Three Stories

Of the three stories I read, the two that I somewhat liked were Ernest Hemingway's, "The Hills like White elepants" and Tobias Wolfe's "Powder".  I thought that the Hemingway story was interesting but it had so many different meanings.  It was just about these to people talking in a cafe.  It reminded me of The Killers, just one setting with just dialogue.  There were so many different meanings that you could take from the stories.  I also think that this would be to hard of a story to act out in class because, first of all there are no girls in our group to play as the girl in the story, also there is a lot of dialect and not much stage directions.

The other story, "Powder", was a good story, mainly because it was a story that everyone experiences in there life at sometime, rebellion.  Its all about a guy going through a road block and the emotional conflicts that the characters go through.  I think that this is a probable story that we can and are doing to act out in class.  There is interesting stuff to do and many ways to do the skit.  Also the dialogue is like normal every day speech and has lines that will be easy to get in character because we wont have to use a certain dialect.

The last story I read was a story by Grace Paley.  I don't even know the name of the story because it just seemed to be an entry of a diary rather than a story.  The book I grabbed was probably not her short stories, but either way I didn't like her writing style. That is all I can really say about her.

Brokeback Mountain

I thought that Brokeback Mountain would have been a good movie and book if they didn't go through all the detail.  I thought that the story was a good idea but then when you would see or read the graphic parts, I felt like it distracted me from the actual movie.  I thought those parts were just hard to go through and be able to continue.  At some parts, I felt like just stop reading.

I thought the movie was easier to watch than the book because in the disturbing scenes you could just look away and start watching when it was over, but for the book you had to read through it.  I thought that the movie was good because at times, I felt pity for the characters.  I thought that the movie did a good job at visualizing some of the things that were hard to comprehend in the short story, for example, the description of all the characters.  While I was reading, I felt it was hard to visualize what the characters looked like.

I liked it how in the movie, they showed you what you don't see in story, like how Jack and Lureen met, instead of jack just telling Ennis the story of how they met.  I also liked how they showed more of Jacks life in the movie than in the original story.  The one thing that I thought was odd though was in the story when Lureen told Ennis that Jack died, she just said that he was fixing a tire off his truck and it exploded and it killed him, and in the movie they explained the tire blowing up as well as showing him getting beat up by some guys.  I feel that that is the only deviation from the story in the movie.

Overall I thought that the movie and story was a good, I liked it but I think it would have been better if it wasn't so graphic.

Raymond Carver Movie

After watching the short story movie of Carver stories, I thought that it was a bit anticlimactic.  The ending didn't really bring things together, it left some questions unanswered and there some parts that didn't have much character development.  There were other parts where things did happen but they weren't explained well enough for one that didn't read the short stories, for example, the helicopters in the beginning were a mystery to me, I had no idea how they factored into the stories and weren't explained very well.

Depiction of the short stories were there, like "Jerry and Molly and Sam" and "A small good thing" were easily seen in the movie and the story ideas were followed quite well.  In the Jerry and molly and sam story-line, the guy left the dog and was having an affair, but in the end he actually gets the dog back and he was a police officer.  In the A small good thing, boy gets hit, goes into a coma then dies, and the parents eat with the baker, but there is also the grandfather that comes and visits, which is not in the original story.  I don't know about the other story-lines though because I did not read them, and judging by how sad the two that I did, I don't plan on reading them in the future.

Besides that, I don't know what else to talk about about the movie, nothing interesting really happened that caught my attention.

Jerry and Molly and Sam

After reading Jerry and Molly and Sam, I felt a combination of sadness, confusion, anger and pity but thought it was a good overall story.  The plot and was really interesting because I thought that the main character resembled me in some instances.  I know what it feels like to be annoyed with someone or something and you just want to get away from them, but after going without that person around, you start regretting what you have done and all you want to do is beg for that person to take you back.

I felt so much sadness and for the dog, I could not believe that the guy just leaves the family dog in a neighborhood.   Even though a dog may be annoying and destructive, it's still a part of your family.  Abandoning a dog is like dropping off your kids in a bad neighborhood.  When Al dropped the dog of, I actually felt like crying.

I was confused on why Carver named the story "Jerry and Molly and Sam", you only read about those three character's once.  Sam is apparently some old neighbor, Jerry is the bartender, and Molly is someone that Al meets in the bar.  They are the least mentioned characters in the story and don't really help with the development of the story.  It is this type of title that makes me think.

I also felt anger against Al because he was a terrible person.  This guy drinks (it doesn't specify if he drinks allot), he has affairs with other women other than his wife, and lies so much.  I think that he deserves for the dog to not take his back.  Also how dare he tell his wife everything will be fine, even though he is lying.

Overall though, I liked the story, it kept me interested.

Tomorrow movie

I thought that the movie adaptation of Tomorrow was not that well.  I thought that Duvall forced his accent to much and I don't know why he thought that Tomorrow was his best performance.  I thought that the only slight redeeming quality was the fact that it was in black and white, which added something, I don't really know what.  I also didn't like how it went back and forth between the uncle narrating and just showing Fentry's life, that made it hard to follow.  I also thought that it was just a boring story that just showed a guys life over a period of months, he didn't really even do anything interesting, even the ending, which was supposed to bring everything together was not as good as it could have been.  I really don't know what else to say about the movie.  

The Sky is Grey

Overall, I thought that the Sky is Grey by Ernest Gaines was very interesting because of the way it was written.  It was hard to understand at first because the narrator is a poor child that suffered through segregation and the narration stayed in character.  Even though it was hard to follow at first, you get used to it as you read on.  The language and dialect was different and kept me interested, in fact if the language was like a typical story, I wouldn't have been as interested.

Another interesting thing I noticed about the story that I thought was interesting is the repetition of words and phrases.  I don't know why it caught my attention, maybe its because of the rhetorical devices we have gone over in class so much or something else.  I think that the purpose of this repetition is to show emphasis on what others are saying because it seems that the repetition occurs more around when others are speaking.  I don't really know the significance but I think that there is something about repetition that adds to this story.

Another interesting thing that I found interesting were all the references to color.  One reference to color is the difference in skin color, since it takes place when the segregation was at its height.  Another reference to color are the environmental surroundings in the story.  This women and this boy at the dentist's shop argue what the color of the grass, the women says its green and the boy says its black.  The boy also says that there is "pink in the air" and I was confused on what he meant by this.  The title even references color, "The Sky is Grey".  There are alot of color references in the story.

This story also got me thinking about how unfair and stupid segregation and racism is and was.  I love those types of stories that are written to bring out flaws in some people, so we can work on those flaws so they dont't become any more of a problem in the future.

Overall, I thought this was a good story to read for many reasons, I thought it was what I need to read after reading Tomorrow.

Tomorrow

I really didn't like this story.  I thought that it was hard to follow and not that interesting.  It was hard to follow because of all the different places and names explained in the story, it was hard to figure who was talking and who was who.  There was no real detail of the characters accept for the occasional weird detail.  One example that comes to mind was Fentry's mustache being as white as skim milk.  Another that thing that was hard to follow was that at times, I didn't know if he was talking in the past tense of if it was the present, that was very annoying.  For example In the beginning the author talks about his uncle in the past and then later he somehow jumps to the present, and that got me all confused.  The parts that I could follow were not interesting, I felt like quite reading, but I continued.

Because I had trouble following, I cannot give much more of a response because I felt the author was all over the place, in the present, in the past, in the kids eyes, and in his uncles eyes.  All that I can say is that I'm not much of a big fan of this story.