The Wedding Story by Julianne Homokay

“The Wedding Story” by Julianne Homokay takes a very comical view at marriage unlike “Trifles” were we see the dark side of marriage. This play mainly deals with the misconceptions that exist about marriage and finding “the one”. The story begins with the Storyteller telling an audience of children that marriage is like a fairytale. He says that the bride and groom were high school sweethearts and basically sugar coats everything. The bride and groom beg the Storyteller to tell the children the truth and when he does present the real image of marriage the Bride and Groom realize that his original sugar-coated version was a lot better. This play is very cynical and tells us that our image of marriage is really wrong and we shouldn’t let that be a standard in our society.

            The marriage described in the play is very dysfunctional it presents a very extreme possibility of how a marriage could be. It goes on to tell us that the marriage is between a thirty-five year old woman and a twenty-four year old man and that instead of being high school sweethearts they met at a bar. They didn’t marry each other for love but the woman got married because she was old and thought this was her only chance of marriage and the man got married because he was gay. The bride goes on to say that the audience has to be told the truth because “No one’s life turns out like that. How many of those kids will live up to your version of the story? None! They can’t, it’s too much pressure.” This shows the stories ultimate goal which is that we shouldn’t be constantly measuring up to the ideals that society has tried to implement upon us. Instead we should do what feels best for us.

Trifles by Susan Glaspell

“Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is a play about marriage and the disappointments that it has. The play takes place in the winter and in a rural area it probably takes place during the first quarter of the twentieth century because phones are beginning to be installed in houses. The plays main characters are Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters and how they are able to coincidentally figure out the identity of the person who killed Mr. Wright , while the men can’t put two and two together. The women discover that Mrs. Wright is responsible for her husband’s death and they desperately try to hide any evidence that might incriminate Mrs. Wright. They do this because they know that Mrs. Wright was very miserable and that Mr. Wright may have been either verbally, psychologically or physically abusive or all three. They understand that Mrs. Wright probably needed a way out of the life Mr. Wright had given her. Murdering him  was the only way she could find some peace and happiness because divorce has still not socially accepted during this time and women had very few rights.

            The part I enjoyed the best from Trifles was the plot development and the details used to describe the setting. The plot in this story is amazing because it has quite a few twists and turns. Although, Mrs. Right is a murderer the audience is able to sympathize with her and at least in my case I wanted her to go free. I felt that after a life time of suffering and oppression she deserved to finally be free. The setting is also very interesting you get a sense of the type of life that Mrs. Wright led because she house is described as being very gloomy, cold and lonely. The house can be seen as a metaphor for the marriage that Mrs. Wright and Mr. Wright had. It was a marriage that lacked love and it was also a childless marriage. The fact that Mrs. Wright wasn’t able to have kids may be why Mr. Wright was so bitter and angry. He probably blamed Mrs. Wright for their lack of children, even though we don’t know the reason why they did not have kids. This story presents a very extreme and sad view of marriage.

What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie

What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie is a short story that takes place in Seattle, Washington the main character is Jackson Jackson or as he is often referred to as Jackson to the second power. Jackson is a homeless man and claims that this is the only thing that he has ever truly been good at. Jackson has failed as a students, husband and father. He has no contact with anyone from his past and the friends that he has are few and they tend to drift in and out of his life. Jackson has no stability in his life and when he finally finds something that might bring happiness back to his life he is willing to face any obstacles in order to get it back. The object Jackson wants back so badly is his grandmothers stolen regalia. He is told by the Pawnshop owner that in order to get it back he needs to give him $999 in twenty-four hours. Jackson attempts to collect all of this money however he ends up spending most of it on booze. Nevertheless the shop owner still decides to give him back the regalia. When Jackson is able to hold the regalia and put it on he seems to be able to connect with his grandmother in a very spiritual way.

 There are many aspects of the story that I like but what I liked the most were the characters especially Jackson. Jackson seems to be really truthful he’s not afraid to say what’s on his mind and he seems to be a genuinely good person. Jackson describes people who he meets in a very comical way and that is also very entertaining to read. Jackson also seems very grateful for what he has. He is always willing to share what money he has, he seems to be a very grateful and giving person. Perhaps this is the reason why he gets the regalia back in the end despite the fact that he did not give the pawnshop owner the $999 that he was asked to bring. What I found interesting about the story was that Jackson never blames anyone for his homelessness and I think that this is part of what makes the audience sympathize with him. Jackson isn’t one of those homeless people that blame life or fate or God for dealing him a bad card, he seems to accept that he is in that position because it was more or less his doing.

The Location of the River by Barry Lopes

“The Location of the River” by Barry Lopes is a short story that deals with the disappearance of the upper Niobrara River in Nebraska. The story first begins with the narrator’s account of Benjamin Foster a historian that lived during the nineteenth century. Foster lived with several Native American tribes, he would live with each tribe a few years and collect and record as much information as he could about them. One of these tribes was the Pawnee tribe, while Foster was with the Pawnee during the spring of 1844 he was told the upper Niobrara had disappeared. Foster thought that they meant that there had been a drought but the Pawnee told him that the earth would make rivers disappear in order to confuse men who were too dependent on things always being in one place. Foster was very intrigued by this and spent the rest of his life trying to find an explanation. The narrator concludes that Foster eventually went mad and decides to embark on a trip to Nebraska were the upper Niobrara is located.  He sees the river while he’s driving at night but when he tries to find it in the morning he can’t find it and looks for it for hours, the narrator then tells us that he hasn’t been to Nebraska since.

The best part of the story was in my opinion the plot. The plot is very interesting because it’s almost as if you’re reading a mystery. The author begins by very condescendingly judging Foster and automatically disregards the Native Americans view of this phenomenon. The narrator immediately wants to find some sort of scientific explanation that can explain what happened with the Upper Niobrara when he can’t find one he thinks it’s more logical to assume that Foster simply went crazy. This shows the disregard that people have towards ideas and beliefs that are different from their own. It also represents the way people tend to look down upon cultures that they consider inferior towards their own. The narrators disdain towards the Native Americans explanation of the disappearance makes the ending even more ironic. It also leaves the reading wondering that not everything can be explained by science.

Brownies by ZZ Packer

 “Brownies” by ZZ Packer takes place in a summer camp for brownie troops. The story is told from Laurel a fourth grade girl’s perspective. Laurel is in an all-black brownie troop. She’s very quiet and introverted and is constantly put down by the other girls in her troop. As soon as laurels troop gets to the camp they are determined to beat up Troop 909 because they supposedly called them a derogatory term. However, at the end of the story we find out that Troop 909 is a group with special needs.  Laurel learns throughout the story that she needs to stand up for herself and she also learns that the world is not what it seems.

            The best part of “Brownies” was the plot because packer makes the story very interesting. It’s not until the end when we learn that Troop 909 is mentally challenged that we finally understand that Arnetta and Octavia had made up a lie to give them an excuse to beat up Troop 909. I also really enjoyed reading the last part where Laurel tells a story about how her father once used a Mennonite man to pain his porch. Laurels father responds “it’s the only time he’s have a white man on his knees doing something for a black man for free”. When Laurel tells her brownie troop this story she comes to a realization that her father immediately took an opportunity to make another human being feel inferior to him. This makes her realize that her father isn’t any better than Arnetta and Octavia it also makes her realize that virtually everyone is capable of becoming a victimizer. Laurel is immediately upset by this because it makes her realize that the world is a cruel place. In a way at the end of the story Laurel loses her innocence because she becomes aware of all of the dangers that are in the world she realizes that the world is no longer a cruel place.

Two Kinds By Amy Tan

” Two Kinds ” by Amy Tan i s a short story about finding one’s true self. The main character Jing-Mei tries throughout her childhood to please her mother’s wishes and expectations of her. Jing-Mei’s mother is an immigrant from China and she believes that in America you can be anything you want to be as long as you are willing to set your mind to it. She has very over the top expectations for Jing-Mei and as a result Jing-Mei begins to rebel and finds that her strength in life is knowing that she can’t be anything she wants she can simply be what she is. Their relationship is always strained and it isn’t until her mother’s death that Jing-Mei is finally able to come to terms with this relationship and realize that her mother did indeed love her even though Jing-Mei thought otherwise. She realizes that by coming to terms with herself she can finally come to terms with her mother.

Even though the story is sad because Jing-Mei is being turned into something she clearly is not there are still some comical aspects to the story. For example when Jing-Mei has to get a boy haircut because her mother wanted her to get a perm so she can look like Shirley Temple. However, she is taken to a beauty school and Jing-Mei ends up looking “like Negro Chinese” according to her mother and as a result she has to cut her hair. It’s also funny when her mother signs her up to get piano lessons from a deaf man. The story over all is very good and heartfelt and i feel that Tan is telling this story to get the reader to understand that trying to be someone else is difficult and it can lead to problems with the people that we love the most. Then ending to me seemed like the best part because the narrator had finally accepted her relationship with her mother and had accepted that despite the mistakes she had committed her mother still loved her.

An Ounce of Cure by Alice Munro

“An Ounce of Cure” by Alice Munro is set in a small Canadian town during the mid twentieth century. It centers around a teenage girl, whose name we do not know, and her obsession/crush with a boy named Martin Collingwood. When the story begins we see the kind of relationship that our narrator has with her mother and it seems like they’re very distant and that they’re more like strangers that inhabit the same house than family members. The narrator cannot confide in her mother and her mother in turn does not see the effect that Martin has had on her daughter. She simply thinks that her daughter is upset with school. They just don’t know how to communicate with each other. Because of this the narrator turns to drinking as a way to solve her problems this turns out to be a huge mistake because not only does she drink way too much but she does so while baby sitting for a neighbor. She is forced to call one of her friends to help her out and just when she thinks she’s safe the couple she was baby sitting for walk in through the door.  She is taken to her very angry mother in the middle of the night. Needless to say once she is faced with bigger problems she is no longer worried about Martin Collingwood or who he’s dating and she realizes that life goes despite what problems we may encounter.

My favorite aspect of the story is that it is told in flashback mode. This makes the story more believable because the author doesn’t have any reasons to hold back information or to edit some of the things that she did. She tells this story as a way for the readers to learn from her mistakes and not be in the same situation that she was in. I think that this also changes her perspective of the situation for example if she would have told the story as a sixteen year old she would not have seen this situation in the same way. She would have been devastated and would have a completely different view of how things had happened. By telling this part of her life as an adult she makes the story more of a life lesson than just a crazy situation.

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

” The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is a short story that as the title point out takes place in the span of one hour. It takes place in the late nineteenth century and centers around Mrs.Mallard a young woman whose husband had just died in a train accident. When Mrs. Mallard first hears this news she cries uncontrollably and leaves her sister to be by herself. However once she goes into her room the pain of the death of her husband begins to leave her and it is replaced by joy.  Joy because she now realizes that she is free to do whatever she wants and because she is now free from her husband’s ‘control’. This joy overcomes her so much that she feels that she can’t keep it inside her. Once she composes herself she leaves her room only to see Mr. Mallard her presumed dead husband walking in the door and dies.

The aspect I liked the most out of this story was the plot. I thought it kept the reader interested throughout the entire story. I liked the way author took up a good chink of the story trying to describe the joy Mrs. Mallard felt at the death of her husband only to have her die at the end. I thought that the time she took to describe their relationship justified Mrs. Mallard’s death because it wasn’t an abusive relationship, Mrs. Mallard just simply felt that she had to live for Mr. Mallard. Mr.Mallard is described as nothing but nice and always looked at Mrs. Mallard with nothing but love in his eyes. Therefore, Mrs. Mallard’s joy at his death seems cruel and it’s hard for the reader to sympathize with her and because of this her death while it may come as a shock it’s not exactly devastating to the reader.

A&P by John Updike

“A&P” John Updike

“A&P” by John Updike is a coming of age story set in the early 1960’s. The main character Sammy is working in the grocery store A&P during the summer. He is nineteen years old and instead of being on the beach and enjoying the summer he has to work because he has to help his family out with their finances. On one eventful day while he is working as a cashier three teenage girls dressed in bikinis walk in to the A&P store. Sammy being a teenager is immediately taken with one of these girls whom he nicknames Queenie, he starts to check the girls out and objectifies them. However, Sammy seems to fantasize more about the lifestyle that the girls have than the girls themselves. Because of this when his manager Lengel calls the girls out for being indecent Sammy decides to be a hero and quits his job as a sign of  protest secretly hoping that the girls will somehow appreciate this gesture. After quitting Sammy walks out of the store and sees the parking lot empty realizing that the girls didn’t care that he had just quit his job to defend them and realizing that he had made a huge mistake. However despite the fact that he had committed this mistake he is enough of a man to accept his mistake and own up to it.

My favorite aspect of the story was the language. The entire story was told from Sammy’s point-of-view and because of this everything we know about the other characters is based upon what Sammy thinks or knows of them. In my opinion this makes the story more interesting because Sammy uses slang and everyday words to describe everything that he sees. His vocabulary is very easy to understand because he speaks the way normal teenagers do. However just because he uses everyday language it doesn’t mean that he fails to describe things in an accurate way on the contrary I think he describes everything immensely well. By using this vocabulary he makes it easy for the reader to connect with him.