The Lame Shall Enter First

“The Lame Shall Enter First” was a much better story by Flannery O’Connor than her previous “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, in my opinion. One solid theme that particularly stood out to me was the idea of not fully appreciating something until it’s gone, which seems to be a particular folly of the human condition; we don’t fully appreciate the things in our life, little or big, until there is a stark contrast in the situation or a complete lack thereof. I find it pretty interesting that one of the main characters is so aptly named ‘Sheppard’, as in the biblical reference of someone who ‘Sheppard’s’ the weak from the valley of darkness.

Sheppard’s assumption that his child, Norton, is wasteful, unappreciative and selfish only comes from his complete immersion in the lives of children with nothing at the reformatory. The antagonistic character, Rufus Johnson, serves as a distraction from his own child whom has no path or direction in life, let-alone intelligence. But I believe this is only Sheppard’s view because he has put up figurative blinders in viewing his son and his behaviors; it is Sheppard’s own selfishness in the absolute need to be, in some way, the very reason for someone to have a perfect life, other than his own son. If Sheppard had showed half the interest in reforming Norton as he did in Johnson, the completely unnecessary and horrifying suicide of his son probably would not have occurred.

Everything You Do Comes Around

“Julian walked with his hands in his pockets, his head down and thrust forward and his eyes glazed with the determination to make himself completely numb during the time he would be sacrificed to her pleasure.” Julian does not like the way his mother dresses, carries herself and acts; in fact it’s pretty apparent that he does not like his mother as a human being. I found it interesting that the only joy Julian experiences throughout the story is watching his mother cringe and scowl, through her painted veil of racism and stereotyping. It’s in this same vein that his mother, too, rejoices at the unease she causes Julian, through her appearance and actions. I think that this story tackles the themes of the real-life stereotypes put into blatant action, the power of denial and eating your ‘just’ dessert, i.e. getting what you deserve.

Personally, I think the karma his mother receives at the end of the story is well justified and that Julian’s life would have been better as a whole if that event had occurred earlier in his childhood. I think a very useful and interesting take on this story would be to look at it from the African-American mother’s eyes; her perspective on a hoity, uppity white woman trying to belittle her child with a penny. I think the fake haven of prosperity and class that Julian’s mother creates is just a safe haven for her bigotry; an attempt to hold on to the backwards values that she practiced.

Also, I saw the ending coming from a mile away.

"A Pair of Tickets"

In “A Pair of Tickets”, Amy Tan explores the themes of self-affirmation/self-identity, ethnic pride and family unity. June-May begins the story in denial of her true family heritage, but in display of her roundness as a character, she evolves to embrace her heritage. It may be the inspiration or motivation given to her by her father Canning Woo, who is physically unattached from his homelands, yet still fully recognizes his heritage; though it is her mother, by no fault of hers, which forms the stereotypical values of being Chinese in June-May’s mind.

Some of the symbols used in the story are very good at subtlety conveying the intended message from Tan. The use of the train as a method of transformation is quite effective in the story; for it is the agent of change that brings about the resolution of the plot. Also very useful as a symbol was the use of the Polaroid photographs, because the way Tan describes the suspense in waiting for the picture to develop relates to the suspense in June-May’s life within the time period of the story. The title itself, “A Pair of Tickets” has important relevance because the story features many pairs of people, including- twins, June & Canning, Aunt & Dad, Mother & June and June & Lilly.

The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket

Compiled in a book of his short stories, The Palm in the Hand Stories, Yasunari Kawabata’s “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” explores many themes, including innocence, friendship, love and fate. The story is centered on the narrator, whom remains nameless, and their perception of the lanterns at night, though at a distance, only as an observer. “Wide-eyed, I loitered near them.” I find it interesting that there is a sort of bad connotation with some of the children uses store-bought lanterns; considering the other children have created beautiful, hand-crafted, original lanterns, I believe this is a commentary on when searching for acceptance and love; we look for those whom are not formed from the traditional mold of life, originality may be what sparks our initial attraction.

The symbolic transfer of the bell cricket from the boy to the girl could translate to the development of love and how, as rare as it is in the wild, one can captivate with a simple giving gesture. The narrator goes on to explain the rarity of such a find; “even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world.” It seems like the moral of the story, in the end, is that you don’t know what you’ve got until its gone or it may be too late to take action. I think Kawabata uses grasshoppers to symbolize the average, everyday romantic find, but in the case of the bell cricket, a truly important find. “And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper.”

Death Upon the Land

Written after his conversion to “primitive” Christianity and fundamental anti-authoritarianism, Leo Tolstoy wrote about a man’s search for adequacy among the peasantry of old Russia, by way of land-ownership, in “How Much Land Does a Man Need”. “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” proclaims Pahóm at the realization that quality of life is directly related to the expanse of your homestead, not fully aware he just unwittingly made a deal with the Devil. It is this theme of the power of death, or the temptation of sin, that Tolstoy intends to convey with the appearance of the Devil. It’s in this vein that the story is rather dark and gloomy, apparently written by a depression-struck Tolstoy.

I think the fact that Pahóm was never fully satisfied with his newly-acquired land shows greed, which would be a quality that had probably been bestowed by the Devil; he always needed more, even though what he had newly-acquired was already much larger than his previous land. It is this greed that causes him to over-walk his land and over-estimate his endurance in his final push towards the ‘hillock’, falling mere inches from his target. I think the story was ended very well and truthfully with, “Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.” In the end, how much land we need is no more than our bodies can occupy.

The Loons

Margaret Laurence’s story, “The Loons”, explores the themes of cultural identity and freedom. The plot-line itself is pretty straight forward; written in a what-you-see is what-you-get kind of way. For a native person, like the main character Piquette Tonnerres, to be alone in her world with no elders of her own kind is not easy and definitely explains her chosen isolation from other girls of her age. This may also explain her distrust of white authority figures, like Dr. and Mrs. MacLeod, although Dr. MacLeod was the “only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good” to Piquette.

I believe that Laurence uses the loon birds to symbolize untouched natural wilderness and the possibility of freedom. In paragraph 35, Vanessa MacLeod insists that they ought to enjoy the loon calls while they can, because the more that civilization encroaches on their habitat, the more chance that the loons will flee forever. That almost seems to be the case with Piquette; it’s as if the closer anyone attempts to get to her, the higher the chance she will retract into herself and reject others even more so.

The way the loon’s calls are described in paragraph 40 is very accurate and creates an image of a mystery bird, for those who may have never seen or heard a loon. I have spent many summers in the North woods of Wisconsin, on the edge of the Menominee Indian Reservation, based on a friend’s property known as ‘Tahltan’. This fairly untouched land has many lakes, on which many families of loons reside and breed. The late-night calls the birds vocalize are really quite mesmerizing and absolutely unmistakable. “Plaintive, and yet with a quality of chilling mockery, those voices belonging to a world separated by aeons from our near world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home.”

The Power of the Blues

As expressed by many of the past century’s greatest and most influential artists, the “blues” are a fantastic motivator in articulating inner suffering and injustices. From heart-wrenching romantic defeats to radical social discriminations, the blues were one of the many soulful platforms of expression for African-American musicians in the early 20th century. In 1957, author James Baldwin, in his short story “Sonny’s Blues”, relays his reality of the suffering and inequality surrounding him in the post-war-years of New York City, and how his brother, Sonny, finally finds his way from the darkness by way of the blues.

The power of the blues & jazz movement of the early 20th century has had profound effects on the way our country evolved into a more, though not completely, tolerant society. The introduction and use of the blues helped African-Americans to turn personal tragedies and suffering into an identifiable, communal art form, in a way that captivated like-minded audiences and forever changed the musical world.

Through suffering, tribulation, drug addiction, the importance of family, and the power of the blues, Baldwin paints a literary portrait of his time in Harlem in the early 1950s and how atrocious and unnecessary social disparities can be overcome through the positive power of music and the Christian ideal of being “Our brother’s keeper”. As Sonny’s brother says in the end, “All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations.”

An Occurrence of Desperate Imagination

“Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timber of the Owl Creek Bridge.” This line brings about a finale which the reader may have expected from the beginning, but the path which the plot careens on takes the reader down a folly of reality.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is set in Northern Alabama during 1863, the year that the Union Army pushed into the deep-south-state of Alabama. During the American Civil War, there was a lack of collective consciousness and spirit in North America. The definition of patriotism was exclusively dependant on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you happened to find yourself. Written in 1891, well after the conclusion of the war, author Ambrose Bierce (a retired Union Major) wrote of an experience he himself may have been a part of in his days of soldiery. Bierce takes his knowledge of war atrocities and delves into the mind of the damned. His examination of the power of the mind under duress is taken to a great level of awareness through the damned man’s visions.

Farquhar’s perceived dilation of time and heightened auditory and visual senses create a sort-of supernatural state in which his mind manifests a mental reality of his conscious’ projection of hope. It is in these themes that Bierce allows his main character to live his final moments in a euphoric and uplifting dream-state, where his greatest dream comes to fruition; to be free of the noose about his neck. It is this study of the true nature of human perception that Ambrose Bierce comments on the power of imagination. No one could say it better than the late, great Kurt Vonnegut when he spoke of Bierce’s story as “the greatest American short story, and a work of flawless American genius.”