Two Stories for Consideration

If my posts and writings for this class have seemed cynical and unimpressed with the stories we have read, that's because they are. Not because the stories are bad or uninteresting in nature, but simply because I'm tired of reading about white male characters. I can't relate to them and I'm bored with them. Out of thirty-two stories in our resources page, a whopping three of them are by authors of color, and two of those are the same author, Sherman Alexie. Though I am not a person of color, I hardly see it justified that we are getting such a blatantly narrow perspective. Though women are somewhat more represented, comprising twelve of the thirty-two stories, even those with female protagonists are still largely about their relationship with men, such as "The Most Girl Part of You,"and "A Conversation with My Father." Furthermore, there is exactly zero queer representation in any of these stories. All of this is to say, it was really hard to find any stories I cared about even remotely.

That being said, the stories I chose are "The First Day," by Edward P. Jones, and "The Tresspasser," by Bonnie Jo Campbell. These stories represent the only story with a woman of color as the protagonist, and one of the only stories about a girl that doesn't involve men at all.

The moments I've selected:

"The First Day"
- Repetition of "This is my mother," because it's a distinct writing choice that clearly indicates some intent. Jones goes beyond just "My mother said," and introduces every line of the mother's dialogue not only as something she says, but something she is. 

- "I know almost all of her looks, but this one is brand new to me." I think this line could be zeroed in on and broadened to the rest of the story to develop both the character of the mother - why is this look unfamiliar? What clues does the story give us as to what this look might be exactly? Why does it stand out so much? - as well as the relationship between the mother and the daughter, a relationship I'd like to examine because it's two women relating to each other without so much as a mention of a man in the relationship, and I appreciate that the story is written so that we don't need to know anything about the father to understand and analyze this family dynamic. There aren't any missing pieces leaving us to wonder where he is or if something happened to him.

"The Trespasser"
- Second paragraph on page 2 - "The trespasser read and reread the notebook.... looks too long" because this is the most we've seen two female characters of the same age group (roughly) relate to each other in any story we've read so far and they never even meet each other let alone speak with one another so I'm clinging to what I can get.

- "Nobody has ever burned her face with a cigarette, and she has never burned her own arms with cigarettes just to remember how terrible it feels." Obviously even just on the surface this is a very striking statement, but it also reveals and extremely profound characterization of the trespasser, who, like pretty much every female character we read about, of course doesn't have a name.  I would think that this girl would not need to inflict pain upon herself to make her feel something, that her addiction and her grotesque lifestyle would be pain enough, since often self harm is a form of release from those who can't feel anything at all. I know almost nothing about meth addiction, so maybe numbness is in fact a side effect, or maybe this girl is experiencing psychological trauma that I can't even begin to analyze, even being a person fairly comfortable with the psychology of self harm.

The Student

"The Student" by Anton Chekhov is the third person narrative of a narcissistic 22-year old seminary student, referred to once by name, Ivan, and throughout the rest of the story, as "the student." It's Good Friday and so there's no cooking in his house, so he goes over to the house of an old woman named Vasilisa, and her daughter, Lukerya. The student tells them a very long biblical story of Peter and his loyalty to Jesus, the entire time relating Peter to himself. This causes an emotional response from Vasilisa, who begins to cry, which the student takes to mean that she relates somehow to the story. This point is not developed in any way whatsoever, and the story ends with the student looking out at the sunset, thinking about how great his life is.

The moments of note in this story occur for the most part while the student is telling the story of Peter. However, when he first encounters Vasilisa, the first thing she says to him is, "I didn't recognize you. God bless you. You will be a rich man" (Chekhov, 264). This quote introduces the idea that the student has probably had a pretty easy life, which we can already gather from his attitude, as I will develop later. He seems very well-respected, if not venerated, by the community in which he lives, based on this interaction, which provides some insight into his character.

While the student is telling his biblical tale, he takes pause at several points to include himself in the narrative. He begins the story because he makes a really loose connection to the way that he himself is warming himself by the fire, "In the same way Peter the apostle warmed himself by a fire on a cold night." He then proceeds to forcibly insert himself into the story at several other points. When recounting the part of the story where Jesus is being questioned, the student mentions, "Peter stood by the fire with [the servants] and also warmed himself, as I'm doing now" (Chekhov, 265). As well as inserting, "I picture it" (Chekhov, 265), demonstrating his inability to remove himself from the story, and the emotional response he receives from Vasilisa only confirms his confidence in his storytelling, a feat upon which he commenced for no particular reason other than I suppose to get warmth and maybe food on a day in which he was cold and hungry because he's extremely spoiled.