FALL 2017
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 15th, 2017
Death is a common theme amongst a lot of stories we’ve read throughout the course of this semester, but there are two where death is a direct source of growth in our main characters. “Mr. Green” and “The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor” are both coming of age stories where the deaths […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 14th, 2017
Not every love story is written in the stars, Lois and Tiny in Elizabeth McCracken’s “It’s bad luck to die,” is an example of this. Despite two people, arguably classified as “freaks,” come together and for a life together, overcoming age, religious views, family, and height. Lois, a young jewish woman of considerable height, meets […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 14th, 2017
Murakami brilliantly captures the complexities of human happiness and suffrage in his story “The Elephant Vanishes.” The way in which the narrator reveals his obsession with the elephant and its caretaker is nuanced and eloquently told. As the narrator tries to make sense of the vanishing elephant and caretaker, and their relationship to each other, […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 13th, 2017
I’m not religious in the least, but my mom was raised strictly Baptist and ended up leaving the church completely. My mom and I have had many conversations about God and religion: how some people utilize religion to find stability in their lives, a moral code, or to better serve a personal agenda. I remember […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 13th, 2017
People’s childhoods affect how they grow up, see the world, and interact with other people. In “The Night in Question,” Tobias Wolff deals with this topic in many different ways, including justifying his own childhood and how it affects how he writes this story. Wolff was raised by his mother, Rosemary Loftus, a devout Catholic. […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 13th, 2017
Elizabeth McCracken’s It’s Bad Luck to Die is written from first person point of view. The narrator, Lois, is a Jewish girl from a conservative family. One day, just after Lois had graduated from high school, her cousin decides to get a tattoo and makes the narrator come with. This is when Lois meets […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 13th, 2017
Hanif Kureishi’s “Intimacy” and Jeanette Winterson’s “The Green Man” are very similar stories. Both stories are told in first person and revolve around the narrator’s thoughts and feelings, especially the implicit sexual thoughts. The men are both are fathers and husbands. They don’t like their life and they are being emasculated by their wives. The […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 12th, 2017
“The Night in Question” by Tobias Wolff reveals the relationship between a protective older sister, Frances, and her little brother, Frank. Frank and his father, Frank Senior, had a negative father-son relationship because Frank Senior abused Frank starting when he was just a little kid. Frank Senior had decided to teach Frank “the meaning of […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 8th, 2017
“The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami employs a unique way of storytelling. Unlike most first person narration, “The Elephant Vanishes” takes on a passive or observer tone. This self-disassociation that the narrator chooses to have with the story he is telling gives us, the readers, a chance to see the internal unbalance of the narrator. By the […]