Monday, February 26, 2007

Some Short stories

Alexie's Assimilation showed how the prejudice in society could affect a marriage between the common American couple. Mary Lynn was feeling a case of boredom with her "white" husband. She felt it was safe. This is a result of the social stereotypes of the different races in a society. Mary Lynn feels that if she were to sleep with a man of different race that is looked down upon it would make some part of her life or her self more exciting. The fact that she likes that an Indian man has scars on his stomach shows that she is trying to fulfill her stereotype of an Indian man as being dangerous. This danger that Mary Lynn seeks is a false way of overcoming the problems with her and her marriage. Her problem being that she is bored. Her husband, Jeremiah, feels committed to marriage and not to Mary Lynn. This is also a result of the social pressures that is placed on marriage. Both Mary Lynn and Jeremiah are so afraid of breaking social conventions than just being happy whether with each other or on their own. They are so caught up on keeping a marriage and family together because society says that is what is most important. It leaves them no room to love each other as individuals until the very end of the story.
The short story, Pyramid, I found interesting. It had strong imagery and left me guessing what the story meant. It seems like a scholar is doing some research on ancient Mayan markings in a pyramid. However, the character that seems to be an archeologist spray paints words that you find in a subway station on the precious pyramid. He refers to this as his “work”, which gives it more meaning than just graffiti. He has a purpose that is not clear in the story, but it’s more than just a prank. He wants some theory of his to be proven which means this could be for other researches to look at and for the main character to observe their reactions. The story is humorous in a way, but strange because there is little explanation. The Glass Eye also had a dark humor to it. The character Folio seems to be a recluse that plays with his eye a lot and doesn’t get out much since he was so amazed to see a woman in a bikini. The glass eye he had before the new eye allowed him to see what he wanted. He wanted to see the woman as thin and attractive. Once the woman gave him a new eye and he tried it out he saw the woman as fat. It is unknown whether the new eye showed reality or if he was just a madman.
I felt sympathy for the character in I Know What You Did Last Summer. She struggled with her love of poetry and her own works. The setting was during the grunge era in music and she was on tour with very famous bands during that time. She was pressured to succeed with her poetry and with her desire to have a good summer. She finds that people don’t appreciate the art of poetry anymore or at least in the places she goes. She was placed in a “corner” near the bathroom to read her poetry and people were just yelling rude things at her. She notices the annoyance of young teens at the time and is bothered by their ignorance. She points out how the different classes dress how they think the lower class teens dress, but yet the lower class population doesn’t even dress that way because they would be seen as dangerous. She notices that poetry of her time has become cliché and stereotypical over her summer. This makes her shift her goals to making good burritos at a stand. She becomes bored with society, poetry, and even making burritos at the end. This shows the boredom with meeting the expectations that society pressures people to be and accept as what’s ‘in’ at the time.

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