Nathan's Short Story Thoughts

So far in Drown, we've seen two stories that are structured to be divided into 6 parts: "Ysrael" and "Aguantando". When I noticed this, I found myself wondering if there was any special significance to dividing up the stories in this way. Why these stories specifically? They don't seem to be any longer than the other stories. And why in both of them are they in exactly 6 parts? What is significant about 6? Is it just a coincidence? These stories were written as separate short stories and then put into this collection, so what makes Diaz choose to put this structure in his stories? What I first noticed about "Ysrael" and "Aguantando" is that they are both narrated from the perspective of Yunior. Perhaps Yunior's stories are all written in 6 parts? But "Fiesta, 1980" is also from Yunior's perspective, and it doesn't follow that same structure, so it can't just be a style unique to any story narrated by Yunior. Look

So far, in Self Help , 3 out of the 4 stories have been written in 2nd person. As the title suggests, these 2nd person stories have been written out as sort of instructions. In 2 of the stories we read, "How to be an Other Woman" and "A Kid's Guide to Divorce", these instructions have been very specific, clearly telling a story through these instructions. Every detail is clear in both of these stories, and it gives the effect of being in the story rather than reading them as instructions. However, in the story "How", I noticed a few differences. For the most part, it is the same sort of 2nd person style, with very detailed, exact instructions on what will happen and what you should do in response. The first time I was reading, however, I noticed a few places where Moore breaks this. Rather than specifying an exact detail that needs to be true, she gives multiple options for some details. This created the effect of those details not really seeming to m

In the story, "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon", we have seen two big moments that, on the surface, would be considered generic for the location: the two lovers on a boat in Paris, and the coming to America with "freedom" all around. However, Baldwin uses the race of his narrator to create a deeper meaning behind what are, on the surface, very quintessential moments. The first one of these scenes is a flashback from the narrator's past. He is standing on a bridge in Paris in April with his girlfriend during the sunset, and he calls it the moment he knew that he was in love. The scene sounds much like the quintessential climax in many romance plots. However, the one he loves, Harriet, is white, and he is black. With the setting being presumably around the 1960's, this leads to a lot of tension behind such a couple. This is the reason for the narrator calling this moment the one he knew that he was in love. He was with this white woman, Harriet, and alth

Salinger has been an author that doesn't like to give us a lot of information. Most of the stories that he writes show the reader something and don't really explain it - he leaves a lot up to interpretation. However, with some of his stories, particularly "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Teddy", the interpretations that he leaves for us are hidden in the text, only to be truly understood upon a closer inspection after the story is over. With these two stories in particular, you almost haven't truly read the story until you've read them twice. With "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", Salinger begins by describing a phone call between Muriel and her mother. Based off of the descriptions given of Muriel throughout the conversation, upon a first read the reader is likely to assume that the mother is overreacting and over-worrying about something, as mothers often do. A lot of what goes on between the two of them, for example the, "funny b

Towards the end of class, we discussed the parallels between the end of the Chief's relationship with Mary Hudson and the end of The Laughing Man. However, looking back at all of the stories told of The Laughing Man, I noticed a lot of parallels in general between descriptions of the Chief's life and stories of The Laughing Man. The short story begins with a description of the Comanches, and with it one of the Chief. The Chief is painted as almost a legend, with a "Just in passing" description of his achievements going on for a quarter of a page and ending with a statement of everyone's admiration for him. Similarly, The Laughing Man is described as a more conventional legend, with an epic backstory outlining how much awe the children held him in. Right from the beginning, the idea of both of these figures being legendary, almost superhuman, is laid out. Towards the end of the "backstory" of The Laughing Man, he is described as lonely, until he finds h

At this point in The Things They Carried , I think we're all pretty skeptical about what information being presented is factual or not. A lot of what is being written seems so true you can really feel the emotions, really see the story... and then O'Brien goes out and tells you that he made it all up. I suppose that is what he's explicitly told us he wanted to have happen. He wanted us to feel the way he felt, even if it wasn't the truth. Isn't that exactly what he tried to do to Bobby Jorgenson? In "The Ghost Soldiers", Tim wanted to take revenge on Jorgenson for failing to treat his bullet wound properly. At the top of page 184, the narrator (Tim) says, "I'd head down to the wire and stare out at the darkness, out where the war was, and think up ways to make Bobby Jorgenson feel exactly what I felt." Just as he was trying to make Jorgenson feel the way that he felt, the author has been trying to make readers feel what he felt. He makes Jorg