Workshop 1 responses

Gillian’s “Maid of Honor”

Gillian writes in a very, very close third person. The reader in inside Susan’s head, feeling her emotions almost immediately and continuously throughout the whole story. Being this close, she catpures the feeling of what it was like to be in senior year of high school as a college-bound student, something everyone in this class, at leaast, can relate to. Because we are so close, I buy her feelings of trying to get close to her sister because the desperation to try to clean things up at home before leaving really comes through, even though she never mentions it.
Gillian seems to have a good hold on her character, Susan, and it seems like she could probably put her in any situation and be able to document what she does. She is clear about what Susan is looking at. For example, when she says, “She stared moodily out of her window. Across the street, several elementary-school kids were playing a game of hide-and-seek, their outlines glowing slightly in the fading light of the late-summer sun,” the rhetorical eye creates a very clear image of what she is looking at. I can see the backlit kids across the street as though I am looking through a window. She set up the image well so that you cannot help but see it the way she wants it to be seen.
The dream sequence confused me a little. I know it’s a dream and it is supposed to be confusing, but I did not really buy that the dream happened. Maybe I am just skeptical of dream sequences, but I felt that the dream was not given context. I am not sure if this is a day dream or if she is asleep in her room or what. I love the description at the end that says, “Susan doubled over with sobbing, great heaving breaths coming all the way from her stomach, bringing her insides to her throat until she was sick, retching, vomiting her sorrow onto the polished floor.” The idea of vomiting sorrow is hard to swallow, but because she adds the modifier “polished” to the floor, I suddenly have an image that I can hold on to, as surreal as it is.

Matt’s “Birthmark”

Matt is playing with making a story incredibly real and tangible in it’s description of the world so that it possible to buy the one surreal item he throws in, the birthmark that falls off. “It was smooth at one point, but it has become rough like a scab,” he says at one point, and this image makes the birthmark something that the reader can feel because everyone has felt a scab before. It doesn’t, however, make the birthmark a scab — it only gives it texture and context.
The decriptions are purposefully understated and non-descript, but it is clear that this is a trait of the first-person narrator. It makes the story funny at times and creates a very awkward rhetorical figure. Sometimes, however, it hard to believe that the narrator would never open up more. He seems to be hiding his emotions, even though he is talking about a very soft moment in his life.
Another small contradiction that just bothered me a little, though it’s not a big deal, is that the birthmark is gross enough that people will not sit next to him on the bus, yet he was able to get a girl who not only went to a dance with him but kissed him, and on his birthmark, no less. This is a surreal moment in the plot that is very concrete for a lot of the rest of it, and that is why it is hard to swallow. I really liked the detail of the birthmark getting stuck on her lips — that idea made me feel pretty sick, especially with all the description of it being red, though not infected. It might not be infected, but it’s still gross.

Bess’ “Leap”

Bess has amazing control of her character’s motions. When her room floods, I can see her dancing like a ballerina, partly pecause the image was set up well beforehand by the description of the picture of the ballerina. I can imagine her swimming motions as she moves through the thick air that becomes like water in this surreal world.
She doesn’t, however, spend any time describing the surroundings. One effect of this is that Enna’s mtions really stand out like a studio picture or a theater stage where the background is plain in order to create a contrast between it and the subject. In this way it works well and I beautiful. However, the force of the flood and, thus, her fear of it is kind of lost because it is difficult to make a mental image of the nondescript cement room flooding. I am not even sure how big the area is, so it feels like watching a dancer on a stage, but you can’t tell where the stage ends. It’s a very interesting feeling, but it does really seem like it was done on purpose.

Al’s story

Al is very good at using the sound of his words to describe the action. He writes, “The wind changes outside nd the rain pats harder against the siding of the house,” and the sound of the S’s makes a light patter sound at strange intervals the way rain does.
When he writes, “Through the walls Wynona hears thunder or a semi-truck on Ogdem Avenue,” not only is the sound of thunder evoked, but the level of muffling caused by the walls is also added to the sound making even more tangible. It’s not the sound of thunder, which sounds like a lot of things — it is that sound from inside that could be either thunder or a big truck, but you honestly can’t tell which one it is. That sound is completely different than just the sound of thunder.

Kate’s “fruit”

Kate has incredible control of sensation so that she can not only describe something and make that object tangible, but she can also use what the narrator smells to build the rhetorical figure at the same time. She says, “It smells like over-ripe fruit and sweat and hand-rolled cigarettes like the ones my father smokes,” and not only does the sensation of the market get created, but also some depth of detail about her father. However, the most important thing the sentense tells the reader is that the narrator remembers the scent and relates it to her father’s cigarettes.
Like Al, Kate can make the sound of her words mimic the action she describes. When the car accident happens, she describes it saying, “I am snapped back by the belt,” which has an interesting, hard stop and start of a sound to it just like the pulling of the seatbelt across her chest.

Amanda’s “Pico de Perrico”

The play between yes and no is really interesting because it establishes a mood of distrust and tension between Alejandra and tía Olga. It also shows that Alejandra is the kind of person who would rather lie than cause conflict.
Amanda’s description of Alejandra running up the stairs is very interesting because it kind of comes out of nowhere. While all this drama with her aunt yelling at her, Alejandra is lost in thought about the feeling of the staris beneath her feet and the fact the she can nearly glide up them without making a sound. It is a clear mental filter that Alejandra has that tells the reader a lot about her character. It becomses clear that maybe she did leave the cage open and that maybe she did forget to feed it. And she does this while creating a very vivd and smooth picture of the simple act of walking up stairs.