Short Story Reccomendation

After reading all these great short stories in class, we had an assignment to recommend two short stories that we found interesting. I read at least fifteen different short stories, and these two were my favorite, and here's why.

The Company of Wolves - Angela Carter

This short story was a combination of old folk tales with a creepy twist.This story was written/ published in 1979. Most of the stories take place near or in the woods, and wolves are prominent in this story. The first story is about a newly married couple, and the groom disappears on their wedding night. Many years later, he returns and finds his wife has remarried and has two children. What happens after that is quite surprising. The second short story is a recreation of red riding hood, but in more detail than the original story, and a lot more gruesome.

At the beginning of the story, the author pulls you in with a terrifying description of wolves, and how savage and dangerous they are. The description of the color of the wolves’ eyes is what kept me reading. Their eyes are red when they are dangerous, or green when they reflect the moonlight. Another aspect of the story that kept me reading was the vivid picture the author painted in each setting, even though the setting and characters changed multiple times.
The main idea of the stories are wolves, because wolves were mentioned in all of the shorter stories.The wolves in the stories were always dangerous, and they almost always ended up killing someone. Even though the wolves couldn’t speak, they always created trouble for the other characters, whether it was by tricking them and leading them to their death, or just outright killing them. The height of the story happened near the end, which allowed the the story to develop. The layout of the story made you want to keep reading. I personally couldn’t put the story down until I had finished it. After I finished reading it, I felt somewhat satisfied, but I read it again anyways because I liked it so much.

After I read it again, I began to notice a theme. The women in the stories were always the victims of the wolves and werewolves, and that maybe wolves represented men. I got the sense of sadness from the wolves, like they didn’t want to be so vicious, but they had to be. I think the reason I liked this story so much was because it combined the real and the fake together to make a twisted and thrilling group of old folk tales. Another reason this story was so enthralling was because it was so different from any other short story I have read. I have read stories about people and their lives, homes, and interactions with other people. I have read stories about animals, but I haven’t come across a store that combines people, animals and folk stories in such a grim way. I think that the rich description of the characters and the setting really pull the reader in, and the storyline will keep the reader reading until the last sentence.

Blood-Burning Moon - Jean Toomer

This story was written in 1923 by Jean Toomer. The short story was about the competition of two men, one black, and one white, for a black woman named Louisa. The story takes place in the south, but it doesn’t name a specific place.  
This clash between two races is the base for this story, and the fight over Louisa accentuated that. Both the men, Tom, the black man and Bob, the white man, love Louisa, and they have just found out about each other. This feud between the two men is what begins the story.

In the first paragraph, the elaborate detail of the setting and the people is what drew me in. Another thing that caught my attention was the title “Blood-Burning Moon”. Later in the story, I began to realize the significance of the name (SPOILER ALERT) because Tom is burned at the stake after killing Bob. Not only was the location riveting, the characters were equally as enthralling as the setting and the title. Tom and Bob are the protagonists in the story, even though Louisa created the discord.

As the story progresses, the tension builds, and we begin to find out a little bit about the characters. Tom is an aggressive man who is very defensive about his belongings, whereas Bob is a spoiled white man who hasn’t done any work in his life. The contrast between these two men kept me reading, and I wanted to see how the story played out. Bob and Tom are their own worst enemies, because they are willing to give up so much for Louisa. Right near the end of the story is the highlight, the battle between the two men for Louisa and her affections. The ending of the story is quite unsatisfying, but it also gives a feeling of closure, because everything has been done, and all of the hostility is over.

The ending of this story is what really makes it unique, because it’s unexpected.These type of stories always end with the white man winning, but in this story, the tables are, to some extent, turned. This difference in plot expressed the theme that even though you love something, it doesn't mean that you are entitled to have it. Both Tom and Bob loved Louisa, but both of them couldn’t have her. This story is different because it isn’t clear who wins the fight, and usually the white man wins because he’s white. I think this change in plot is what readers will like most about this story, as well as the beautiful description of the setting and characters.

Ryan Boudinot - The Littlest Hitler

This short story was quite funny. I think it captured Halloween pretty well. The main character went as hitler, and he got ridiculed because another girl went as Anne Frank said he killed her. Later, there was a haunted house, and the kid went with an older girl, but he got scared and cried, but then the older kids open the haunted house and think they're having sex. Afterwards, the kid buys a new costume and goes trick or treating, and eats all his candy and goes to bed. This isn't the typical Halloween for a fourth grader per say, but the whole "costume ridicule" and "eating all your candy" is pretty normal. I think that this kid was just trying to fit in and be cool, and he thought that by being hitler, he might get a little attention. He did, but not necessarily in the way he wanted. The whole haunted house thing was a test of the kid's moral judgement. Does he tell the truth and say that no, they were not having sex, he was just crying, or does he lie and let the older girl take the heat to make himself look cool. Not surprisingly, he chooses the latter, and it doesn't seem to affect him that much, even though he receives hate letters from the girl's friends the next day.

One story from my childhood is:

Once I was playing in a park with my family. While my mom was occupied by my hurt younger brother, I jumped off my swing and started towards the exit. I was not quite tall enough to reach the latch, so I tried climbing over the fence. I also was not tall enough or strong enough to pull myself over the fence, so I tried an alternative method. I remember climbing to the top of the playground to try and jump over the fence. I, of course, being a six year old, could not have possibly made the jump. Even so, I still jumped, but I landed on another toddler. I'm pretty sure the toddler was fine, but as soon as I got up, I sprinted back to the swings while the whole playground gathered around the toddler. No one saw, so no one knew it was me. 

Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man Is Hard To Find

I think this story was very surprising. I thought this story was going to be about a car trip with a family, but it was definitely far from that. The grandmother in the story is the typical grandmother, saying how polite people were in her day and how now 'a good man is hard to find'.  This is a reacuring theme throughout the rest of the story, because while she was talking to an escaped criminal, she was saying that he was probably a good man with a good family. I don't know what she was trying to do by saying that, because after the father was killed, I knew the whole family was going to be killed, and it was only a matter of time before she was disposed of. One really interesting thing did happen, right at the very end, the grandmother realizes the prisoner is her son, but he gets upset and shoots her anyways. I don't know how she could be his mother, but the way he reacted could mean she was. I found that part interesting but also confusing.

The title "A good man is hard to find" has significance in this story because it has to do with the fact that people change over generations. In the grandma's generation, people were polite, and they respected their elders and their homelands, and they did what they were told. In the grandchildren's generation, they were loud and obnoxious and sometimes bratty. The difference between these generations is that in the grandmother's generation, good men were everywhere because they were so disciplined, but in the children's generation, a good man is hard to find.

Joyce Carol Oates - Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

I found this story terrifying. It was like my biggest fear in a short story. The author based off a murder,  in Tucson, Arizona, by Charles Shmid. It was about a girl named Connie, and her mother doesn't approve of her, and she's pretty and blonde. I just don't understand how this random guy found out all this stuff about her. He even showed up at her house! And the way he behaved and dressed was so creepy! She described his hair as looking like a wig, and she thought that he was in his thirties, but he convinced her that he was 18. She thought that he had stuffed paper in his boots to make him look taller, and that he wore sunglasses and his face looked like he had a mask on. He talked weirdly and he didn't even sound sane. He was talking to his companion (Ellie), using phrases "he'd learned but was no longer sure about which were in style". I felt like he had created a whole fake identity to get with Connie. The whole thing just creeps me out so much! I don't understand what happened at the end, did he rape her, did he kidnap her...both? Why did she go with him so willingly at the end?

A song that captures the mood of the story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYgoy_IitaU

I chose this song because it starts quietly but grows to become creepy sounding.

John Updike - A & P

This story was quite interesting. The narrator was a 19 year old grocery store clerk, and this story was probably set in summer, because three girls walk in wearing just bathing suits and no shoes. Usually, If you walk in to a grocery store in just a bikini, someone will ask you to leave, or at least put a shirt on, but no one does until the very end of the short story. I find this surprising, because both of the clerks (including the narrator) didn't say anything. The narrator, being a teenage boy, notices their bodies and quickly distinguishes the "Leader" of the girls. The narrator also calls the other people in the grocery store "sheep" or "scared pigs in a chute". I wondered why the author chose to do this. It made it seem like the boy didn't care about anyone but the girls, which is probably true. The boy seemed to be fascinated by the girls, almost like he had never seen one before. He watched them the entire time, which was kinda creepy. One thing I didn't understand was why he quit his job at the end. The girls were stupid to try and buy stuff from a grocery store with only bikinis on. I think that the boy was overreacting a bit because he quit just because the girls got embarrassed. 

My favorite passage was this one: 

"I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wan't anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark grey and his back stiff, as if he'd just got an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be for me hereafter. 

I like this passage because we finally see some emotion from the boy, instead of his judgments about the girls, the grocery store and the other people inside it. This was the first time he realized the consequences of quitting, and he quit for a stupid reason. he wanted the girls to think he was on their side, but they didn't even give him a second look and they were already gone by the time he walked out. The boy also saw how his actions were affecting the other people in the grocery store. the manager had to take over his cashier position, and he could see that he was angry by the way he stood.

I think the purpose of this paragraph was to show that rash decisions just to impress other people don't always work the way you want them to. In this case, the boy quit his source of income, just to impress some girls who obviously could't give a damn about him. Another purpose this paragraph serves is to show how even though the boy was constantly calling the other customers "sheep" and "pigs", he had become attached to the girls enough to call them "my girls". What made them "his girls"? Besides the bikinis, what made them so different from any other customers? I'm sure he had helped other girls in the grocery store, and I don't understand why these girls are so different.

Gabriel García Márquez - A Very Old Man With Wings

This story surprised me. I was expecting a plot, or something exiting to happen by the end of the book, but it stayed neutral the entire time. Nothing very significant happened, and even the end was a little boring. I think that the short story was well written, and there was good description of what the  "Angel" looked like, but nothing described the emotions or background of the angel, and that made the short story a little dull. If there was some background information on the angel, I think the story would have made more sense, and the readers could know what the angel's motivation was or at least how it got there.
Some Questions I have:
-Where did the angel come from?
-What time period is the story set in?
-Where does it take place?

Naguib Mahfouz-Half a Day

I expected the story to be something completely different from what it actually was. At first, it sounded like the character was about four, because he was just going to school, but at the end, the character is much older. I liked the way the author's view of school changed, because it went from a scary and dark place to a place where he learns and has friends. I also liked the way that the author described the setting in the beginning, and at the end, because they were so different. I could visualize the main character's home, and the land surrounding it, and I could also picture the school very well, which made it easier to read and understand the short story.