Starting My Blog

The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is about a family who sets out to take a trip to Florida.   However, as they are driving to Florida, they decide to take a detour which leads to an encounter with three criminals who escaped from prison.   One of them was called “The Misfit”. The main characters seem to be the grandmother and the Misfit.   I believe the story is about how difficult situations can give us an opportunity to change. In the beginning of the story, we see that the grandmother is manipulative as she tries to convince her son Bailey not to take them on the trip to Florida because she wants to go to Tennessee instead.   She also seems to be judgmental as she tells her grandchildren that in her time “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else.   When they encounter The Misfit, and the grandmother recognizes him from the newspaper, she immediately starts telling him that he is good, that he...

The Use of Force is about struggle.   One struggle between the physician and his patient and the other between the physician trying to stay composed as he is struggling with his patient.   The doctor is called to the home of this family with a sick daughter.   The doctor begins the examination by asking if the girl has a sore throat, and although they tell him no, he wants to check her throat because diphtheria was going around at the school she attended.   At this point, this battle began between the young girl & the doctor.   She did not want him to see her throat.   Both parents tried to get her to open the mouth but to no avail.   The girl gave up a pretty good fight, she would not open her mouth.   Throughout all this, the doctor is trying to stay composed, through his verbal and non-verbal communication. The doctor overpowered the girl at the end and pried her mouth open long enough for him to take a culture. You would think that t...

When reading the title “Hills like White Elephant”, I think of something that is rare, but big.  A hill that is big can be difficult to surmount.  The title itself speaks to the story.   There is something that the American man and the girl (Jig) cannot surmount.  As you read the conversation they are having, it seems like they are talking about an abortion without saying it outright. A decision was made, Jig did say she would go through with it, and the man keeps referring to it as a simple procedure.  So, it’s not the decision that is insurmountable.  As I read what Jig was saying, it seems like she feels one way one minute and then another way in the next sentence.  She banters back and forth, which leads me to ponder the possibility that the insurmountable hill is not that she’s having the abortion but that she perhaps feels guilty that she wants the abortion.  The setting takes place in Spain, where Catholicism is the prominent religion...

I found “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin quite interesting.  The story begins by mentioning that “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble.”  Immediately, I knew this was important, like a foreshadowing of what was to come, but I did not expect the twist of her heart trouble to be so ironic. Mrs. Mallard hears of her husband’s death and begins a journey of emotions.  Throughout the story, with the use of imagery you find that she is repressed in her marriage although her husband seems nice and has looked upon her with love.  She does not seem to reciprocate that love all the time, and I was left to wonder why.  Perhaps, she did not marry for love, but for convenience or because it was expected of woman during the 1800s or maybe she did marry for love, but because of the times, she was not free to really be herself. Throughout the emotions that she experiences, instead of feeling a sense of loss that comes from grief, she comes to this epiph...