A&P by john updike

This short story was written very informally that you feel as though you are having a conversation with the narrator. What I found very interesting while reading it is the attention to little detail, especially when describing the girls and their character. It was almost creepy to me how he noticed so many little details about the girls, and there was also some sexual attraction that could be sensed from the descriptions. It is a mundane story, girls come in wearing a bikini to a store to pick up stuff, but the way it is written, and narrated in a first person enables us to know more about the girls character, as well as the other cashier and the manager, while also learning a great deal about the narrator himself.

A & P

I love Updike's description of the way the third girl walks. He pays attention to the small details and this works to help bring the character to life. The reader is able to see this stuck up girl who thinks very highly of herself simply through a description of her feet as she walks. Updike characterizes this girl throughout the entire piece by describing her actions with great detail. He also describes specific parts of her physical appearance which work to show us her character. For example he describes how she wears her bathing suit with the straps pushed off of her shoulders. On the other hand Updike characterizes the main character through his speech. When the main character says that he quits and explains why the reader can see that he is not a very rational person.

Tone in A&P by Updike

A&P reads like a long monologue of an overgrown adolescent, and this tone is probably the element that makes the story logical and make the character come to life to me. At the beginning, I didn't realize that the protagonist/narrator was just a boy. He sounded, or pretended to sound older, almost detaching himself from any personal feelings from the three girls. He has a mix of judgment and admiration for "queenie," which elevates through every one of his descriptions of her. And at the end, when he decides to quit his job and the conversation with his boss finally implies that he is much younger than his tone at the beginning seems to suggest, the story comes together really nicely for me. From what I can see, Sammy comes in two parts - the old-sounding judgmental know-it-all who thinks everyone is silly and hilarious and the adolescent boy who might have a crush on the girl in her bathing suit. The resolution of the story becomes clear precisely because the adolescent boy in him has won over the other part. This goes well with the image of him stubbornly deciding to quit his job just to prove a point to his manager and thus making the story much more logical.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'connor

This story has a mixture of humor and dark events. It starts off by getting the reader to  understand the dynamics of this family. The grandmother appears to be an awful mother-in-law as she can't even address her daughter-in-law by name. The children seem to be a little spoiled, and the dad seems to have resigned from trying to control the people around him. Their road trip seems normal, and the accident unfortunate. The drama begins when the car full of the convicts pulls up. At first you think the men will help them, or at least just let them be, but the author takes us through a series of increasingly shocking but realistic events. The fact that the entire family including a baby and grandmother are shot in cold-blood murder is awful, and at the end of the story the reader is left  with anger at the grandmother because it seems like it is thanks to her mouth that the entire family dies. One can only imagine how the dead bodies will be found in such a secluded part of the forest.

In Response to "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

I absolutely love the moment of realization in a story, when the author gives that final cue you need to realize what he/she has been keeping from you until now.  In this story, that moment of realization happened for me just after the grandma says she recognized the man, but didn't know where she recognized him from.  In this story, that moment of realization was immediately followed by dread and fear.  When a character that the reader (me, in this case) has barely met evokes such a reaction, the author has definitely done something right.  I think the fact that I knew so little about the Misfit before his encounter with this family is what made him scarier.  I had no idea if he was going to actually fix the car or shoot them all at any moment.  My worries were proven right when he shot the grandma three times for touching his shoulder on page 1212.  The manner in which he has the rest of the family killed is equally chilling.  The point of view prohibits the reader from seeing what exactly is going on in the woods, which allows the reader's imagination to run wild.  Neither the grandma, nor the Misfit seem very concerned with the shots fired in the trees and this made it even less clear what precisely was going on.  I still had a small piece of hope that the family might be alive until the Misfit shot the grandma.  Until this moment, the reader is left to imagine what horrible fates may or may not have befallen the family already, and what may happen to the grandma next.  In this way, O'Connor does a marvelous job of feeding on one of our greatest fears" fear of the unknown.

"A Good Man is Hard to FInd" is creepier the second time

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Conner was very disturbing for me to read, but I found it to be even more so the second time I read it.  I think this happened because the first time around, there were a few things mentioned that I though were a little off, but the second time through, they hold intense moments of foreshadowing what was to come at the end of the piece.   For instance, it is mentioned that "they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890" (617).  The first time, I thought this sounded like a police report sort of way to write out details.  Then I read that it was the grandmother who wrote this information down (617) and just kept reading, thinking it was odd and that maybe something bad was going to happen.  But after I knew what actually happens at the end- it really was a crime report!  That was creepy because it was like the grandmother was writing the future, and she was the one to suggest the path that was dangerous, so the irony is there as well as foreshadowing.  Also, it is mentioned that the grandmother thinks " in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady" because of the 'feminine'  way she was dressed (617).  At first, I read this as the woman being vain and the stereotype of an old-fashioned lady who always wanted to keep up her appearances.  The second time- foreshadowing! In a really gruesome way, too. 
In another thought, I strongly disliked the characters.  The older children are rude, and make stuck-up remarks about things like Tennessee being "' a hillbilly dumping ground"' and that the girl "'wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this [the restaurant/house] for a million bucks!"' (619).  Snobby!  The author did a good job of portraying these kids as mean through use of their dialogue. I also do not appreciate the grandmother's actions.  She seems selfish and unreliable by the end of the story.  At first, I thought she may be a nice person, one who even amidst a rude family still wanted to do things like tell stories and make jokes (as on 618).  But when the criminals catch them, the woman really seems to just look out for herself instead of trying to save her family (though such a horrible situation, who knows how one would react).  The woman pleads with the terrible man, that he is "a good man" and so on and shouldn't kill her (623).  Through use of dialogue, the author, rather than portraying the woman as cunning in her attempts to escape death, shows the woman to be frantic.  I think this sense comes from the repetition often occurring in the woman's speech (623-626).  The end was confusing to me.  I hated the criminals, and it disturbs me to think about them too much, because the ring-leader is too weird in the things he says- it was ambiguous and creepy (623-627).  The whole story was overall very disturbing.

Light Writing and Dark Happenings in A Good Man is Hard to Find

At the beginning of A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor I felt prepared for a juvenile story. The writing style is child-like in nature as is its protagonist, the old lady. As I was reading it I noticed very simple sentence structure, a basic vocabulary, and scarce use of commas. Everything sounded so plain that I expected maybe some cute hijinks to happen but nothing too serious. But lo, the power of understatement I was about to realize. 

The antics of the old lady in the beginning are put together with the care and gentle insult of a tale about a dear old family member. As I read through the story I couldn't help but smile at the quirky details that made me feel for the woman. I mean, for God's sake, she stows her cat away in a basket for their family road trip...this is comedic insanity. Her rationale is laughable too--trying to convince her son to travel to another state by mentioning a bandit supposedly on his way towards the one they plan to visit? 

The story begins to show its darker side at the car crash. More specifically, when the old lady begins to have doubt. For the first time she becomes embarrassed about her actions, what people are going to think about her, and this is when the whole world goes off kilter. The cat's kicked, latches itself to her son who is driving, the car flips, the mother is thrown out of the car with the baby, on and on. 

To make matters worse, the grandmother's skewed logic rings true in a cruel twist of fate--they meet the notorious Misfit. The story becomes heavily dialogue based and we are no longer in the realm of nostalgic stories and memories--we've reached the present where nothing is fixed. The Misfit plays a perfect Colonel-Kurtz-mixed-with-Batman's-Joker villain. He wonderfully plays off of the old lady's old-school racism at times, for instance remarking "Nome, I ain't a good man...but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters". Later on in his monologue he also shines through his simple, straightforward rebellion that seemed so radical through others' mouths: "I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it". 

Tying the story off with the murder of an entire family was never an option in my mind at the beginning of the story. And through this simple tone I find the story becomes even more haunting. Good job, ol' Flanny boy. 

A & P by John Updike

When I first read the short story, I thought that this will be a story about a teenage admiration of a late adolescent (the protagonist, Sammy) and one of the three girls. After reading on, I could hardly decide. The protagonist's decision to resign from his cashier job at A & P was rather silly, but the readers were not directly introduced to his reasons behind making this decision. Even though the readers were brought into every bit of Sammy's thoughts of the three girls and his colleagues, this rather main point of his decision-making was not explicitly portrayed. While this omission intoduced ambiguity, which was rather annoying, it also indirectly characterized Sammy. As a 19-year-old teenage boy, he was easily distracted by the entrance of three girls in bathing suits, rather impetuous at his decision to resign without a plan and the portrayal of his strong ego at not correcting himself after he realized that the decision that he made out of a whim was a mistake. He was also rather confident as he thought that he could impress the girls by 'standing up' for them. He was rather naive to think that beauty and youth could triumph everything else, which he felt so strongly about that he voiced his resignation once that thought crossed his mind. However, like most teenagers, he finally managed to take an action and stood up for his thoughts rather than being a sarcastic observer that he always was, although his action was a rather wrong one.

All in all, even though the whole story is very real, there is a sense of oddity and irrationality in this story, which ironically parallels with reality, where the oddest yet most wonderful mistakes are often made.

Response to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

 This story by Flannery O’Connor, was at times very difficult for me to connect to, and at other times a very emotional read for me. The extreme violence, though difficult to read, strangely was not the part of the story that most affected me emotionally. Perhaps it was because O’Connor’s methods of having much of the violence occur out of sight made the extremity of the situation even more challenging to absorb, or perhaps not. Regardless, it was the instances of the grandmother’s forgetfulness and vulnerability, the instances of her being unguarded that made me feel the most upset, the most sympathetic, and the most angry. At one point, O’Connor writes, “a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner” (1206). In this moment, when the grandmother realizes she has led the family down the wrong road, that the house she had convinced them to go look at was in another state, I felt her shame and discomfort, felt the reversal of her role from parent to child with her son as she knew she would be chastised and that he was already impatient. What is even worse is that her response leads to the accident, which causes such a devastating end. The randomness of the story is not only in the violence, but in the flawed workings of the grandmother’s mind, the workings that lead her and her family down just the wrong road into the path of violent criminals. Similarly, it is the grandmother’s revelation upon first coming into contact with the men, her exclamation of, “You’re The Misfit!” that seals her family’s fate (1208). In her recognition of the men, she makes it impossible for her family to be let go.  It is the grandmother’s mistakes that lead her family to their end, and for me, that was the part of O’Connor’s story that was the most difficult to read, the part that – despite the gruesome violence – left me most unsettled and upset, and wishing for the ability to rewind.

Reflection on Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Even after reading Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” a couple of times I struggle to discriminate the exact emotions that it triggers in me. Not only does O’Connor put forward a violent and harsh depiction of life, but through the grandmother's character she also challenges what it means to find redemption and salvation. While this short story is full of conflicts, ironies and paradoxes, the ultimate irony is that the grandmother, a person who perceives herself as a superior and righteous person, seen as she says “in my time… children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then,” finds clarity and salvation through the “Misfit,” a person viewed by society as an unmoral “criminal.” 

While the grandmother thinks of herself as better than those around her, both on a material and spiritual level, both her behaviour and dialogue capture a profound sense of hypocrisy. She is critical and judgmental of those around her, yet lives oblivious to her own misgivings including not only lying about the “secret-panel” in the house but also being dishonest as she fails to admit that she mistook the location of the house that “was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.” But what really struck me about her hypocrisy was her selfishness towards the end of the story where while she says “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” multiple times, she never tries to save her family and actually seems completely unaware that they are being killed.

The Sadism in a "Good Samaritan" Nature

William Carlos William's short story The Use of Force quite a striking piece. The work is narrated by a doctor during an earlier time period who is on a house call and trying to figure out if a little girl has diptheria or not. However, the choice of an internal monologue presents the reader with a darker side to this medical professional's nature. 

While at the beginning everything seems normal the tone becomes increasingly sadistic throughout the story. The doctor, once seemingly annoyed, begins to order and take pleasure in the control over this little girl: he angers at her father's reluctance to hurt her while holding her, calls for her wrists to be held, and brutally forces a wooden spoon in her mouth to open it up. He finally admits "I too had gone beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it".

One could say that the most frightening part of the story is the contrast in between the doctor's appearance and inner pleasure. Just after admitting his pleasure in fighting her he narrates the outward rationale that the parents (and other logical patients) see: "the damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy...others must be protected against her. It is a social necessity...but a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the operatives. One goes on to the end". Now the reader is fully cognizant of the new sexual tension on the doctor's end, a need to lay claim over his prey. The very act of forcing the spoon down her throat illustrates a prime example of penetration, too. And in the end, it is all the better to him that she resists--he wants the fight. 

"The Use of Force" by Williams

"The use of force" is a novel that talks about a doctor that makes a house visit to see a child who is possibly suffering from Diphtheria. The child is unwilling to show her throat for examination, which results in a physical altercation between the doctor and her. What I really enjoyed from the short story is the description of emotions specifically emotions of frustration and fury. It was a first person narration from the point of view of the doctor. His description of the child shifts from a quiet and beautiful child sitting on her fathers lap, to a "brat," which by itself indicates the frustration of the doctor. He keeps fighting her, until her tongue bleeds using a spoon. What weird is that the doctor enjoys forcing the child to open her mouth, because he stoops to her level and tries to assert his power. He stops thinking rationally or being patient. He is frustrated and he seems more driven with emotion. And I found the description of emotions very interesting because it is something we call all relate to and it was written really well.

War by Luigi Pirandello

This is a heart-wrenching story that gives perspective into the characters and lives of people affected by war. The author begins by describing the woman and man entering the vehicle, taking care to bring their physical and emotionally appearance to light. The dialogue amongst the passengers further shows the inner conflict within each person, and the conflict amongst themselves. The purpose to child-bearing is questioned, and allegiance to their country is no longer clear. The man who lost his son tries to be strong but this makes him appear to be in a phase of denial. The author does an excellent job in showing the distraught condition of the passengers through their physical appearance and dialogue.

"War" by Luigi Pirandello

What I love about this story is how well Pirandello is able to characterize the husband and wife in just a few short pages. We get a good idea of who they are simply from the few sentences describing their physical appearances at the beginning of the story. Even though the wife never actually speaks the verbs Pirandello chooses to use when describing her actions work perfectly to show us her personality. We see how torn up she is about her son leaving and at the same time we see that she understands the pain that the other people on the train are going through and wishes that her husband would simply stop talking. Her husband on the other hand is greatly characterized through his words. He truly believes that his son going off to war is worse than anyone else's child going off to war. He keeps trying to get the others to understand this, even long after they have all explained to him what is so terrible about their situations.

Characters in "The Use of Force," by William Carlos Williams

“The Use of Force,”   by William Carlos Williams

  Williams’ use of description is well done in this short story.   For such a short story I felt as if I came to know each of the characters.  The doctor is the power figure who exerts his power by giving orders.   He gives orders to the father, “Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists.”  He gives orders to the mother, “Get me a smooth-handled spoon of some sort, I told the mother.”  He eventually has to exert his power with the child, “In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child’s neck and jaws.  I forced the heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till she gagged.” 

The parents of Mathilda who seem to be fearful of being judged by the doctor and who at the same time are distrustful of him, “I could see that they were all very nervous, eyeing me up and down distrustfully.” It seems that they are feeling that the doctor may think that they have been neglectful concerning the child’s health so the father asserts, “My wife has given her things, you know, like people do, but it don’t do no good.”  The nervousness of the parents can be felt in the way that Williams describes their interactions with the doctor.

There is Mathilda, the sick and frightened child who insists on hiding the fact that she has a sore throat from her parents and from the doctor.  She puts up a fight to protect her secret.  But in the end her secret is revealed, “And there it was—both tonsils covered with membrane.  She had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret.”  For a little girl Mathilda put a lot of thought into hiding and keeping a secret from the adults involved. 

I enjoyed reading the story and being in anticipation of the ending.  It was not obvious that the doctor would be able to get Mathilda cooperate or not.  The use of force was necessary to save the life of the child.  A great story with a happy ending.

On War by Luigi Pirandello

This story is a classic example of why a strong title can make a story flow perfectly. The internal conflict of the mother who lost her only son to the Country juxtaposed with the "fat man with bad teeth's " realization that his son is in fact dead was established perfectly through the title. Both characters were experiencing an internal war from the lost of their sons. It was interesting to see the characterization of both the man with the bad teeth and the woman who sat quietly in the corner listening because their common connection was their pain. Each of the other characters were in a sense disillusioned by pride of winning an argument of who had the most love for their son, and not displaying hurt and pain. The man and women, however were speaking from a place of pain, and were the only ones who would allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to publicly display that pain. The ending really struck me as powerful because of the agency that Priandello allowed the woman to have. He wrote this piece in 1934, a time period where women were not really allowed to speak out, let alone bring a man to tears.

Diction and Irony in "The Use of Force" by William Carlos Williams

The first thing I noticed about this piece was the diction.  Williams does not use quotation marks to indicate dialogue, which gives his piece the feel of one person telling a story to another person or group of people.  He also really doesn't need quotation marks as it's very clear who is talking when.  He makes that clear by regularly reminding us of who is speaking.

The other thing that struck me about this piece was the use of dramatic irony.  The three-year-old doesn't tell anyone that her throat is sore.  That would be quite unusual for a three-year-old, especially one who is very sick.  Three-year-olds aren't the best at keeping secrets or knowing what they should or shouldn't say.  Somehow, this one knows that she doesn't want to have diphtheria.  She has probably seen someone in her family die of diphtheria and knows that the way it begins is that they let a doctor look at their throat and then some time later, they die.  This is a good example of dramatic irony because life and death is at stake and the little girl has it totally wrong.  The doctor isn't the one who will cause her demise but the only one who can potentially save her, yet she is fighting him with everything she's got.

The Use of Force

The Use of Force starts with a character we immediately are told is a doctor, and the fact that this doctor narrates (and perhaps also that a doctor would be expected to be proper and responsible) meant when the parents eyed him 'up and down distrustfully' I wrote off their concern and sided immediately with the doctor, though by the end of the story I wonder if they'd picked up on something odd about his character! The doctor has strange relationship to the patient - 'I had fallen in love with the savage brat', 'it was a pleasure to attack her' and this direct access to his thoughts mean we see he battles himself as much as her & her half-compliant parents in trying to obtain the swab - convincing himself and the parents it is all in the name of the child's health, and trying to appear rational and restrained while we see he is whipped up in enjoyment of the violence. 

The child's mutism until halfway through the story invites the question of her motivation in not allowing a simple procedure - is she just scared of the instrument or the doctor? After all the frantic shrieking and splintering and bleeding and assault in second half, with the fear that the rising tension might result in serious harm to the girl, the reveal is an odd kind of calm - the doctor finally sees what he was looking for, but it was not what he wanted to see, and could well be fatal for her. I finally discover the girl's motivation is more complex than I'd expected, and 'tears of defeat blinded her eyes' works so well as the last sentence: from the experience of crying as a release of tension, to the association of 'defeat' with finality, to her eyes blinding with tears as a filmic vision of the scene dissolving to black.

Punctuation in "Use of Force" by W.C. Williams

     In Williams' short story, "The Use of Force,"  I was trying to figure out why I thought everything felt so real about it.  I think it was partially because the lack of quotation marks, and the fact that dialogue did not occur each on its own line.  I think this style made the writing seem more like a stream of thought, rather than very structured and calculated language.  By the end of the story, I felt like I knew the doctor, because I had been exposed to his private thoughts as well as his actions in one stream, so to say.  For example, on page 807 we read, "Well, I said, suppose we take a look at the throat first.  I smiled in my best professional manner and asking for the child's first name I said, come on, Mathilda, open your mouth and let's take a look at your throat."  In this manner of writing, we as readers see what the doctor is doing versus what he is thinking at the same time, which I think creates a more "3D" character.   Also, we know the doctor felt he needed to find out if the child was sick for everyone's sake, but we also hear that for the doctor "It was a pleasure to attack her" (808).  What a contrast!  I think maybe the doctor is getting angry because he had already "seen at least two children lying dead in a bed of neglect" (808), which is a statement that not only creates a sense of urgency through the rhythm of it, but shows the reader why the doctor is getting almost panicked in a way.   Seeing the doctor contrast harsh words to describe the sick child such as "little brat" (808), and describing that "she had fought valiantly" to hide her sickness (809) made me think that the doctor was imposing bad descriptors on the child to distance himself from the pain resulting from finding her with the deathly sickness.  The story made me feel hopeless especially when I read the ending line of "tears of defeat blinded her eyes" (809) because though the reader never finds out what happens to any character in the story, we can guess by the word choice that it may be too late for the girl.

Reversal of Expectations and Characterization in "War" by Luigi Pirandello

Probably the greatest success that Pirandello achieved with "War" is the fact that two main characters addressed in this story have come alive so spectacularly. By the end of this short story, the man with the dead son and the woman with the enlisted son have become distinctive characters, even though they share the same pain and emotional turmoil brought about by war. The fact that they are not mere caricatures of soldiers' parents comes directly from the two reversals of expectations - one experienced by the mother and the other experienced by the father who lost his son.

The first reversal, for me, was not as immediately obvious during the first time I read this story. However, the second time around, when I recognized the opposite directions of the mother's and the father's emotional and (almost) ideological shifts, not only did this reversal become more coherent but it also added to the three-dimensionality of the mother's characterization. We met her on page 1260 as a caricature of a mourning mother: "a bulky woman in deep mourning was hoisted in- almost like a shapeless bundle." With the shift of the story towards her stream-of-consciousness musing and her movements on page 1262, ("the words of the traveler amazed and almost stunned her" and "she lifted her head, she bent over from her corner trying to listen with great attention...") I felt a reversal of expectation. The reason for this is the fact that generally, grief consumes us and does not let us listen to rationales, especially one as ideologically driven as given by the "fat man," father of the dead soldier. This gave me a much clearer view of the mother as a real person with a clear mind and not just a mother overwhelmed by grief.

The second reversal of expectation comes forward with a doubling effect on both the father and the mother as characters. For the mother, this is noted explicitly in a short paragraph: "just as if she had hearted nothing of what had been said and almost as if waking up from a dream" (1262) This, on the wake of her ideological epiphany earlier, (knowing that she needs to "rise up to the same height of those fathers and mothers willing to resign themselves") reverts her back onto her grief. However, by this point, this just serves to make her more three-dimensional and not to rebuild her as a caricature as this flash of emotion adds to the conflict within her between ideology for the greater good of the nation and her fear and grief for her child. The effect of this reversal of expectation on the characterization of the father, however, is even more prominent. Before, I viewed him as an ideologically driven man and, even worse, a caricature of government propaganda. However, as noted in the many blog posts before mine, the simple question of the mother, "Then… is your son really dead?" has brought about the outbreak of emotions in this man and "his face contracted, became horribly distorted […] he snatched in haste a handkerchief from his pocket and […] broke into harrowing, heart-rending, uncontrollable sobs." This outbreak of overwhelming emotions is what brings him to life as a character with all-out emotional reactions to the death of his son, void of any trace of his previous ideologically driven rationalization. 

Thus, with two well-placed reversals of readers' expectations in a 3-page story, Pirandello has brought two characters so spectacularly to life that they have made the wounds of war cut deeply into readers' minds and made us sympathize with not just the two main characters, but anyone who has been forced into a situation similar to theirs.

In Response to "The Use of Force" by William Williams

The short story"The Use of Force" by William Carlos Williams provides an interesting take on authority in society.  At first, my preconceived ideas about the gentleness that pediatricians treat their child patients with were still intact.  This notion was helped along by the description the doctor gives of the child as an "unusually attractive little thing" with "magnificent blonde hair" (1590), and by the way he resents the parent's suggestion that he might be there to hurt the child (1591).  My misconceptions about his character lasted all the way until he admits that he "had grown furious" at the child (1592).  Up until this point, the so-called use of force had only been for the child's benefit, to get a diagnosis, but at this moment, the motive for the use of force becomes two-fold: for the child's benefit and for the doctor's pleasure.  The doctor is now trying to force the child's mouth open for the pleasure of overpowering the child as much as for her own good.  He takes pleasure in attacking the child, but since he is the only one who knows this, his behavior is still acceptable.  Because he holds a position of authority, he is allowed to continue his aggressive attack on the child.  Imagine if any other person but a doctor had tried to do that, and how different the reaction of the parents would have been.  However, because they trust the doctor to do his job, they are willing to let him force their daughters mouth open while is screaming and bleeding, again, only because he holds a position of authority in this situation.  There is an ironic moment when the mother asks the screaming girl "Aren't you ashamed to act like that in front of a doctor?" (1592).  However, the real shame lies in the doctor's behavior towards his patient to whom he is supposed to do no harm.  I was very surprised that the story ended with the child's feelings and not the doctor's.  Is he triumphant that he has reduced her to "tears of defeat" or does he regret his use of force (1593)?  I think the message that Williams conveys with this story is that authority allows the use of force to change from a selfless desire to help another to the selfish desire to conquer another without consequence.

Reflection on “War” by Luigi Pirandello

 If I had to describe how this short story made me feel in one word I would say surprised—surprised by the confrontational conversation that takes place inside the “stuffy and smoky second-class carriage,” surprised by the competitive dynamic between the characters as they try to quantify each others losses, surprised by how relatable the feelings of loss were to me even though I have never come close to experiencing that level of pain, surprised by how real the setting felt despite it being so foreign, and surprised by how despite the strange behaviour of the parents, their behaviour felt simultaneously oddly familiar. It was only at the end when Pirandello writes “and, to the amazement of everyone, [he] broke into harrowing, heart-rendering, uncontrollable sobs,” did I realise why this was—“War” is ultimately a reflection on the human condition. Pirandello’s view of human nature is a sad and lonely one. Through his depiction of the scene in the carriage, as parents argue who is in the worst position, Pirandello shines a light on our inherently competitive nature. The loss of their sons, something that should bring these strangers together, ultimately tears them apart. Pirandello confronted me with the sad reality that we are often blind to our common humanity because our instincts have become to focus on our differences as opposed to our similarities. It feels strange to describe the final moment in this short story as beautiful but that is what it is. For in this moment where the man breaks down, “to the amazement of everyone,” they are reminded not only of their commonality, but also that no cause, no justification, no duty to a "country" will make the loss of a child any less heart breaking and profoundly painful, and that is a sentiment they can all share.

Response to "The Use of Force" by William C. Williams

The Doctor and The Use Of Force

The Doctor in this story by W.C. Williams is a peculiar character. Initially I thought that he was just a doctor checking on a patient because this is his job, I did not have any particular sense of his character and I did not suspect that anything was out of the ordinary. The family was silent and worried as he came to their house and were waiting for him in the kitchen where the father was holding the girl, Mathilda. 

The Doctor talks about the girl as a child for "advertising leaflets" and "unusually attractive thing". He also compares her to a "heifer". It's really disturbing that an old man describes a child this way, but I let this go because I thought "ok, that could just be an external description without anything more there". But then things become weird.

As the Doctor proceeds to the examination and mainly due to the child's refusal to receive the exam and the dreadful sense of fear that the implication of diphtheria's infections created a tense situation between the characters. The Doctor starts saying things like "I had already fallen in love with the savage brat", "I wanted to kill him [the father]", "It was a pleasure to attack her". These ambiguous statements make the relationship of the Doctor and the patient really complicated. 

The Doctor is clearly charged with power through his position as the authority figure in the room. The parents are scared of the decease and are ready to do everything for their child. The Doctor is their only solution and in their eyes he is better. At this point we should note that this is a first person account of the events. Hence the Doctor is aware of the impact that his presence has in the room. He uses force to do good. But then he admits that he's enjoying using force. It really complicates things and makes this Short Story extremely interesting. 

When finally the Doctor discovers the girl's "secret" and confirms that she has diphtheria things complicate more through the way that the narrations ends. I don't know what do think about his intentions to use force. Yes, there was a possibility that the girl was sick so the stress to examine her was major, but he took pleasure out of it. When he sees that the girl has mucus in her throat and that she was binding it from her parents and him there's a connotation that the girl knew the implications of her disease so this makes her more than a stubborn and immature child.

It's is really effectively done, especially considering how short the story is. The importance of the disease and the emotions in the room are communicated through the writing. 

"The Use of Force" by William Carlos Williams

The first thing that attracted my attention when I read this short story was the absence of quotation marks. As a result, the dialogue and the narration (which also includes the narration thoughts as this short story was written in the first person's point of view) were not distinguished from one another. This omission of quotation marks created ambiguity. For an example, "Don't call me a nice man to her. I'm here to look at her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it," may be the doctor's thoughts or the continuation of his speech to Mrs. Olson. Even though I could never pinpoint if the phrase was his thought or his speech, I was introduced to his character and how he viewed the situation.

The use of the first person's point of view was advantageous as I could read into the protagonist's thoughts, but it also made the scene unreliable. It was only viewed from the doctor's point of view, making the doctor's character unreliable as well. The whole scene might even be his imagination! If I were to judge the scene with my stereotypical thoughts towards a doctor, I would not have imagined that he would speak or think as he did in the short story. Furthermore, I was not introduced to the insights of the other characters. Even the interpretation of the girl's thoughts were through the doctor's mind!

The doctor's character was very developed in this short story. His character extended beyond the stereotypical all-good doctor. I was introduced to the insight of the protagonist as a doctor. Despite his noble job, he did not like to be called him a "nice man". He separated himself from his work as he smiled in his "most professional manner". Even though the act of treating patients and curing them of their diseases was "nice", he wanted to keep that entirely professionally. Deep inside, he thought, "It was a pleasure to attack her."

Response to “War” by Luigi Pirandello

This short story affected me more dramatically than almost any other that I’ve read in the class so far. Strangely, I didn’t feel that emotionally connected to the piece in the initial stages of the story, though the content of sons going off to war and parents visiting them for the last time before they do so was obviously serious and heartbreaking. What I found so fascinating about this story’s affect on me was that it coincided directly with the characters’ emotions in the final moment when the wife asked her fellow passenger, “Then… is your son really dead?” (Pirandello 1262). Pirandello had built the tension of the passenger’s emotional breakdown throughout his speech to the other people on the train, highlighting the ways in which his physical appearance contradicted his words. The man states, “because my son, before dying, sent me a message saying that he was dying satisfied at having ended his life in the best way he could have wished. That is why, as you see, I do not even wear mourning…” (1262). Yet just after that Pirandello writes, “He shook his light fawn coat as if to show it; his livid upper lip over his missing teeth was trembling, his eyes were watery and motionless, and soon after he ended with a shrill laugh which might well have been a sob” illustrating that in fact he does grieve, and that all that grief lies just below the surface (1262). When the mother in the story asks him the ultimate question, the grief is triggered and, as Pirandello states, the moment of realization occurs. The man realizes that his son is dead and that no amount of philosophizing can reduce the pain of that. In the moment the man realizes this and crumbles, I felt the sharp pain as well. I was heartbroken when he was, and in a truly masterful feat of Pirandello’s, I was somehow blindsided by it.