Category: Reading Reflection

Exposition: A tale of two men. One, a privileged, white, father of two, killing five children by chainsaw while ‘protecting’ his own kids and his library DVD’s. He is acquitted of all charges and given his freedom.  The other, a poor, teenaged black youth, is focused on getting a job and dealing with the repercussions of the outcome of the trial.  Originally I thought this was set in the deep south in the 1960’s. When Emmanuel “stepped into his patent leather Space Jams with the laces still clean and taut as they weaved up all across the black tongue” (3) I realized that this story is set in present day in “Valley Ridge, South Carolina”. (2)

Conflict: Emmanuel wants to minimize his blackness because he is faced with outright and blaring racism every time he turns a corner, walks through a mall, or boards a bus.

Climax: The repetitive cry, “Fela St. John! Fela St. John! Fela St. John!” (26) and then “he saw his own brain burst ahead of him. Hardy red confetti.” (26)

Falling Action: Emmanuel’s blackness dropped to 0.0. Is that because it really doesn’t matter in the big picture of things and only society defines a person’s race, religion, disability, or ethnic background?

Resolution: The author deconstructs race and the concept of blackness by accentuating Emmanuel’s self-interpretation.

I have never used LSD or any other hallucinogen. After reading Johnson’s story, Emergency, I know I never will. Because the un-named protagonist and his buddy, Georgie, are both high on some cocktail of pills throughout the story, many of the experiences that occur may or may not have happened. When the narrator wakes up in the truck (assumingly somewhat sober) he states, “Or maybe that wasn’t the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn’t matter…a problem was already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning”. This depicts the frame of mind of the narrator not being concerned about anything. Something horrible could have happened or something beautiful, it didn’t matter to him either way.

Johnson also showed how the tension could increase in a situation. “We’ll just get him prepped and sit tight. Orderly! ‘Do you mean me?’ Georgie said. ‘Should I get him prepped?’ Is this a hospital?’ the doctor asked. ‘Is this the emergency room? Is that a patient? Are you the orderly?”. The reader can feel the doctor’s frustration with the orderly with the doctor’s staccato questioning.

I could really taste the pills he was “chewing” even though I typically don’t ‘chew’ pills or vitamins. Especially the capsules in the dissolvable plastic. “I stood around looking at charts and chewing up some more of Georgie’s pills. Some of them tasted the way urine smells, some of them burned, some of them tasted like chalk”.

I could not personally relate to any of the experiences in this story but the author used such good descriptions that I was at least able to envision what the activities the characters were going through. The story was disturbing and at times completely unbelievable such as when the orderly returns from prepping the patient with the hunting knife that was in the patient’s eye, in his hand, thus turning the room full of specialists dumbfoundedly silent.

I think incorporating an unexpected situation into a story does encourage the reader to pay close attention to the narrative. I may give that a shot in a future fiction story of my own.

Flannery O’Connor’s story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, is written mostly in the third person point of view. She uses the present tense telling this story and the reader is welcome to ride along in the car with the family.

In the first scene, the father, grandmother, and two children are reading different sections of the newspaper while the mother feeds the baby on the sofa. I found it interesting that the author names and describes the father and the children but does not name the mother, grandmother or the infant. She brings the reader in closer to the scene with the dialogue between the characters. The reader may pay closer attention to the dialogue of the characters who are less ‘developed’. These dialogues are written more in a second person which adds somewhat of an intimacy to the characters personalities. I also noted the apathy the parents had toward the children by basically ignoring them. This seems to be the origination of the cycle of disrespect in each family member. It also serves to create a narrative distance between the characters.

The details of grandmother’s preparations for the trip, hat and gloves and oversized valise, accentuated her shallowness, pretentiousness, and hypocrisy. The car ride itself was generally peaceful and the children calmed down to listen to a story from the grandmother about how life was so much better in the days of her maidenhood. The year 1955 is very evident in the car because there are no seatbelts and no car seat for the baby. This era is also apparent in the grandmother’s comments about the “cute little pickaninny” and “Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do” as if stating a fact, not a derogatory opinion.

The scene at Red Sammy’s BBQ was interesting in several ways. First, Sammy was described in great detail from his paunch to his clothing. He also has a name. Not so for his wife who is un-named and minimally described. Surprisingly, the mother plays an active role at the jukebox while Bailey says nothing throughout the meal, distancing himself from everyone and the grandmother attributes it to “trips made him nervous”. All is written in the third person until Sammy’s wife comments to the little girl, “Would you like to come be my little girl?” in the second person POV, as well as the grandmother’s“ “Aren’t you ashamed!” at her granddaughter’s snotty reply to the woman.

As I read further into the story and met the Misfit and his boys, I realized that we were privy to the Misfit’s thoughts as well as his dialogue. That is more of an omniscient point of view; allowing the reader to note the thoughts of each character. That change in POV swayed me because it seemed much of the dialogue was directed in a “you should” sort of message leading me to see a second person POV.

The horrifying final scene first made me think of lambs going peacefully to slaughter. Bailey was in shock and not at all able to grasp the seriousness of their situation. After those first shots the grandmother began to unravel. This is where the omniscient point of view changing to make a point became more evident to me. I could follow the grandmother’s thoughts and words as well as the words of the Misfit.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
The grandmother was right, they should have gone to Tennessee. But is was all the cat’s fault. I found the foreshadowing of the grandmother considering ‘to pin a spray of flowers to her dress so that anyone finding her dead body would know she was a lady’ very telling of her pretentiousness. Another example of foreshadowing was the grandmother calling attention to the family cemetery…hmmmm.

O’Connor’s use of the omniscient point of view seems the easiest way to write. You are not limited by one character’s perspective and can explore the backgrounds of each character. But then again, by limiting the perspective into a first person “I” POV the author can set a scene and control it through the narrator’s POV, like Catcher in the Rye.

Exposition: Tem and Ellie loved eachother very much. They seemed to be married forever, with two married children, one grandchild and another on the way. Early in their marriage there was an opportunity to find out their own death date on a machine by typing in your Social Security Number.

Conflict: Ellie was all for it, Tem was not. Tem attempted to forbid her to go but she foiled that by saying, “Oh Honey, that’s just not in your character.”

Rising Action: When Ellie returned (with the information she sought), she tried to protect Tem with a sort of ‘band aid’ shielding him from all the details. But he insisted to know what she knew.

Climax: As Ellie realized the gravity of the situation, she was in possession of a life changing piece of information that could ruin one’s life, Tem waited, raging, barely controlled and miserable. Ellie was his life…if she died, he died too…so to speak. As Ellie spoke the month and the day, Tem refused to let her continue.

Falling Action: Thus the following years of their life together sort of tumbled along as many marriages do. Kids, baths, schools, “the stillbirths and the car accidents”, more importantly, “smelling the back of Tem’s neck in the middle of the night”

Resolution: Ellie paid close attention to the minute details of her life. Her infinitesimal and immortal orgasms.  “Cooking dinner together, cleaning up while listening to their favorite radio show, and drying the dishes with a warm and damp green dishcloth.”

“Why had it never occurred to me that it might be something that would kill Tem too?” I am sure Tem may have considered this possibility all along, but like a bandaid, covered it up so I would not be exposed to his fear and uneasiness.

I also contemplated the possibility that there was a bureaucratic mistake. The machine was malfunctioning, maybe I typed in the wrong Social Security number, or maybe after all this time I had mixed up the digits…where would the new boundaries of my life be?  As Ellie and Tem crawled into bed with six minutes left to the day, Ellie thought about these possibilities while she curled up to Tem and again blissfully inhaled the back of his neck.