The Littlest Hitler

I really like the development this story goes through.  At first it was slightly whimsical, just about a kid who got himself in a really bad situation.  As the story continued, you got an understanding of his home situation.

His mother left his father, and it doesn't seem like she really cares about her son.  You only hear him talking about his father.  His father seems a little checked out, he has three ovens in their "living room".  The boy says he doesn't like having friends over because of the stoves.  The father doesn't really understand whats appropriate for a kid to be exposed to.  He shows his 9 year old son how to roll a joint.  That's just terrible parenting.

One part that really stood out to me was at the end when the stoves are being compared to one another. One of the stoves is dead, one has embers in it, and the other one has a fire going.  I think this symbolizes the amount of guilt the boy is feeling.  In the beginning he just thinks that he's being a really scary guy for Halloween.  Then, when people start making fun of him, he starts to realize that dressing as Hitler wasn't a good idea.  And then, when he sees the Jewish kids that couldn't go trick-or-treating, he starts to feel really guilty.

One moment of my childhood that kind of reminds me of this story is when I was separated from my family in a mall when I was around two or three.  We were walking through all of the shops that had these huge signs on them, and lots of interesting things in the hallway, and I must have gotten distracted.  I ended up wandering away from the rest of the group after I had seen something I really liked.  I don't remember ever feeling panicked, or even realizing that I had gotten lost.  Eventually my family found me in the Hello Kitty store that had a person dressed in costume.  I had apparently been hugging the dressed up person for at least fifteen minutes.

My parents really love to talk about this story all of the time, and whenever they bring it up I kind of cringe.  I mean, I caused everyone fifteen minutes of complete panic because I got distracted by a giant Hello Kitty.  The worst part of it all is that I never even really liked Hello Kitty, I just really liked giant mascots because they reminded me of Disney World.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

I was pretty confused throughout most of this story.  I found it a little hard to follow at some points.  I think this may have to do with the style the dialogue was written in.  It seemed like the characters were written with an accent.
  
That being said, I really liked the story.  I think it points out a lot of flaws that are common in older ways of thinking.  The grandmother was telling The Misfit that she believed that he came from a good family, so therefore he must be good.  This isn't the case, and we discover that the grandmother saying this was completely ironic, because she was his mother.

The grandmother also told The Misfit to pray to Jesus because that would somehow make him a good person.  I don't think that religion has the power to all of the sudden stop someone from brutally murdering innocent people.  I think that once a person is at the point of holding a gun to their own family not much can change them.

I think that the title plays in to the story because the grandmother kept repeating that she believed The Misfit was a good man.  And in the end he ended up killing six people.  The title kind of talks about how the grandmother has this list of standards that "good men" must fulfill.  And she keeps saying that The Misfit fits almost all of the categories.  Then in the end he kills her so it kind of goes to show that her list is irrelevant.

Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

I thought this story by Joyce Carol Oates was really interesting.  I thought the concept was unusual, a girl leaving her house to go with the "bad guys".  I would think that the logical thing to do would be to stay inside.  I think things in this story really started to go wrong when Connie didn't immediately ignore the guys that came to her door.  If she just stayed quiet in the house, where they couldn't see her they might have left.

I thought the ending was really good, although I wish you found out what actually happened to Connie.  The story kind of just stops when she walks outside.  You kind of get the idea that she probably ends up dead, but I still would have liked for the author to explain what happened.

I was kind of confused as to why she wouldn't just stay in the house.  She doesn't really like her family, she said she wishes her mom was dead, so the fact that she gave up her life for them didn't make a lot of sense to me.  I think the reason she left is more because of all of the things Arnold is saying he can give her.  She knows that he's not actually going to give them to her but after living in her sister's shadow and having her mother disapprove of her she wants out of her house.  She was described as having a head full of daydreams and listening to music and watching movies that were about love.  She just wants to be away from her family who don't really respect her and with someone who loves her.  So when this guy shows up telling her that he'll love her, she knows that he's trouble and it's not going to end well for her, but still goes with him anyways.

The lyrics of Daydreaming by Paramore really remind me of this story.  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/paramore/daydreaming.html

A & P

I think this story says a lot about how girls are viewed by men.  These girls that walk in to the A & P are immediately identified by weight, which seems to be one of the main ways guys categorize girls.  Then the narrator (Sammy) starts talking about how pretty the leader of the girls is.  He doesn't care that she's breaking the store's policy because she's pleasing to look at.  If the girls that walked in were unappealing he probably would have told them to leave.

It sounded like the girls were relatively young, they were described as kids, so it was pretty creepy to have the older guys checking them out.  It was even more messed up that the girls deliberately walked into the store knowing what kind of attention they were going to get.  It seemed desperate. 

I was really surprised by the ending.  It didn't make sense to me that Sammy would just quit his job over his boss telling some girls he just saw for the first time that the way they were dressed was breaking store policy.  He didn't even see the girls at the end so he kind of just threw away his job for no reason.  

My favorite passage was, "All this while, the customers had been showing up with a cart but, you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a paper bag as gently as peeling a peach, not wanting to miss a word."  I liked it because it described the situation perfectly, the people not knowing how to react so they just avoid, and the guys wanting to see as much of the girls as they could.  It really shows how ridiculous this situation is.  The people are described as sheep, and the simile for opening the bag is peeling a peach, which I wasn't even aware were fruits that you peeled.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

I thought that this story by Gabriel García Márquez was a little strange.  I was confused as to what the man with wings was.  At different points of the story he was described as a different thing.  It ranged from an angel to a trick from the devil.  He was kind of reborn in the end, with his wings growing back in.  I'm interested to know what type of world this was set in, because it doesn't seem like ours.  It describes a man with wings who suddenly is 'reborn' and a girl that has the body of a giant spider.

This story spoke a lot towards human nature.  The family took advantage of this winged man.  They kept him in terrible conditions and profited from him staying on their property.  He was described as a captive that the family got rich from.  I also saw some aspects of human nature in how the Father responded to the situation.  He looked to the people in a higher powered position to give him the answers.  I think that people tend to do that a lot in real life.

The story was also about religion.  I found it interesting how the man with wings was considered divine because he matched the description of an angel, but the woman with the body of a spider was just a carnival attraction.  This man could have been like the woman, but since the wise woman and Father said that he was from heaven the people thought that as well.

By the end of the story I'm still wondering where the story takes place (time, city, 'world'), what the man with wings actually is, and what brought about his miraculous recovery.

"How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)"

I think that this story says a lot about how different races are viewed without actually explicitly saying anything about racial divides at all.  It talks about how brown, black, white, and halfie girls all require different tactics to be used while on a date.  I got a general idea of when he was talking about which type of girl, but he rarely referred to them as a color, instead he talked about where they came from.  I found this a little confusing because it was sometimes unclear as to which type of girl he is referring to.  I understood that outsider probably means white or halfie, and that local most likely means brown or black.  I think that this story speaks to race more so than some stories that are strictly about racial divisions.  It's saying that girls of different races all have different standards, and that the lighter their skin color is the higher those standards are.  It's also speaking to how the parents of the girls have different levels of concern.  The parents of the girls that are from out of the neighborhood (lighter skinned) are more concerned with their daughter dating a boy with darker skin.  One of the parts that really stood out to me was when the guy said that if the girl was from the neighborhood you can just take her to a fast food place where as if she's an outsider you should take her to the Mexican restaurant.

The dating advice I would give to someone, however cliched it may be, would be to treat their date with respect, and to be engaged in conversation.  I would tell them to disregard any preconceived ideas of their date that are based off of race, social class or anything of that sort.  I would tell them to remember that they are equal to their date, and that a relationship relies heavily on equality.  Other than that, I would tell them to be themselves and don't forget to smile!

Happy Endings

I really enjoyed Happy Endings.  I  liked how it points out that cliches are over rated, and in the end the ending doesn’t really matter.  I like how it was broken up into different smaller stories, and how each smaller story ends up back at point A.  I think that the last story that talked about the main idea would have made more sense if it wasn't included as a part F.  I thought of it as more of a conclusion.  I really like the idea that you always come back to point A in some way or another.  I don't agree with the author when she says that the plot of a story is just one thing after another and has no meaning.  I think that without a good plot a story isn't captivating enough to be enjoyable.

If I were to add a part it would be:

John and Mary couldn't stand each other.  They've always hated each other, from the day they started the same shift at work.  They often interrupt the building with the sounds of them screaming at each other.  Mary is sure she has never met anyone as vile as John.  And John is positive that he has never met anyone as horrendous as Mary.


But time passes, as it tends to do, and slowly their screaming fades.  Eventually the building is quiet.  Soon enough John asks Mary on a date and it all continues as in A.