird in this collection, but it still had a weird and eerie vibe.

Edison, New Jersey

Something that I found very interesting about Edison, New Jersey was how open the narrator was about what he was doing... That made me wonder, what did the narrator think of the listener?

Edison, New Jersey was a story basically all about conning rich people. The narrator was talking in a style as if he was letting the reader in on a joke. He tells us about how he steals money from his work, little bits at a time. He tells us about how, if he has a bad customer, he will clog their toilet and steal their toiletries. It seems like he is the one in control in these situations, even though you would expect the rich people to be the ones in control.

This is super different than what you would expect as well. Normally, someone of lower middle class would be jealous of the upper class. But in Edison, New Jersey it is completely opposite. The narrator is very content with where he is and actually prefers what he is doing rather than having a job that might make him richer, which he is offered at one point in the book.

Anyways, my hypothesis is that the narrator is talking to us, assuming that we are also lower to middle class as well. If we were rich why would he be letting us in on these secrets? Let me know in the comments if you think this hypothesis is accurate or not. Can't wait to read!

A Real Kid's Guide to Divorce

At first, The Kid's Guide to Divorce didn't remind me of my parents' divorce at all. My parents divorced when I was in 5th grade. Everything was okay for me, because I knew it would be better if they were separated. I think the thing that most threw me off about this story was that I went in expecting a normal, stereotypical story about a kid going through a divorce, but the story was really different. And that's when I realized that it really was like my experience with divorce. My experience was just like the one depicted here.

Moore shows us in this story a normal night with one of the child's parents. And that's exactly what it's like most of the time, just normal nights with your parents. But you don't remember the normal nights when you think back on your parents divorcing, so that is why I didn't think it was like my experience when I first read through it. When you think about a divorce you think back to when your parents first told you, you think back to all the fighting and the arguing, you think back about one of your parents moving all of their stuff out, you think about all the sad parts, but not the happy ones.

The story was similar to my divorce, however, towards the end when the mother asks about how the last three days went. The narrator then gives us a little hint as to what it's like at their dad's house. This reminded me of my divorce because, although the mom's house didn't seem like a very fun place to be, the dad's house seemed pretty chill. That's kind of like my situation with my parents except reversed. I live with my dad so his house is a little bit more strict and structured. We can have fun, but it's not like at my mom's. At my mom's, we only try to have fun. We play lots of games and she lets me eat whatever I want and it's really fun. I enjoy being at both places, but I understand how the narrator feels in this story.

Because this story doesn't show a lot of aspects of a divorce, here is my short "Kid's Guide to Divorce":

1. A LOT of people will ask you if you're okay, how you're doing, how things are at home, etc. Be truthful about that, but don't make it seem like you're upset because then they'll just treat you like a baby.
2. You'll get a lot of sympathy gifts and a lot of special treatment. Just roll with it.
3. In 10 years, you'll probably have forgotten how your parents told you they were getting a divorce. It's okay to push that memory from your mind.
4. Things will be better because your parents aren't fighting all the time anymore. They'll actually seem like friends again.
5. Your parents will introduce you to their new girlfriends and boyfriends in the future, be nice to them for the sake of your parents.
6. You'll get nearly double to christmas presents now. Just roll with it.
7. The biggest thing to remember is that everything will be okay. 

At first, I didn't like this story. I got kind of angry because it doesn't really show a lot of the hard parts of a divorce. But as I kept rereading it, I enjoyed it more and more because I really did understand.

Captured... Her Heart?

The family dynamic in The Man Child confuses me a little bit. 

When I first started reading it, I got really concerned that I was about to read a short story about an abusive father who did not care about his children or wife at all. I thought the family dynamic would be a lot worse than it ended up actually being.

In the very first paragraph in the book, Baldwin is setting up the scene. They’re describing the main character (Eric) and his family. In the second line, Baldwin writes, 

“Eric lived with his father, who was a farmer and the son of a farmer, and his mother, who had been captured by his father on some far-off, unblessed, unbelievable night, who had never since burst her chains. She did not know that she was chained anymore than she knew that she lived in the terror of the night.”

When I first read this, I had to reread it, making sure that I wasn’t mistaken. His mother was captured by his father? What does that mean? These questions are never really answered in the novel, so those lines still confuse me. But not only that, they leave me with a sense of worry. It makes me feel like the father is not a good guy. It makes me believe that the father will turn out to be a bad man in this story and that scares me a little. 

Later in the same paragraph, still setting up the story, Baldwin writes,

“Then, not long ago, there had begun to be a pounding in his mother’s belly, Eric has sometimes been able to hear it when he lay against her breast. His father had been pleased. I did that, said his father, big, laughing, dreadful, and red, and Eric knew how it was done, he had seen the horses and the blind and dreadful bulls.”

This again, puts my mind in a weird place. It is obvious that Baldwin is maybe trying to set us up to be wary of the father figure in this story, but I’m not so sure. 

The story goes on, nothing really stands out about the father that is “bad”. He seems pretty caring towards his family, which it doesn’t seem like would be the case based on the first paragraph. So maybe, the word “captured” was in reference to a phrase like “captured her heart”? Who knows.  The only thing that I noticed that the father did that was bad was poking fun at Jamie at the dinner table and arguing with him. This also kind of contradicts the beginning, because in the third paragraph it said they were good friends, they were practically brothers. So I was surprised by that as well.

Overall, I liked this story a lot. I liked the twist at the end, although it was horrible and awful and terrifying. I guess I just like morbid short stories. But, I am still confused by the beginning. I still don’t know what Baldwin meant by all of it. I don’t know if he wanted us to believe that the father would be bad, if he was just setting us up to be surprised. Whatever his actual intention was, I was definitely surprised by the story as a whole. 

What color were her eyes?

Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes stood out to me as a story. It was the first one that really confused me, which isn't really normal when I read a Salinger story. I really didn't know what to make of the story so I shamefully looked at a summary to try to get more info that I might have been missing. I guess the thing that confused me the most was the relationship of the woman in the story to the two men. Was she just some random woman? Or was she Arthur's wife? *dun dun dun*

I think it's interesting that we can read the story in two completely different ways depending on how we see the female character. So I guess that's what I'm trying to compare right now.

If we view the female character as just some random lady:
I think that in this situation, Arthur looks a little (or a lot) less sympathetic. He calls up Lee in the wee hours of the morning after a party, freaking out about his wife. She isn't home, which I guess is definitely a little worrying, and he keeps accusing her of hooking up with any guy she talks to and going crazy at parties. Someone in class mentioned that it made Arthur look a little possessive in a way, and I kind of agree with that. It does make him look a little possessive. Plus he keeps saying all these bad things about his wife (granted I think he feels a little bad for saying them...). But overall, Arthur definitely looks a lot less sympathetic.

If we view the female character as Arthur's wife, Joanie:
This changes things a lot. At first, it's a little hard to pick up on the idea that the lady might be Joanie. Some people in class didn't pick up on it, I didn't even pick up on it until I read online that it could be Joanie. We'll never really know, but I think that it makes it a more interesting story if Joanie is the one with Lee that night. If we assume that it is in fact Joanie in the room, Lee looks like (to put it bluntly) an asshole. He's hooking up with his coworker's wife! I just feel really bad for Arthur here too because it's obvious that he's worried. He might even have his suspicions about Lee and Joanie, and maybe that's why he's calling. I have a lot of theories that I could talk about but really I'd end up writing an entire essay. But if this really is true, it also makes Lee look pretty impressive by walking this tight rope of trying to give Arthur advice but also trying not to give him any hints that he's with Joanie.

There are a lot of things that might point to the second theory (as Joanie being the woman in the story). First of all the title could give it away. "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" could suggest eyes, green with envy, and a pretty mouth having to talk their way out of a sticky situation (Lee talking to Arthur on the phone). Another small thing that could allude to the second theory is in the beginning, when the phone was ringing, Lee asked if he should answer it or if he should just let it ring. Why would he not answer it? Was he worried that it actually was Arthur? We may never know.

Really, I don't know anything as to whether or not it is in fact Joanie, but I definitely have my suspicions and theories.

A (im)Perfect Day for Bananafish

In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", written by J.D Salinger, we see a man named Seymour Glass who is veteran of World War II. J.D Salinger depicts a scene where Seymour is playing on the beach with a girl named Sybil he has met at a resort in Florida. Sybil is only 5 in this story, which might already sound pretty sketchy (I mean, we're basically trained to think that a older man playing with a 5 year old girl is a little odd). But right before this scene on the beach, Salinger depicts a scene where Seymour's wife, Muriel, is having a phone conversation with her mother.
The phone conversation is just setting us up to think the scene on the beach is even more weird and it makes us think something bad is going to happen. Muriel and her mother are talking about Seymour, the mother saying she is worried about Muriel, and Muriel saying that she trusts Seymour. A lot of things are revealed about his character discreetly during this short conversation. It is alluded to that Seymour might have some sort of mental disorder and that he is not to be trusted.
This scene leads up to the one on the beach, where an innocent girl is talking to and swimming with an older man who, we now know, seems to have some mental issues and might be hard for the reader to trust now.

I think that Salinger is toying with the reader a little bit here. I think that, by arranging the story in this way, Salinger wants us to feel suspicious of Seymour on the beach. Because he clues us in to all these little details about Seymour, he inflicts this feeling of wonder about what will happen with him and Sybil.

After the scene on the beach, we see Seymour interact with a woman on the elevator. He gets really mean and defensive and, ultimately, scares away the woman. It was a side of Seymour we did not even see a glimmer of on the beach. It was a drastic change.
Then we see Seymour get back to his room. Everything seems normal, but then Seymour takes out a gun and kills himself right in front of Muriel while she is asleep.

I think Salinger puts these scenes after the beach scene for a reason as well. On the beach, we see a happy Seymour and nothing really bad happens (although it is still just a little creepy). But once off the beach and back in his real world, Seymour becomes another person. And when he kills himself, it shocks the reader because we see the more innocent Seymour tragically take his life. The stark contrast between the scenes plays with the readers emotions a little bit and even makes them want to go back and reread the story in case they missed something. I think this is a very important style that Salinger uses. He sets up the scenes in his stories in an important way and I think, while reading Nine Stories, the reader should definitely take note of that.

Is anything real?

The first thing I noticed about The Things They Carried was that the title page says "A work of fiction by Tim O'Brien". I thought it was a little odd, and it made me not put as much faith into the integrity of the book as I could have, but I forgot about it as I started reading. The heavy stories that Tim O'Brien shares pull at the heartstrings in many cases and evoke so many emotions.

Throughout the novel though, O'Brien keeps mentioning that certain aspects of the stories might not be (or are not) true. He keeps toying with the possibility that he made it all up. This made me wary too as I kept reading. He goes back and forth between telling the truth and "telling the truth". He plays a very meta game of telling us that he's lying, but makes us think to ourselves "is he really lying? He could be lying about lying!". He keeps saying that it is okay to fabricate certain things about a story to get the point across. But I'm not sure I really believe that in all cases.

I'm a firm believer in being respectful when it comes to topics such as war, and I just don't think that O'Brien is being very respectful at all. When I read the chapter "Good Form", I became extremely angry. I was arguing with myself over whether it was right, or even just okay for O'Brien to tell us all these things about events that he didn't actually experience first hand. But ultimately, in my mind at least, I decided that it wasn't very okay at all.

The story that got me the most was "The Man I Killed". In it, O'Brien is very raw about this man that "he killed". He tells the reader all of these unedited details about this man that he seemingly killed in the war. Then, in "Good Form", he admits that he didn't kill the man and that he was just present at the time that he was killed. He says that he was too scared to look at any of the bodies that were in Vietnam. Honestly, I thought the fact that he (basically) made up almost the entire story was awful. It just seems so disrespectful to me. A lot of thoughts ran through my mind like "what about all the people who actually had to kill people in the war? What about the people who died because they had to kill people in the war? What about the people who are scarred because they had to kill people in the war?". It just upset me because it seemed like O'Brien was looking for sympathy if he really did make all of this up. I don't want to sound disrespectful myself by saying these things or in any way take away from O'Brien's actual experience in the war, but I'm just frazzled by the whole thing.