Fiction Reading Responses

“Where are you Going? Where Have you Been?

Joyce Carol Oates

Unlike the other stories that I have read in the Seagull Reader, I forgot to read the introduction/background paragraph that precedes each story before reading Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” As a result, I missed the fact that the story was inspired by the Life magazine article on the serial killer, the “Pied Piper of Tuscon.” As the story developed, the creepiness of Arnold Friend who is after Connie certainly caught me off guard. At certain points in the story, I had to stop and put down the book, in order to have a momentary break from the eerie suspense.

The most critical element of the short story is the dialogue. The interactions between Connie and Arnold Friend seemed so natural that they created a vivid imagination in my mind of the dialogue going back and forth. “’What’re you thinking about? Huh?’ Arnold Friend demanded. ‘Not worried about your hair blowing around in the car, are you?’/’No’/’Think I maybe can’t drive good?’” The dialogue between the two characters dictates all the action and suspense in the story. The persistence and irratibility of Arnold Friend can be sense in his voice as the conversation continues on. As his patience begins to wither, and his tone becomes more demanding, the suspense begins to climax. From my experiences as a reader, I cannot say that I have experienced a more terrifying dialogue than the conversation between Connie and Arnold Friend.

“Yes. I’m your lover. You don’t know what that is but you will…I’m always nice at first, the first time. I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me and you’ll love me—‘/’Shut up! You’re crazy!’ Connie said.

The fact that the suspense is tied to the direction of the conversation creates this intense scene where each subsequent line from Arnold Friend leads to a larger, looming sense of hopelessness and fear. It drives the pace of the story to a gritting halt. The observations that are interspersed throughout the dialogue enhance the dialogue as they foreshadow the eeriness surrounding Friend. “He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light.” These details as well as the overall digression of the dialogue into Arnold Friend attacking Connie creates a frightful read.

Reading Response #2

A&P by John Updike

My fascination with A&P is derived from the point of view in which the story is told. While the actual explicit events that take place in the story are limited to just the half-naked girls shopping at the A&P and Sammy’s dispute with his boss and his subsequent decision to quit, the story implicitly discusses the clash of Middle-class, conservative American values. Sammy seems to be stuck in a limbo of sort, between his parent’s expectations and the social norms of his small town and his own ambitions or rather, boredom. The small-town setting of the story, which Sammy watches from his cashier’s counter is described well by Updike.

“…We’re right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices…It’s not as if we are on the Cape; we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town haven’t seen the ocean for twenty years.”

Updike’s setting seems to represent small town, conservative America, which ends up being a point of conflict with the narrator. Sammy who is a young adult, works at A&P to possibly satisfy the wishes of his parents. This is conveyed through Sammy’s boredom with his routine job of ringing up customer’s purchases and when his boss tells him after quitting, “you don’t want to do this you Mom and Dad.” Sammy is probably a member of the baby-boomer era, that is experiencing confusion and frustration over the generational gap between him and his parents, as well as the town itself. While he sides with his parent’s encouragement in working at the grocery store, the bathing-suit clad females that browse the store’s items inspire his momentary, youthful pride. “She lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute.” Sammy is in awe over the girl’s presence for much of the story. Updike creates a certain juxtaposition between the “promiscuous” girls and the A&P grocery store.

“You know it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A&P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over our checker-board green-and-cream rubber-tile floor. “

From Sammy’s perspective, this leads to a tug-of-war in his head over his allegiance to his youthfulness and his loyalty towards his parents. Ultimately, it is the seductiveness of the young girls, or rather, the seductiveness of his generation to quit his job and disobey others’ expectations of him. The brilliance of the story is evident in how, through Sammy’s point-of-view as the narrator, Updike is able to comment on a serious social conflict experienced by the youth in Middle class America in just a short sequence of events at the grocery store.

The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien

First off, I had read the short story in addition to the entire semi-fictional novel, The Things They Carried, in a high school English class. Reading the short story alone was interesting because certain aspects or characteristics that are emphasized in the first chapter, are less obvious when reading the novel in its entirety. I enjoyed the short story because I thought that O’ Brien was able to avoid the clichés of war stories with his focus on the actual objects that the soldiers carried. This central theme in the short story is important as it depicts the soldiers’ experiences without merely telling the reader their experiences. I have always been told by English teachers to show not tell when writing about event and O’ Brien does this with his characters and the things they carried. “Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed twenty-three pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded.” Instead of simply saying that the troop was always ready for conflict with their guns cocked and loaded, he shows the ready this characteristic through the weight of their loaded guns.

The short story is devoid of any political grievances on the part of the soldiers. To me this seems realistic in the sense that the number one thing that soldiers are concerned with is the gear that they have to carry, not the president or the reason they were over there in the first place. For a war that was remembered for being so controversial, this characteristic of the story allows it to avoid the clichés that might be present in other Vietnam war stories and film. The second paragraph is simply a list of many of the objects that they carried around. “P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent…” This sets the thematic tone right away, which is focused on the burdens placed on the soldiers via all the things that they carry around with them. “They were called legs or grunts. To carry something was to “hump” it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, “to hump” meant “to walk,” or “to march,” but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.” I really like this line because it depicts the weight that they are forced to carry in a sub-human way. The fact that they refer to themselves as grunts who hump loads of equipment everywhere is an anti-war statement as it presents the daily life, or the routine of the soldiers in an inhumane light.

In addition, O’ Brien seamlessly transitions from intangible to tangible object when describing the weight that the soldiers hump around. “Henry Dobbins carried hi girlfriend’s pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a comforter. They all carried ghosts…” “The carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried common secret of cowardice barely restrained…” This was an important aspect of the story because it depicts the emotional struggles of war. I liked how he characterizes these intangibles as having their own weight as it shows the amount of pressure and stress that the soldiers were under.