Violence

“Mauricio (The Eye) Silva,” and the excerpt from The Savage Detectives were both about abounding amounts of violence. In The Eye's story he rescues two boys from being castrated by breaking them out of and Indian brothel, and in The Savage Detective is a story about a man and his friend in war torn Africa.
Quite honestly I found both of these stories incredibly disturbing, first of all just the pure horror of the Indian ritual in The Eye's story was incredibly horrible, I don't see how you could justify doing that to children, even for a religion, that is crap and I have absolutely no problem with The Eye becoming violent to free the boys.
The Savage Detective was disturbing to me because right in the middle of Jacobo's journey in Liberia his Italian friend gets shot in the head, once again the soldiers in Liberia are not even over 20 yet they have to kill people and think about things like the fact that a dead body left in the street will probably be eaten by dogs.
Both of these stories were written by people who weren't the only main character. In "Mauricio (The Eye) Silva" the writer is hearing the story from The Eye, and in The Savage Detective Jacobo is constantly looking for his friend Belano, who at the end of the story walks away to an unknown fate.
While the ending of The Savage Detective is sad I was far more disturbed by the war going on between the children in the country. In both stories the death of kids and mutilation of young boys was by far more disturbing to me then any unknown fate or really anything that could happen to an adult. Kids should not have to deal with that kind of death and pain.

Better Half

These are two stories about love and loss, the first better half is about Anya a Russian girl who moved to America and married simply to get away from her old life. She married Ryan someone who in the first scene throws a jar full of coins at her. She originally met him at her job in a diner, he looked like the "most nervous person" out of his group of friends who were known to the diner's staff as "the Retard Party". She apparently married him as "a favor" and hoped for emotion later on.
Anya is in the process of becoming a resident, the constant fighting with her husband which eventually leads to his "accidental" abuse causes her to leave him and seek residency on her own. The latter part of the story focuses more on the fact that she has a restraining order out against Ryan and yet still goes after him. Her lawyer made it very clear that she shouldn't even talk to him, yet they still end up sleeping together on several occasions. Ryan tries to make the relationship work at several points in the story buying her a juicer towards the end and apologizing for his "accidental" abuse of her earlier but Anya seems to not want to hear it and actually picks a fight with Ryan over the gift.
The title Better Half is some kind of a misnomer because as Ryan pointed out Anya never thought the marriage "was real." The question in this story is whether or not Anya really needed Ryan. Sure she went back to him after several months of being separated with a restraining order still against him, but was that her still being in love with him (if she ever was at all) or was it simply because she was so lonely. Towards the end of the story Anya seems to regret her choice of leaving Ryan behind, she feels like she is seeing him constantly and always checking just to find out that he really is gone.

Orbiting

This is a short story about the daughter of an Italian immigrant named Rindy (her parents call her Renata throughout the story.). Her father "married down" and her mother "married up and that's the family story." This story is about her thanksgiving dinner with her family and new boyfriend Ro. Ro is from Afghanistan and was the son of a wealthy landlord in Afghanistan. Ro had been through a lot in Afghanistan, from getting arrested for passing out pro-American pamphlet, to being tortured in prison, and finally escaping Afghanistan by "orbiting" from one airport to another. The story primarily focuses on Rindy and her families lives and problems. Her sister Cindi has married a divorced middle aged man with a daughter named Franny. Her parents are drastically different her mother being from a lower class in Italy speaks plainly and is more open about her emotions, her father is more aloof and gets stressed easier. The most interesting part of the story is when Ro is telling his story about how he came to America. In that moment Rindy realizes how easy she has it in America and how much she respects and loves Ro for the hardships he has been through. She thinks comparing her father and step-brother to her boyfriend "They have their little scars, things they are proud of, football injuries and bowling elbows they brag about. Our scars are so innocent; they are invisible and come from rough-housing gone too far." Ro on the other hand had had to endure such childhood horrors as being attacked by dogs and beaten by crazy man with a burning stick. In short this story expresses the innocence of America compared to the Middle East. It also raises the question: is it better to fight for something as Ro fought for his freedom or just be handed it as we have been in America today?

Stone Reader

The final interview with the author of the Stones of Summer, was very interesting. Dow Mossman seemed a bit out of it at some points, changing volume and tone and speaking quickly. He was not what I thought of when I thought of an author, he had little to no money, couldn't even hold a job bundling news papers, and had been doing manual labor in the form of welding since his book had ceased to be in circulation. It amazed me that this was the person who had inspired a two year long man hunt for the amazing author that wrote the book The Stones of Summer. It seems sad to me that someone with the capability to write something so powerful, and yet could lead such an unnoticeable life. Dow Mossman spent an incredible amount of time and energy on his novel and yet saw so little for it. He had life experiences that mattered, he had a view on life that was unique, and yet he spent most of his life welding metal together. I find it horribly depressing that someone with such talent wasn't allowed to make that talent his sole profession.

Glengarry Glen Ross

This story was remarkably interesting, there was a good amount of profanity and many confusing sentences that got cut off half way because no one in the story wanted to shut up. My favorite part was scene three in Act one, where Rick Roma who is remarkably two faced, was selling land to someone at a bar. The way he sold it was incredible, he talked to the person he was trying to sell the land too (James Lingk) as though they were friends even though later in the story he completely tries to screw over James Lingk, my favorite line in the whole story is an empty sales pitch by Rick Roma ""If it happens AS IT MAY for that is not within our powers, I will deal with it, just as I do today with what draws my concern today." I find this idea incredibly powerful, throughout the entire story no one is really is in control of what happens to them, Williamson didn't rob the place but still had to deal with it, Aaronow didn't ask to be an accomplice to a crime but he became one, and Levene got screwed when he sold to a couple who were just stringing him along this story is about taking life as it comes and dealing with it.

"Sonny's Blues"

This is a story about life. The pain, suffering, hope, fear, loss, freedom and entrapment. This is what people go through when they are brought up in troubled situations. The narrator of this story is the older brother of Sonny, who is really the main focus of this tale.

There is very little one can understand from this story without having lived at least a part of it, pain, true pain, is incredibly hard to explain. Sonny himself explains to his brother at one point that he "can't really talk about it, not to you not to anyone", I don't think this is because he doesn't want his brother to understand but rather because unless you have been to a place where you are completely broken, you don't understand what it is like, you never really can.

This story is telling the reader one of the greatest truths in life, the harder the times, the farther a person has fallen, the more pain and suffering they have been through, the more they become something else. While they lose something in the process, like an animal leaving it's leg in a trap, they become something more then they were before at the same time. Everyone does this to a certain degree, everyone loses something, it's just that some lose more than others and that brings out more character in a person and you lose more of who you were before. Sonny says at one point that it is repulsive to think you have to suffer so much to get something so beautiful out of it.

Another point made in this story is that suffering is a huge part of life and as the narrator said "...there is no way not to suffer-- is there Sonny?" and while there isn't people make choices in an attempt to lessen the suffering. The point that Sonny makes through the whole story is that someone who has not made the same choices to lessen the suffering could not possibly understand what he has been through. He loses the boy that he was before but at the same time he becomes something more and gains abilities to do things and understand things that people who haven't been to the place where they were, as Sonny said, "Something I didn't recognize, didn't know I could be. Didn't know anybody could be." where he "Did terrible things" to himself and was quite literally "bad" for himself, could never possibly understand.

Everyone makes their own decisions in life and the choices they make, along with the choices that are made for them before they are even born, define who they are, and what they can do. Whether this makes what Sonny did right or not... who am I to judge the decisions he made to cope with the suffering in his life? Was his brother better off than him? or was he worse off cause he could never possibly share his reality with people the way Sonny did at the end of this story?

"The Flowers" by Alice Walker and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid Analysis

First and foremost I would like to say that the Alice Walker poem is one of my favorite kinds, a death of innocence poem. I really want to focus on the line that really grabbed me "And the summer was over." The very last line after Myop the girl in the poem finds a dead and rotting body by stepping in it. The whole poem up until she finds the body is quite innocent and happy it describes scenes where she is picking wildflowers and watching animals play, then she finds the body and kind of describes it in the same way she has described everything so far, very observantly and with a child like innocence realizing that the buttons have turned green, and the blue overalls, his naked white smile. I think at this point she didn't really realize what had happened, it was only when she picked the wild pink rose from the center of the remnants of the noose did she realize, that not only was this man dead but everyone will die someday including her. Then her childhood was over, her innocence left, the end of the summer wasn't a literal end of the summer it meant that she died a little inside cause she realized that the world wasn't what she thought it was. The death of innocence, no one ever goes back to how they were before and it is sad to lose the person that was before. In essence Myop died that day and was gone forever.

"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid focuses more on the overbearing parent, the one that tells you you are nothing and will never be anything because they want you to become better than they were but they really don't think you can. The person that the story is trying to help gets all of three sentences in, throughout the whole story and the first two times she speaks she is ignored, and the parent keeps going on their rant. The narrator of the story thinks that what they are saying is important and will help their daughter, but in reality they are just giving their child that many more reasons to fail, because the girl will ultimately fail no matter what she does according to the narrator. "this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming", "so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming", "this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up". It's almost sad, in trying to help her child the narrator almost creates a self fulfilling prophecy that destines her daughter for nothing but failure. In the very end when the narrator finally does pay attention to her daughter all she does is chastise her. "you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?" The narrator has already predetermined that her daughter will be a failure.