Monday, November 24, 2008

The Jimi Hendrix Story

As I was reading the story "Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' At Woodstock," (wow that's a long title), I really learned to like the writing style of Sherman Alexie. When we read his other short story, "Every Little Hurricane," I became very interested in his unique style. Although he always seems to add in some details that are a little out of the ordinary. For example in this last story we read of his, he talked about the little boy Victor falling asleep to the sounds of his parents making love. He said that he enjoyed listening to that which to me is very strange. I was also surprised at how open his family was. His mom would just upright tell him that she loved when his father and her would make love while they were drunk. Then he would pass out on her while they were doing it. She even told Victor that this was how he was conceived.

Another interesting part in this story is the relationship between Victor and his father. They weren't like your average father and son who would obsess over things like sports. Instead Victor would help his father enjoy the Jimi Hendrix song when he would arrive home drunk. However, in the morning when his dad would wake up he would always feel bad. To make up for it, he would tell Victor all of these stories about his life. Then in the end of the book I felt really bad for Victor as he stood outside waiting for his father to return. It made my heart break. I wasn't sure how old Victor was, but I could just imagine a little boy with a broken heart yearning for his dad to come home.

This story was one of my favorites that we have read so far. I really like this author's writing style and his different views on normal. This was a good story!!!

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

When reading the story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, by Flannery O'Conner, I first thought that there was nothing to strange about Tom T. Shiftlet, but then as I continued to read the story I realized that he was some sort of creeper. He randomly showed up at Lucynell Crater's house and then, without even knowing him, she told him he could stay the night. Then he was telling her his life story. He told her about all the different jobs he had and what he was doing now. After that the old women asked him if he wanted to sleep in the car while he did some work around the house for her. However, when Mr. Shiftlet saw the car he became obsessed with it. He would always stare at it and admire it. I believe that the only reason Mr. Shiftlet came to the Crater's house was because he wanted to get money from them and he wanted to get the car from them.

The other thing that I thought was strange in this story was how the older Lucynell begged Mr. Shiftlet to marry her daughter. She kept saying throughout the story that she didn't want her daughter to leave her, but then she was trying to pawn her off to some strange man she barely knew. Then once they did finally get married, right after their wedding, they were going on their honeymoon. However, they didn't make it to their hotel. He left this poor deaf , who could only say the word bird, at a restaurant in the middle of no where with only a sandwich. Then he randomly picked up a hitch-hiker and started telling him how wonderful his mother is. That was also very strange to me.

All in all this whole story was quite strange.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

When trying to think of what to write on our first blog, I drew a blank. At first I was frustrated and upset at the fact that we were being forced to write this, but then as I thought about it, it started to intrigue me. I started to think about what we had been talking about in class. We spent a lot of time talking about art and the different interpretations each person had on a single piece. I thought it was very interesting how one thing could have so many different meanings to different people. For example the art piece we looked at that had the man and pregnant women in a bedroom. In my class alone their were at least four different ideas about the meaning of the piece and why the author made the faces of the people look sad. However, when I heard the real meaning behind it it changed my whole view on the picture. I feel that sometimes when we know how something is supposed to be viewed or interpreted we view it that way. We don't get the chance to use our own imaginations and create our own ideas. That is why I really liked doing that activity because we each had a chance to create our own ideas and then we we told what the true meaning was. In the end we got the best of both worlds.