Response to Cole's "Secret Park"

The story revolves around a man who is about to turn thirty and has reconnected with two old friends from high school to try and get himself into better shape. They decide to put the narrator through a routine at an old park they used to frequent. The narrator seems to be at least a bit surprised at the activity the park has gained over the years since it seemed to have gone unknown for a long time. His friends arrive and he spends most of his time either jogging around the track or doing either sit-ups or push ups. By the end of the routine, the protagonist is exhausted and seems like he is ready to keel over when he notices his friend lying on the grass. The narrator finally collapses to his knees in the grass but not from exhaustion. We see that his friend has collapsed from anaphylaxis.
    I found it peculiar that the protagonist rattled off random city names (which quickly became the names of actors) to get himself through the final part of the routine. A rather…interesting quirk. I liked some of the descriptions the narrator gave while going through the exercise, such as “my heart started to pound against my stressed lungs, struggling to feed my body more oxygen.” It really made me feel how grueling this routine was for him.
    The story felt like it ended rather abruptly. I didn’t really see much off an arc and the ending felt like it was cutting off at the halfway point. Also, I’d like to see more about how the park played a role in the characters’ lives. It seems to become nothing more than a backdrop before too long. This could go along with maybe a bit more background for them. They seem like they were good friends but seem to have grown apart. Why?

Response to Jessica's Untitled

Andy, the main character in this story, is staying up late trying to write a story for her class the next day. She seems to have trouble focusing and has yet to type anything, the Word document in front of her being little more than a blank page. To add to this, she seems to have trouble coming up with any ideas to make an interesting story. She wanders the kitchen, makes a list for groceries, but ultimately just stares at her computer. This writer’s block forms the main conflict of the story as she paces around the kitchen. She is met by one of her more unpleasant roommates and entertains the idea of writing about an irritating roommate, but this idea only lasts a second before it is scrapped. YouTube and TV hold her attention for the next few hours as she continues to procrastinate well into the morning. She finally decides to write on her experiences that night, writing about a girl named Jess who couldn’t write a story. It goes untitled (much like the actual piece) and Andy hands it in at the end.
    I liked the main character, Andy, and just the situation in general. It’s very relatable. Her (rather comedic) methods of procrastination are actually quite similar to mine. I also really liked the ending and the girl that Andy chose to write about (I found it humorous).  Also, I found the line she quipped to her roommate rather funny. Don’t know why just did.
    One issue that stuck out to me was the way time passed in some instances. The jump from the beginning’s eleven to two o’clock seemed rather drastic. Maybe that is just me though. It seems like she spent a lot of time walking around the kitchen and the encounter with the roommate doesn’t seem like it would have taken that much time.

Response to Once in a Lifetime

The story was about a girl who is looking back at a time of her life. She remembers seeing the members of a family that her family was friends with off. Years later, the same family friends return and ask to live with the narrator’s family. The girl has to give up her room, something she isn’t too excited about at first. The family arrives and the girl and her parents are amazed to see how much they have changed. The friends have become more “American,” which the girl and her parents aren’t too happy about. She sees the boy she’d known years before and notices how much he’s changed over the years. She becomes enamored with him, causing her to forget all of the other crushes she’d have since then. As the days pass with the house guests, the host family becomes more irritated with the way their guests have become: self-indulgent and wasteful. The narrator is eventually taken out to the woods behind, where her friend reveals that his mother is actually dying. She breaks down crying but never tells her parents. Eventually, the other family moves out and the girl’s family never learns about the mother’s illness.
    The story was told from first person, a nice perspective which gave great insight to the girl’s personal thoughts and just how awkward she felt with the other family invading her home. There are long paragraphs taking up the bulk of the story with lots of details. The detail is nice but at the same time it can at times be a bit excessive and starts to feel a bit tiring the further you read through the story. It also seems strange that a story written from an Indian perspective makes very few cultural notes when they say that the other family has become American. 

Response to Cary's "Meow"

I assume the story is about an autistic boy named Cyril. At the beginning, he is in someone’s home (a person he apparently knows) uninvited. He is abruptly kicked out soon after the beginning of the story. He wonders down to the Captain D’s restaurant, counting each step along the way, all four hundred steps. He meets his friend Earl there at the restaurant and the two sit together outside while Cyril eats and Earl smokes. Earl tells him to go find the stray cat that stays around the restaurant, Jimmy-cat. Cyril finds the cat behind the dumpster with strange things crawling around on its stomach. He becomes scared and calls for Earl as he counts to himself. We find out from Earl that Jimmy-cat has had kittens, making it more of a “Jasmine-cat.”
    I think you chose a very creative stand point to tell the story from. It’s very similar to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (the way the main character continually counts when he’s nervous or to keep track of things made me think about it) which tells its story in the same way. It made for a very unique way to tell the story and gave an interesting view point. 
    To tell the truth, while I thought the way you told the story was very interesting, I was unsure of the change that occurred within the story. The biggest change seems to occur to the cat but I don’t really see how the main character changed at the end, though this may just be because he still called the cat by a boy name and didn’t really seem to acknowledge what Earl said about it’s gender, but I think the biggest change would occur when the cat has its kittens.

Response to Laurel's "Perfect"

The story is about a very unlikable girl who didn’t like the person she’d been in high school so she decided to change herself. She was apparently successful (in a way) and became a very arrogant person. Extroverted and talkative, the protagonist thinks everyone loves her but we see that is not the truth and people instead shy away from her and don’t much care for her company. The girl is unaware of this up until the end when it dawns on her. She calls her old best friend and decides that she wants to change back or at least change into a person that she can like and is liked.
    I really think you present an unlikable person very well. I didn’t much like her but I think she was presented well at least. Her arrogance was very clear from the very beginning and it was obvious that the change she had made and the girl she’d become was not good. She was so deep into her fantasy she didn’t see who she was until the end. It made you feel a bit of pity for her disillusion and I really hope she does change for the better.
    Throughout the piece, you made extensive use of italics. At first, I thought these were thoughts and wondered if they were why were they in third person. They seem like they are linked to her thoughts but at the same time are told from an outer perspective. I’d take the italics out and change it to normal text and maybe through in a couple of tags for such thoughts.

Response to Rhamah's "Cats"

The story follows a person who is working in a cat store called Kitty City. It opens with the protagonist and what I’m guessing is the boss (the Cat Lady) observing how shameful it is that six kittens have been abandoned by their owners at such a young age. The reverie is broken when a couple and their daughter come into the store. They wonder around and look at all the cats, their daughter poking her hands into each cage as she passes. They stop at one cat’s cage (Lily) and almost pick her until they notice she only has one eye. The story ends with a young boy coming to find a cat. He almost chooses to take Lily until she attacks him.
    I liked the sort of sarcastic tone that the protagonist speaks in during the story. There are several spots where you can feel the “Yeah right” in the voice. I also liked the attention to detail with the cats. The image of hair everywhere and the constant smell of crap was presented well. I also liked how you compared the kid’s fingers to sausages as she reached into the cats’ cages.
    I really didn’t see the change in the story. I figured it was about the person working there, going through the motions of their everyday job. I didn’t really feel the conflict and change in the story at any other time than when Lily attacked the young man. Despite the conflict this caused, I didn’t really see much of a change in the protagonist. They seemed little more than scared by the cat’s outburst. I’d suggest maybe adding a little more to the story because it seems like it ended too abruptly.

Response to "Incarnations of Burned Children"

The story starts off as a peaceful normal day until a shrill scream cuts through the air. The Daddy (as the man is referred to throughout the entire story) rushes in to check on the noise. He finds his child wailing and the Mommy trying to calm the baby down. The Daddy pushes her aside and tends to the baby, which is where we find out that scalding water had been dropped onto him. The story flows as a constant stream of events. Long sentences filled with conjunctions makes up most of the story and the entire three page story is only one paragraph long. The way the story rushes through the story helps build a sort of tension in the reader. The characters are never truly named other than with words such as Daddy and Mommy which gives the story a type of disconnect that I think works. There is no dialogue in the story, which adds to this. The only time we hear anything about speaking is when we hear about the mother says “their God’s first name.” It makes the situation the parents are in seem much more urgent. The Daddy skims over some details but the detail put into the wounds that the child has received it very clear. We see the child’s skin turning pink from where the scalding water had washed over him. The child’s screaming becoming hoarse as the parents realize that the water had spilled into the diaper. The Daddy then picks up the baby to rush him off to the ER. He leaves with the baby, “burning rubber” from his tires as he speeds through town, leaving the door to his home swinging open as he rushes out. The Daddy seems to be very annoyed by the Mommy’s inattentiveness and the fact she allowed the baby to be hurt.

Response to Nate's "Summer of Lemon Drops"

The story is about a young man who is put into community service. He goes to the beach every night to find sea turtle nests and put grates on them to protect the little turtle eggs from raccoons. His dreams of going to New York to intern are shattered by these turns of events. Every night, he is assisted by a man named John, a man who seems to have a very happy-go-lucky attitude towards his job. Our narrator isn’t too happy but has no real choice but to grin and bear it. One night, the two of them find a treasure chest full of gold but as they are carrying it back, John reveals it is just lead painted gold. The boy laments as he takes a couple of lemon drops.
    I really liked the voice in this piece. I loved the sarcastic nature of the narrator and the way he believed there to be only two types of faces in the world. I really liked the line comparing Cairo and Cape Canaveral, as well as the part talking about the mosquitoes (I found it a bit humorous). I also appreciate how the “treasure” at the end turned out to be nothing more than a practical joke.
    A couple of things stuck out to me. There were a couple of tense issues that confused me a bit. I really didn’t see the conflict nor a real resolve to the story. The narrator never really seemed to change, he only seemed to be going through the motions as he counted down the days to his freedom. The only real point of conflict seems to be at the end with the treasure and that does little to change the young man.

Response to Adam's "Animals"

The story follows a young man who had stolen a jacket from a souvenir shop in Italy and gifted it his sweet girlfriend upon his return to the States. His girlfriend’s, Jenny’s, innocence and disappointment in his theft makes him want to change and he does for a while. He stops drinking, smoking, and stealing just for her and to try to live up to her standard. This goes awry when his sister is killed in a car accident and he quickly returns to his vices. He’d tried hard to build up good morality but it quickly went down the drain and caused a bit of a rift to grow between him and his girlfriend. Jenny shows up one night and reveals that she has stolen some earrings. The act of stealing, something that had once excited the young man, left him in a state of disgust for a reason he didn’t understand.
    I actually liked the protagonist in the story despite all of his faults. I liked the fact that he at least tried to give them all up for his innocent, pure girlfriend. It’s clear to me that she makes a big impact on his life if he wants to try to hard to give up his vices for her. I also liked how he didn’t embrace her theft at the end of the story, showing us that he’d changed.
    Something I would like to see more of is the protagonist’s family. Maybe show a bit more back story with them to explain why he took up those vices in the first place or to show just how close to them he is. I think it would help in understanding why he went into the downward spiral so hard near the end.

Response to Taylor's "Losing Sincerity"

The story is about a young man who has been promoted to a supervising position at a hotel. He talks as though his a normal guy just wanting to enjoy a normal college life, with things such as dating and partying, just like his fellow employees. He began dating a fellow employee the night before the story begins. The night covered in the story is the night of a huge event that is being held at the hotel. Most of the conflict in the story come from the huge party that the ballroom at the hotel doesn’t have the room for and the raging guests both in the ballroom and the others lined up outside. The party and the night eventually winds down and the sense of normalcy sets in. The story ends with Brad (the narrator) getting a drink with his girlfriend.
I really liked the voice in this story. It was casual and easy for the most part and they flowed like an actual stream of conscious rather than someone writing something down. This is accentuated at times when the narrator says something like “Oh well, screw it.” I also liked the easy-going dialogue between the characters in the story along with the little bit of background you gave to some of workers that are (I assume) closer to Brad.
As I stated earlier, the voice was very easy going yet it seems to be very proper at the same time, more so later on in the story. The use of contractions is pretty much nonexistent toward the end and it breaks up the flow a bit. Another thing is I had trouble telling who was speaking a couple times in the story, such as the part after his talk with Alyson, when he goes to the bar and speaks to Connor. I was also unaware of how the narrator changed by the end of the story. He just seemed to have gone through a hectic night at work.

Response to Jessica's "For the Love of the Game"

The story starts off looking like it is about a baseball player by the name of Joel Johnson but this is quickly thrown off by an “I” who is watching the game. This narrator seems to be watching the game, picking up all the little details about the pitcher as the high pressure game slowly draws to a close. As the game is drawing to a close, we find out that it is not a real game but an old VHS recording of a 1985 game. Lindsey (the narrator) is caught watching her father’s game yet again by her mother. We find out the father has not been present in her life as he chose a professional career in baseball rather than staying with his family. Lindsey has plans to go see her father at a game and finally meet him, but upon going to the game, she is unable to see him play or even see him afterward. She then finds a note that says her father was there but didn’t want to meet her without her mother present. The story ends with Lindsey looking forward to her meeting with her father.
I really liked how deeply immersed in the game the writing was at the beginning. It really got across the tension and the gritty nature of baseball (with all the clay and dirty uniforms and the like). I liked that we didn’t find out that this game presented was not a real, current game until about midway through the story. Finally, I liked how the ending didn’t show a complete resolution but rather a road to a resolution.
Something I would like cleared up earlier on would be Lindsey’s age. I pictured her as really young toward the beginning (probably because she calls her mother “Momma”) and I was unsure of her age pretty much until the end.