POV and Creepy Stories Discussion

Another day, another reading assignment.

In this assignment, I reviewed Point of View! Basically, you have a bunch of different types of narration that can be divided into two subcategories of "Narration from a Nonparticipant" and "Narration from a Participant." From there, you can go more in depth, but the main point is that you're either using third or first person, respectively.

Whether your narrator is a participant or not, they are probably one of three types: innocent, naive, or unreliable. This means that you may not be able to trust your narrator because 1) they don't understand the implications of the story, 2) they have certain beliefs thrust upon them at birth that they have not matured past, or 3) they are "deceptive, self-deceptive, deluded, or deranged." This information is presented as "bad" for the reader, but really I think that the deceptive narrator or the innocent narrator adds a whole new level of interest to the story. With the innocent narrator, you have to think past their actions and come up with why they would do the things they do. With a deceptive narrator, you do almost the same, but at the end you may be surprised to figure out that the narrator has not been entirely truthful. We, as readers, are conditioned to read and accept most things in fiction as truth (for the fictitious world), but when we are presented with a deceptive or innocent narrator it makes the reading experience so much better.

I also agreed with the text saying that third person narration is more trustworthy than first person, as first person presents more of a bias. Although, third person could potentially be deceiving. In Harry Potter, the narration is in third person limited, so Harry is the main focus. Every thought or emotion he has is displayed to us, but so are his perceptions. For example, Harry constantly thinks Snape is wishing him trouble (and at times he is), but a lot of the time he isn't, it's just how Harry perceives it.

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Moving on to character, this was a review also. By now we should know the difference between "flat, round, static, and dynamic" characters and all about the "antihero." However, I did like the paragraph on naming characters, especially the quote, "A character, first of all, is the noise of his name." Naming of characters is so important. If you name a character "John Smith," he will immediately be considered ordinary; however, a character like "Freda Zeggs" would be exotic and unusual. I also liked hearing about how Charles Dickens named his characters and wondered if it was still possible to name so obviously in the literary world today.

The paragraph on motivation was interesting too. I think about character motivation a lot because of the RP group that I'm in. When you write a character for an RP, you usually have a few set values that you try to go off (at first). As you continue to write and develop your character, you can add in little nuisances ("multiple facets" of the character) that make your character unique and not "stock." I find this idea kind of hard to grasp. Not in the sense that I don't understand how motivation works or any that, but kind of the fact that human nature is really confusing and how can you even fathom shoving that into one character? I have realized as I've kept writing for my RP that characters are so much more complicated than the book definition ("an imagined person who inhabits a story") makes them out to be. If you write them well, they are hardly "an imagined person" when you're done with them. You can practically reach out and touch them because of their realness. It kind of reminds me of the saying "I have lived a thousand lives through books." If you write a character well enough, it's almost like the reader can mix up the character's memories with their own. I don't know if you've ever experienced that, but I frequently find myself trying to remember if something had actually happened or if I read it once.

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In "A Rose for Emily," the story is told in first person through a minor character. I believe it's told through a member of the town, but it's a little bit odd because this member of the town knows just about everything. However, this could be more of a retelling after hearing a bunch of things from other members of the town. Kind of like an older person telling gossip to a younger person, as we do see a lot of gossips in the town. The effect of this kind of narration is weird. If we would've seen from Emily's eyes, perhaps we  would've been less creeped out, but probably not. By not seeing from Emily's eyes, we gain no perspective or motivation for why she is doing all the creepy stuff she's doing and WHY HER HOUSE STINKS I MEAN COME ON! Looking in as the casual observer, we only see certain seemingly weird things Emily does. Exhibit A, buying arsenic "to kill rats." Perhaps the police should have maybe, just maybe paid a visit to her lovely home. Especially after that nice man who was her lover disappeared. Overall, the narration leaves the reader guessing why Emily is doing all this weird stuff and then at the end super creeped out because we don't know her motivation for being a scary, old necrophiliac.

In "The Storm," the story is told in third person omniscient, meaning an all-knowing narrator. The effect of this kind of narration is a disconnected kind of air. If it would've been told from one of the character's POV, we 1) wouldn't have seen everything that happened and 2) would have been much more emotional about the situation. Everyone just seemed very calm and composed, and that had the effect of making the actions in the story seem acceptable to the casual reader. The message you get from it with the disconnect is something along the lines of "BE FREE YOU SEXY PEOPLE, NO ONE CARES--especially not your wife," but we would've gotten distinctly different messages if it would've been told from each one of the characters. In fact, we may not have gotten a message at all.  "The Storm" was by far my favorite of the two. I really dislike creepy stories or stories that make me uncomfortable. "The Storm" was more of a, "I'm not sure I agree with you, but at least your story isn't the creepiest thing in the world."

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Foreshadowing is used a lot in "A Rose for Emily." In the first sentence, even, foreshadowing is used. We learn immediately that Emily is dead, which is foreshadowing that at the end we'll find out something about her death. In the next paragraph we learn a bunch of seemingly mundane things about her "stubborn and coquettish" house that should be seen as a metaphor for Emily herself. This is foreshadowing for the character to come, as we only know Emily's name so far. When they go on to mention the thing about her not having taxes, you know that's gonna be a big point. Why else would the mention something so boring? Then they go on to visit her and that is foreshadowing for the fact that they will never visit again based on her behavior. Lastly, we see foreshadowing in the fact that Emily has cut all her hair off after "being sick" and looked like a young girl again. This should warn us that something is wrong with Emily and that "looking like a young girl again" suggests some sort of innocence or lack of regard for morals--meaning mental illness (not to suggest that being mentally ill is a "lack of regard for morals"). The narrator is telling the story from memory, probably, so almost everything is either foreshadowing or "We didn't say this then, only this."

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Setting is literally the most important thing in both stories. Going to the more obvious of the two first, in "The Storm" the setting is important because it allows the mother to commit her infidelity. It also traps the father and son in the market. Additionally, it brings the lover in from the rain. If the storm hadn't happened, the father and son wouldn't have been trapped and the wife wouldn't have had the time to do her thing, along with the fact that the lover wouldn't have come in from the rain.

In "A Rose for Emily," setting is equally important, yet less obvious. The setting needed to be in a closed off, antiquated town in the middle of nowhere for this to work. If it was in a large city in modern times, no one would've known or cared. But, being that it's in the middle of a hot summer in an isolated town that knows everybody's business and has nothing better to do than gossip, we get to hear the telling of Emily's life from the view of the casual gossip. If the gossips didn't care about her, we never would have known about the fact that a new man was in her life or that she bought arsenic at the store. We needed the small town atmosphere or else we wouldn't have the story. We also probably wouldn't have the wonderful comparison of stubborn house to stubborn woman.

Short Fiction and Plot

After being asked to read around twenty pages of a textbook that I had never laid eyes on before and promised itself to be boring and stale, I found myself dreading the reading experience. However, upon actually getting into the physicality of the reading, the textbook was not as dull as I expected. I wanted to read more, unlike the usual where I would get tired of it halfway through a paragraph. The reason, I realized, was because it was actually engaging and even comical at times instead of dry and tedious prose that the writer expects the reader to fall asleep to. I wanted to comment on that immediately because it feels like something that should be noted in a course where we explicitly talk about good and bad styles of writing. 

Upon reading more into the textbook, I did agree with the point that although tales and fables had little decoration, they were still "good reads." This sets forth the idea that even if you only have the bare bones of a story, you still have a story--possibly a good one. When reading short fiction, you must look past the non-decoration and see that it doesn't help the story, but merely distracts the reader. If a shop boy is not described to his full extent and is left instead a "stick figure" of a character, we can look past it to instead see the message of the piece. 

I also learned that the word "tale" is used to tell short stories in bare detail, and that this was because most story tellers told their stories and couldn't elaborate fully on every detail in them. This was particularly interesting to me because I find the tradition of oral history really captivating. It's so enthralling that for years and years we didn't write down stories but merely told them. I wonder how this has influenced story telling and writing in the future? Were stories originally very descriptive but then passed down so many times that they reached their bones before finally being written? Are we basing entire histories off of pieces of work that may or may not be the bones of a once meaty story? These questions are really intriguing to me and I wonder what their answers would be. 

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I reached "Godfather Death" and "A&P" with some trepidation, but mostly it was excitement because all of the previous stories were really interesting. I was also able to compare them to a television show I watch obsessively and I thought that made the whole thing all the more engaging. 

In "A&P," I thought that the protagonist was Sammy because he seemed to be who was telling the story and his emotions were focused on rather than anyone else's. The antagonist would be Sammy's boss, Lengel, who told the girls to leave the grocery store. I picked Lengel because he forced Sammy to make a choice about whether or not he was going to stay and also made the girls promise not to dress that way again.  

The external conflict presented was Lengel forcing the girls to not come back to the store unless they were dressed decently. This is the external conflict because it is physically happening and is some outside force against the characters. The internal conflict was when Sammy had to choose whether or not to quit. This is because it happened inside of our protagonist and caused a conflict. This conflict was preceded by the story's climax: Lengel coming out of his office and questioning the girls, making Sammy think about what he had to do himself. The elements that foreshadowed this event were when the sentence, "Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family thinks it's sad but I don't think it's sad myself," came up. This said that something bad was going to happen but we weren't exactly sure what.

I don't believe Sammy to be any less of a hero for wanting the girls to notice him. If there were no girls in the first place, Sammy probably wouldn't have quit. The girls were a necessary part of the equation (kind of like a constant) and if Sammy needed them to notice him (an extra that we can place off to the side) to carry on with his quitting (the dependent variable), then so be it. 

The character Sammy is portrayed more fully through the use of comedy and real-life thoughts and dialogue. Through this we see some of his emotions and thoughts. With the doctor in "Godfather Death," we only saw the bare surface of a man. However, for that story, this was completely okay. It didn't detract from the overall message at all. With "A&P," if we'd known none of the thoughts or emotions of the character it would have seemed dull and without a message. This displays that different types of short stories must have different approaches taken to get across the right message. 

I don't think that supermarket setting of the story is entirely vital. This story could be in a lot of different places and still have the same effect. The only thing that would possibly have to be adjusted with a change of setting would be Lengel's reason for making the girls leave, and in turn, why Sammy would quit or, in a change of setting, do some other similar thing. Whether or not it is in a supermarket, you'll still get the moral/message. 

The differences in story-telling from the older fiction to "A&P" were very small. The moral/message was in each, but it was harder to find in the newer works. In the older fiction, the story was bare and decoration-less with stick figure characters who only served the purpose of pawn. While in the newer fiction, characters were better described but only because it helped the story move forward. As previously stated, if in "A&P" Sammy had been a stick figure character, the message/moral would not have come across clearly. 

In modern literature, we have writers who carry on the tradition of bare bones writing (Ernest Hemingway) and we have writers who begin anew with complexly described characters and many adjectives (Jane Austen). However, most literature nowadays is more "A&P" style and not just a skimpy story with a simple message. We now have convoluted story lines and messages that are caught up in different messages. While this may seem confusing, I think it just shows how far we as writers have evolved from our original "tales" and stick figure characters used as pawns in our lengthy game of chess. 

Blog #1: Elements of a Story

A story is described as "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment." I find this definition very bland and what someone who had no idea what a story was would say. A story to me is somewhere you can escape to that gives you some sort of adventure or conflict or life lesson. A story is ideas presented to you in a way that you don't notice they're there until the end. A good story changes your way of thinking and makes you want to be better. Writing and storytelling are two crafts that cannot be defined to the narrow "accounts told for entertainment." Stories are something entirely different. They are stars inside of an author's brain that spill onto the paper and become constellations and galaxies that you, the reader, have the pleasure of naming and enjoying. 

The elements of a story that make it "good" are things like symbolism, imagery, character development, world building, story arcs, plot twists, and backstories. Symbolism makes the story more than just words on the page. It takes what could have just been the color yellow in The Great Gatsby and turns it into a clue of corruption. Imagery lets you see what is happening while you are reading. Character development helps you make believable characters so that people can either relate to them or at least enjoy them. World building lets you make organic worlds that are believable and interesting instead of one-dimensional and common. Story arcs and plot twists are essential to any story. Backstories are the highlight of my writing and reading life. They are my essence and my happiness. Backstories (going along with character development) make characters so much more intersting. You can either empathize with them, understand them better, or feel even worse about their situation. For example, learning the back story of Remus Lupin in Harry Potter was one of the saddest events of my recent life. 

The elements of a story that make it "bad" are just the opposite of all of these items. If you have one-dimensional characters in a bland world where your characters do nothing but walk around and have conversations rife with nothing but everyday niceties: you do not have a story. You have a journal, and a fictional one at that. 

When looking over our "syllabus" for this class (that we made last year), I found myself getting a sick feeling in my stomach. What had I gotten myself into? There were so many books and essays and responses that I couldn't quite wrap my head around doing this and also doing another English class. I'm really worried about this, but I hope I can manage it all. 

What I'm looking forward to in this particular unit is the chance to explore how to create such things as: world building, character development, symbolism, backstories, and so forth. I can competently create them now, but I'd like to be able to smoothly do so. I think reading and reflecting on passages will help with this a lot, but I'd also like to possibly listen to speakers on this (on YouTube or in books). I went to a literary conference last summer and I learned a lot more about writing than I thought was possible. While I'm not terrific, I find the more I learn the more I can look back on past work and see that it's getting better. I think working on the basics and the structure of writing will make it easier in the future.