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.

How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl or halfie) - Junot Diaz

This was an interesting short story, because its like dating advice for boys. It's not just about black girls, its about all girls. The author writes about the reactions different girls might have based on their race. It's definitely a story written for guys, because the author is only talking about how to talk with a gir, her parents, how and where to take her out to dinner, stuff like that. It shows the thoughts of a guy, but it doesn't show what the girl is thinking. It would be cool if the author wrote another short story to go with this one, but through a girl's perspective. I think that would add another side to the story, because this short story seems to be targeted towards men. 

Some dating advice: 

Always be honest with the person you are dating, (excluding white lies, because most of the time, they are used with good intentions like not hurting your girlfriend/boyfriend's feelings) because if you lie to them, or withhold the truth, they'll most likely be mad. Also, take their interests into consideration. If they like to do yoga, plan a yoga date. If they love art, take them to a museum, or don't complain if they take you to a museum. Put yourself in their shoes, understand what they might be thinking or feeling. If you just broke their ugly___(insert any item), don't say "Its ugly anyways, its ok." Imaging what that item meant to them, and apologize. Even though you've got to respect them and their feelings, every once and a while, take a few minutes to see if you're happy. If you're not happy, it's time to move on.

Margaret Atwood - "Happy Endings"

I liked this short story, because it was unconventional, and different from the other short stories I have read. The author had different views on "Happy endings", and just endings in general. She was saying that it doesn't really matter what the story is, because they all end the same way: the characters die no matter what. She said that even though the beginning and the middle were interesting, they all end the same way. I also liked how there were different "endings" for different types of people. There was three (sortof) happy endings and a couple of really depressing endings. Even though these endings were sometimes sad, they were somewhat realistic because of the emotions the characters had: unrequited love, anger, hurt an loneliness.

There were six endings in the short story, so I made a seventh.
G.)
John and Mary haven't met in 7 years. They went to college together, and they were actually very close. They just drifted apart over the years. They run into each other at their tennis club, John herding his three kids out to his rusty old minivan, Mary walking in with her expensive racket and her rich fiancée. They meet each other's eyes, and they both take a second to recognize each other. When they do, only John says hello, because Mary is scared of what her husband will do if she speaks with another man, especially one from her past.  After John's awkward hello and Mary's timid nod, they go their separate ways. On the drive home, John thinks about how much Mary has changed. While playing tennis, Mary laughs because John has not changed one bit. Mary was always so courageous. so outgoing. John thinks. He wonders what made her change in the first place. He decides to call her to see why she was so afraid to acknowledge his presence. As John looks down and reaches for his phone, a truck joins his lane on the freeway, and smashes the whole car. The story was big on the news, but since Mary isn't allowed to watch the news, she never found out. For the rest of her life, she can't figure out why she never saw John again at the tennis club.