Summer 2001 |
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--Notes on a few stories --Notes on a few more stories Mike Rios Eng 7757 Dr. R. Nordquist "The Keeper of the Virgins" by Hanan al-Shaykh At first, the dwarf only wants to talk to Georgette (who he is in love with?). He is then curious about the convent itself. After time, he becomes fixated and obsesses about entering the convent. Why? Is he driven to it because he cannot enter? Drawn to that which he cannot have? Or is he drawn because he longs for a place he can be a part of? A place that he can belong to? Why does he stay in the convent once he is allowed to enter? Does he take some sort of responsibility for that which he has intruded upon? Does the dwarf’s actions say something about how certain societies should treat other societies once they come into contact with each other? Is this stretching the story’s meaning too far? Is it simply about this dwarf, this individual, and his longing for acceptance? If so, why do the nuns accept him as their protector? Or do they even see him as a protector? Are they showing him love, instead of him showing them love? When he decides to "respond to their love, to help them realize that Christ knew about them" does he have it all wrong (13)? Are the nuns not the ones who respond to his love, by accepting him, giving him a home, a sense of purpose and meaning and worth? Or do both the nuns and the dwarf respond to each other? Why does the nun show him the body? Is it to instill in
him a sense of permanency; meaning that he will stay with them until he dies? Whose body
is it? Is it the body of the last helper, the last outsider they took in? Whoever it
was, he or she died recently. Which makes one wonder if the dwarf is perhaps a
replacement? This scene is the most difficult to understand in the story.
"Amor Divino" by Julia Alvarez Is the grandfather, Papito, a symbol of the weakening link between tradition and history and culture? Is Yolanda the weakening link? Or is she the product? She marries John in order to somehow go back home, to be accepted again. Is her failed marriage a failure of two cultures? Or does her marriage fail because she must first find the balance of within herself? The way in which the narrator reveals facts (such as
setting and names and history) is great. The reader learns these things in a way that does
not slow down or interrupt the reading process. "The Immortals" by Martin Amis Instantly evokes Nevil Shute (nuclear war aftermath) and Salman Rushdie (rhetoric). Narrator truly has reader believing that he is immortal, until the last three paragraphs. At this point, when he begins to speak of the "mass delusion," the reader suspects the narrator of suffering from delusion as well (31). Was he really a schoolmaster? This would explain his knowledge of and references to history. Or is he truly immortal? Is our willingness to believe in his immortality shattered at the end? Does it matter? Does his message (humans’ destructive tendencies, stupidity, arrogance, ignorance) rise above the twist ending? Or is his message hindered; does the narrator lose all credibility? If we cannot be sure of his immortality, how can we be sure of his narrative, especially the nuclear war? Does it matter? Is his delusion somehow linked to our (mankind’s)
delusion about the necessity of nuclear weapons, about our (mankind’s) own
significance? Is it the reader that is delusional then? Society? Not wanting to confront
itself and its actions? Its beliefs and views? Is it these beliefs that Amis is
confronting throughout this story? Does Amis turn our world around in the narrative in
order to have us face our real world, and hopefully turn it around? "The Glass Tower" by Reinaldo Arenas Captures a writer’s sense of responsibility to his or her creations/characters in
one phrase: Alfredo, the protagonist/writer was "ready to abandon the poetess in
order to save his characters, who seemed, strangely enough, to be gasping for air,
although out in the open" (37). "G-String" by Nicola Barker Barker says that her "main motivation in writing anything, especially short
stories, is that it should be quite simple." This story really is simple, and quite
fun to read. At the same time it is deals with the complexities women face in their daily
attempts to balance independence and assertiveness and femininity. "Aren’t You Happy for Me?" by Richard Bausch The story mainly concerns itself with Melanie and her fiancé, Coombs, but is it truly about them? Or is it about Ballinger and his wife? Or solely about Ballinger? Ballinger seems to feel Mary and he should stay together in the end. Why? Does he want to stay together for Melanie’s sake? But she is not a "kid" anymore. Does Ballinger foresee Melanie getting a divorce? Why? Would Ballinger think that
Melanie’s future divorce would be caused by the couple’s dramatic age
difference? Or does he have reservations about Melanie’s upcoming marriage because
his own marriage has failed? Does Ballinger really have a problem with his Coombs’
age? Or does Ballinger fear that he will lose Melanie as well as Mary? Does he see Coombs
as a potential father figure in Melanie’s life, somehow usurping his
(Ballinger’s) role? Does this possibility compound his fear of losing Melanie? "The Fat Man in History" by Peter Carey Peter Carey said of the collection in which this story appears, "The trouble with academics is that they try too hard to understand these stories .... They should relax. The stories are only about what they seem to be about. They are, if you like, a collection of 'what if' stories. I took a dozen or so hypotheses and asked what would happen if ...." he definitely accomplishes this sense of "what if" in this story. There is a balance of the real and unreal (a characteristic of history that writers such as Rushdie play with and focus on) throughout the narrative that is both appealing (or rather interesting) and discomforting. This story is very very disturbing, from beginning to end, even without the cannibalistic conclusion. Perhaps it is the unreal element that provokes discomfort; perhaps it is the very unique and different characters, and the unpredictability that results from such uniqueness. Whatever the reasons, this discomfort seems essential to the story and proves effective. Are bad, ineffective, corrupt leaders always replaced by seemingly good, effective leaders who in time become just like the leaders they replace? Were these leaders always like the ones they replace? Who really chooses leaders, in any form of government? A great quote from the story: "It is a relief to able to call him a name"
(135). The reader feels some sort of relief as well. It is as if the reader has been given
something he or she can grasp, whether or not it is true is beside the point. Is this how
entire countries are sometimes fooled into accepting cruel, corrupt leaders? "The Old Man and the Mastiff" by Patrick Chamoiseau Is the old man a link to the Africa? Is he a link to the past? Even though he is not sure of his identity and his past, he is still regarded as a "sun of remembrance." Is this fair to him? Does the old man really escape in the end? Is he alive? Is it possible that he died, a heart attack perhaps? Would this be the only way he could truly escape such a ruthless master, and system for that matter? Why does the mastiff howl? Does it sense that its double has left? Is it a symbol of
the master’s frustration at having lost a slave? At having lost the opportunity of
capturing the old man? Of punishing the old man? "Never Marry a Mexican" by Sandra Cisneros The narrator confesses that she enjoys having sex with husbands while their wives give birth. It is this joy that leads her to steal the babushka doll baby. Does her narrative serve the same purpose, to bring her joy? Is she using words, and recounting her stories, in an attempt to touch those babies? Perhaps the babies are her memories? Does she really feel joy? Or is she turning her situations around so she can better cope with them, and herself, as well as her past? Is it the narrator who does not want to marry a Mexican? Or is Drew and the many men
she has supposedly used who do not want to marry a Mexican, her? "The Story of the Lizard Who Had the Habit of Dining on His Wives" by Eduardo Galeano Is this an allegory about the way men "consume" women, devouring their identities and selves? Is the only way a woman can prevent a man from "consuming" her to consume him first? Is this really about marriage, love, relationships? One partner always consumes the other? Mike Rios Notes on [additional] selected stories from The Art of the Story "Portrait of the Avant-Garde" by Peter Høeg What is it that Simon feels in the end of the story?
What is the "unfamiliar feeling of impotence, of a defeat that [goes] beyond
him personally"? Is it mortality? When Simon thinks, "Now I am to be
crushed," does he sense his own mortality? Up to this point in the story, it
can be argued that Simon feels somewhat immortal. He certainly feels that his art
will live forever. And if his art lives forever so does he. More so, Simon
views himself as a creator, not only of art but of an art form that has shaken the world
and brought it out of the darkness he feels it has been living in for so long.
Besides creating art, he attempts to create, or rather recreate people such as Nina.
He also attempts to recreate the world. He thinks of himself as a god, even taking his
seventh year off to rest. And coupled with his sense of divineness is a sense of
omnipotence. Is this what he loses in the end? What he must lose in order to what?
Survive? Be saved? Because he asks for mercy. He is afraid of being crushed, of dying, of
losing his power. And why does his sense of defeat go beyond him personally? Does he
identify his mortality with others? With the humankind? Is the world the same as
Nature? As God? Is he asking the world/Nature/God to have mercy on him alone? Can we view
Simon’s plea in the end as a surrender to forces beyond his and our control? Or is he
trying to save himself? Or is he trying to save humankind as well? And what are we to make
of the subtle and not-so-subtle religious references throughout the story (from Simon the
creator through the island of Christians to the proliferation of sets of threes)? Do they
help our understanding of Simon and the story as a whole? "A Family Supper" by Kazuo Ishiguro We get the sense that there are more ghosts in this family
than just the mother. But what are they? Does the mother’s ghost represent anything?
Does it represent the family’s and their culture’s traditions? Or rather the
death, so to speak, of those traditions? And what has caused those traditions to die, or
what has killed them? Is the killer America? The two children in the story have been
influenced by American society: one wants to hitchhike through America and the other has
already lived there. Is the sister’s smoking a symbol of American influence? What
about the narrator? What did he do that his family (his parents, especially his father)
viewed as so wrong? Was it that he had a girlfriend that was American? (All we get is her
name, "Vicki," but we can say that she is American, or at least that she
represents a non-traditional Japanese individual—and family if her parents named
her.) Was it that he moved to America? Was it that he moved to America and he was seeing a
non-traditional Japanese girl? In the end, do we get the sense that the father’s
fears of losing his culture’s traditions are realized? Or are these traditions
revived or resurrected in a way through the narrator’s return from America and
decision to stay in his father’s home? Or is there a sense of both Japanese and
American traditions and/or values mixing or combining? Is it possible for such a mixing? "The First Day" by Edward Jones Who is the story about? Is it about the narrator and her
first day at school, the first day she is separated from her mother? Or is it about the
mother and her first day taking her daughter to school, the first day she is separated
from her daughter? "Willing" by Lorrie Moore What is the source of Sidra’s dilemma? Is her
identity/life/self dependent on her own view? Or is her identity dependent on others’
views? It seems as if her life is determined by what Hollywood thinks, what the public
thinks, what her parents think, what her friends thinks, and what her Walter thinks. Is
the story about how outside views can affect this actress’s life and self? Or is it
about how outside views can affect actresses’ lives? Or how they can affect
women’s lives? "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami The elephant can’t be an elephant, can it? Is the
elephant supposed to be just an elephant? Is it something else? Does it represent
something? Is so, what? Strength? Wisdom? And what about its disappearance? Is the
disappearance itself important? Or is its effect on the narrator more significant? He says
that he "often get[s] the feeling that things around [him] have lost their proper
balance" and that "some kind of balance inside [him] has broken down since the
elephant affair" (465). What kind of balance is it? A balance between what? Between
the logical and the intuitive? And why is it that only the narrator seems to believe that
there is no real explanation for the elephant and the keeper’s disappearance? Why is
it that the woman he meets treats him differently when he admits his thoughts on the
vanishing to her? Is she like the rest of society in wanting "unity of design"?
Is the elephant’s disappearance representative of the unexplainable in the world? Of
occurrences and events that can cause imbalance in the narrator and society, because we
really don’t believe that this imbalance is "Probably something in [the
narrator]" do we? But what really leads to this imbalance? Seemingly unexplainable
events? Or society’s failure to explain them? Or society’s refusal to accept
that they are unexplainable, or that at least society itself cannot explain them? Do
relationships suffer like the narrator and the woman’s because of this refusal? Is
the key to balance in the acceptance of the unexplainable (and/or the limits in our
ability to explain certain things)? Or should we do like the narrator and submerge
ourselves in the logical and pragmatic? When he says that he is successful in selling the
more pragmatic he becomes, do we believe him? If so, is it real success? Is it success as
a seller of appliances or success as an individual? "A Riddle" by Antonio Tabucchi Tabucchi’s story is similar to Murakami’s.
"The Riddle" deals with the seemingly unexplainable as well. Here we get a
missing elephant too, the elephant on the hood of the Bugatti Royale. We also get a
mysterious woman. But the narrator of this story has a somewhat different purpose in
relating his narrative. He weighs reason with intuition, or in this case reason and
dreams, like Marakami’s narrator and thinks that the key to explaining the seemingly
unexplainable—or filling in the gaps in our lives—is through putting aside
reason and relying on the intuition. Yet, he does not fill in the gaps in his life. Is he
relating his "riddle" to demonstrate to us that he—like us—has gaps to
fill in his life? But does reading his story make us want to examine our own gaps? Or does
it make us want to examine his first? Or: When we are exhausted with his riddle and gaps,
perhaps failing to solve and fill, then do we turn to our own stories? "Africa Kills Her Sun" by Ken Saro-Wiwa This is not a black and white story. Racism is an issue. For instance, Bana refers to "explorers" such as Drake and Cortés and Raleigh and how their explorations were revered when in fact these explorations were nothing more than robberies. But Bana also refers to the corruption in his own country by his own people. A corruption akin to that existing in other nations that gained their independence from imperialism only to be subjected to dictatorships of another kind. "It’s the guard and you the living who are in prison, the ultimate prison from which you cannot escape because you do not know that you are incarcerated. Your happiness is the happiness of ignorance and your ignorance is it that keeps you in the prison, which is your life." This is the lesson that Grant learns in Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying. "I am a slave," says Grant. It also might have been what Jefferson—or an alternate Jefferson—could have (should have?) said in reference to why he stole the cash from Mr. Gropé’s register. I would like to see a cross between Jefferson and Bana. Saro-Wiwa gives us a character that is very complex. Intelligent. Immoral. Lucid. Deluded. Experienced. Naïve. Bana is aware of history, of his culture, of society. His defense is both well grounded and contrived. He makes some good points. But we wonder if he is using his nation’s corruption as an excuse for his crimes rather than a justification. Even so, he is justifying himself, but should he have committed these crimes in the first place? He is an educated man. He did not need to rob. He admits that it was a choice and that he does not regret it. Do we believe him? He probably does not regret it, but who knows? So, is it significant that he made a choice that he supposedly freed himself from the daily prison his fellow Africans live in? That he was not forced to commit these crimes? Or is it more significant that he says it was his choice, given the story’s title? And speaking of the title, what does it mean? "Sun" seems to be a pun on son, so that Africa kills her son, her men, her people, those with the potential to shine and succeed and attain real happiness. Does Africa kill her son, Bana? Given his letter, it would seem that Africa does not kill her son, Bana. He chooses to die. Instead, perhaps, the son or sons or suns that are killed are those Bana mentions, those Africans who are living outside the prison walls, those Africans who are living. Recommended Reading |
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