Short Story

WHATS UP GUYS???????? so i decided to try my hand at short story writing since i figured that we had read a lot of them already, and that i sort of had the gist of how to write one (SOO much harder than i thought) so i hope everyone enjoys it, and if you wanna id love to hear what you guys think, and i could also use some help coming up with a title.

The waiting room was empty at four in the morning, except for Dave and four other tired, panicky guys. They were each dressed in their own way, some in suits, some in sweatpants, but they were all there for the same reason. Dave had met Susana around ten months before. At twenty-three, Dave WAS looking for someone to settle down with but, as soon as he saw Susana walk into his friend's halloween party dressed as “Slutty Cookie Monster,” Dave knew that she was not going to be “the one,” but that had never stopped anyone before.

After they spent some time together, Dave started to feel bad but, like everyone knows, being with someone who likes you, and cares about you, is much better than being alone. So Dave tried and tried, but after a few weeks of trying, he tried way too hard and accidently got Susana pregnant. Dave did not love Susana but she loved him, and sometimes that is enough for things to work out. So, they moved in together and they started planning ahead for the future, which was shrouded in a veil of disbelief for Dave, but all too real for Susana.

One night, Dave didn’t come home after work. Susana waited, and worried, and reassured herself the whole time he was gone. After two long nights spent at Lucys, Dave finally stumbled home.

“I don't love you,” she said.

“Alright,” he said.

“We're through,” she said.

“Cool,” he said

But, after seven months of trying to make a failed relationship work, it was too late for anything to be done about the baby.

All of a sudden a nurse burst through the door, and the five men stood up.

“Dave?” she said in a soft  voice

“Yeah, that's me,” Dave croaked out, as the other men sat down with sighs, and returned to their state of inward panic.

“Come with me,” she said with a smile, as she lead Dave down the long, colorful hallway.

Dave walked into room 28C and found everything to be a lot different from what he expected. There was no blood and no doctors in blue scrubs scurrying around, instead there was just an extremely sweaty Susana, holding a small, pink, bundle of noise. Susana smiled at him and handed him the now-quiet bundle of blankets and baby so that she could close her eyes for a bit. All thoughts of pretty nurses and Slutty Cookie Monsters flooded out of his thoughts as he looked down at his little squirming baby girl. 

Dave didn't love Susana but, as he looked into his new baby girls eyes, he realized that he had finally found “the one.”

The Littlest Hitler

I thought this story was AMAZING!!! When read the first couple of sentences i was a bit weirded out, and not really sure in what direction the story would turn, but then i actually started to feel bad the little hitler. I liked HOW Ryan Boudinot told the story. He could have left out lots of details, like when Davy went in the tunnel with Cyndy, but i think it helped him create a good image of what the entire day looked like. How old was he when he wrote this story because i think he did a great job in showing what a kids views and opinions are. I liked the quote at the end "i opened the door to the flaming stove and thought about throwing my while bag in their bet then remembered the rule: wood and paper only, besides, I had an entire snickers bar in there, i wasn't insane" I think this is a great quote, and i think it shows that Davy felt poorly for the kids "less fortunate" then he is who don't get to go trick or treating, but it also shows that he truly is a kid and that even though he sort of gets the ideas of....protest (?) he's not really able to turn those thoughts into action, like when he sees the Friedlander kids. I also really liked the way that Ryan described the dad, i know that isn't the perfect example of a fatherly figure, but i think he is a perfect example for a nurturing person, and one who really cares for their kid.

I also want to talk about the last line for a bit. "Then i reached into the stove to see how far i could go before it really started to hurt" I know this is a pretty bad inference to make, but i think that this really shows that what Lisette talked about in school really effected him. I think that it shows that he really feels bad for "hurting" the girl i guess. If thats not what it means then that just means that Ryan Boudinot is REALLY good at writing endings.

I don't really have any experiences so far that have involved a tiny hitler, but i think I've had some pretty interesting ones. One thats had a pretty big effect on me, like this on did on Davy, wasn't one when i was little, but one that happened this summer. it's not a very interesting story, but i went on a camping trip for 5 weeks this summer on a bus, with 32 other people. one of the greatest moments on that entire trip happened when we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning so we could make it to Canada before like 2, and there was this one moment when me and my friend Rebecca were the only 2 people awake on the whole bus, and i don't know why, but just looking around, and seeing all those people who were some of the most amazing people I've ever met, just all snoring and laying onto of each other, was just such amazing.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

I actually really liked this story. i thought it was really interesting, and SUPER sad. I know that we're supposed to sympathize with the grandmother and at the very least feel sorry for her but i really disliked her. I thought that she was the most selfish character in the entire story and even though it wasn't entirely her fault that everyone was killed, she still played a really big part, and honestly, i found her character kind of annoying. I also felt really bad for bailey, not because he died (even though that kinda sucks) but because he was just sort of thrust into this situation. I really liked the language used in the story. I liked the quote "She would've been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life," and the one where The Misfit talks about how Jesus thrown everything off balance. I think thats a really interesting way to think about Jesus. 

At first i thought that the title was not very well chosen, but as the story progressed i started to realize why Flannery O'Conner chose to name the story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find". I think the reason its named that way is because there are different types of "good" men described in the story. Like even though Baileys mean at times, he is still considered a good man, because he tried to stand up for his family and tried to do the best thing he could for them. Thats totally different from the other type of good man described which i actually think is The Misfit. I think this because even though his actions are horrible, at least through the eyes of the Grandma, we see that he had the possibility to be a good person, which i think is sort of the lesson in this story. That all these good men really aren't that hard to find.

Where are you going? Where have you been?

I thought this story was really unnerving, and really REALLY creepy. I thought the writing was good, and very creative, but i just didn't like this story. I almost hated the way that Oates portrayed Connie. I didn't like how she was portrayed as powerless towards the end of the story, and I didn't like the light the author cast on her in the beginning. The way that she reacted to Arnold was just absolutely stupid. There were like 9 signs in the first like 18 seconds they were talking that Arnold was really creepy and someone who she shouldn't be dealing with. If your like a 16/17 year old girl, and you realize a creepy guy whose hitting on, named Arnold, is around 30, that is the moment when you stop talking, and start HAUL ASSING YOUR WAY OUT OF THERE. It really bugged me how she didn't take any action towards trying to stop Arnold until the very end, and even when she did, all she did was scream at a phone, and fall down. When I first read it i thought that Arnold had like gone in and stabbed her (because it said her back was wet and she fell on the ground) but then I figured out that Oates had just portrayed Connie as an incapable, not very bright, or understanding girl. I know this is going to sound weird, but I would have liked to seen like a fight scene. I would have liked to see Connie stand up to Arnold and at the very least make SOME serious attempt to make him leave her alone. I also didn't like how Connie was portrayed both by her parents, and by her actions with her parents. It made her seem even more like an incapable person, and it also tried to justify the reason why she acts the way she does.

A song that i think describes this story very well is a song called Water Fountain by tune yard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-KulvW2TUQ
The reason for this is because the song starts of in a sort of happy peaceful and joyful way, but if you listen to the lyrics it's actually really strange and sorta creepy, and it gets constantly weirder and more disturbing throughout the course of the song, EXACTLY like the story.

A & P

John Updike uses a lot of creative language throughout the entire story. Overall, i think the story doesn't really have a super defined point, or focus, but i liked it because of the way he describes things, and because of the way he laid out the story (even though it was a bit confusing). My favorite passage from the story is "all this while the customers had been showing up with their carts but you know, sheep, seeing a scene they had all bunched up on Stokesie" I like this passage because I think it's a funny way to describe the customers from the perspective of the cashier. The reason i think the story is confusing is because of the way the girls are described in the beginning. I thought that they were little kids, but as the story went on and we saw the reactions from the "older" men, i got the feeling that they were just a bit older than i thought. I also think that it's a bit strange the way that John portrayed the guys in the story. There were some parts in that story that I thought were pretty damn creepy (cause i thought the girls were little kids) so I would just like to know why John Updike wrote that in the way he did, and i would also like to clarify some of the sentences like "it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla i have ever known were there".

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Some of the short stories that we've read have been confusing, but none were as confusing as this story. I think that the story is really intriguing and interesting but I think that because everything is so fragmented it makes it hard to understand. One example is when they talk about having to kill all of these crabs that are running around their house. WHY ARE THERE CRABS RUNNING AROUND THIER HOUSE? Throughout the story there are a bunch of really confusing details that get put in, and never really get explained, like when they talked about the circus that had the flying man with bat wings. Marquez just sort of casually drops in these details that I think just end up confusing the reader instead of enhancing the story. Overall I think the entire story is very interesting, but I'm still confused by it. When I read the ending I was expecting some sort of idea that brings everything together, but honestly, I just got more confused. The last sentence sort of makes sense when Elisenda talks about the "Angel" no longer being an annoyance in her life, but I think it just brought up more questions. If I had to rate this story i'd give it like a 3 out of 5, because the story is very detailed and very interesting and pretty fun to read, but it's just super confusing.

1: Is the so called "Angel actually an angel, or does he just represent some unknown mysterious object?
2: is there a moral to this story, and if so, what is it?
3: What does the spider woman represent besides the literal?

How To Date A Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)

This story was really interesting, and SUPER informative, I now know that if i get a date with a white girl from out of town I'll at least get a hand job. This story was really interesting to read, but i think it was a bit confusing. I had to go back and read some parts of it because i didn't get exactly who he was talking about at that specific moment. I think the way he categorized and generalized all of these girls was really mean because he portrays girls as either really "easy" and not very bright, or he portrays them as really cold and distant. It's a weird idea to try and generalize about a group of people just because of their skin color and where they're from, and i think its wrong to try, even if there is a little bit of truth in what he said. Even if you as a person have some routine dates that you like to go on, there should be some level of personalization depending on the person that you're going out with. if you like the person enough to go on a date with them you should like them enough to at least try not to generalize them. If i were to give dating advice to someone (which i can't really, because i don't have a lot of "experience") id tell them to at the very least try and be interested in what the person is saying and try to think of them as a reflection of yourself. By that i mean think of them as someone who can feel in all the same ways that you can, and as a person, instead of just a guaranteed hand job.