Friday, February 22, 2008
The Life You Save May Be Your Own
This story to me was very very agregious. It was just wierd that a random guy would walk up to a house and start to fix things for no apparent reason. He just shows up and fixes basically the whole entire house without asking for anything in return. My first impression of this guy was that he was going to take advantage of the old woman by stealing/mooching from her, or was just one heck of a nice guy. My instincts told me the first notion would be correct, but my feelings were wrong. It seemed like he was just there to do a good deed (or maybe more like 20). Then all of a sudden the old woman starts offering her daughter to the man. She rambles on about how much the girl means and all this and that, but it sort of seemed to me like she was trying to pay the guy with her daughter. It seemed like that because she said about how devastated she would be if her daughter ever left, but then she keeps insisting that this random guy should marry her daughter who is deaf and can only say "bird". Finally, the guy marries her and they act like they are going to some hotel for a honeymoon. They stop off at a diner and the guy just leaves his "wife" there all alone passed out on the counter. Actually, on second thought he really was mooching off of that old lady. He made her give him money for the honey moon and then the guy just ditches her. He also pretty much just takes the car and even though he fixed it he still should have said, "No, you should keep it to go into town." That seems a little fishy to me. Then the guy picks up some kid walking down the road and they start talking about their mothers and all of a sudden the kid calls the other guy's mom a "polecat" and just jumps out the car. The end. This is a completely random story. Just think about it. Guy just shows up and does chores. Guy marries deaf daughter whom he just met. Guy ditches "wife" for no real reason. Guy picks up boy who later jumps out of the car. The message it tries to convey is unclear and the story just was completely random. This story reminds me a lot of something that Kurt Vonnegut would have written. This story can be summed up by the word agregious.
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5 comments:
I agree Joe. This story was dumb. It had no storyline, what so ever. It was annoying, made me angry, and I felt that I became dumber just reading it. It was a waste of time and effort.
Well, I agree with both Joe and Sam on this story. First, like Joe, I could tell that the man was somehow going to somehow hurt the old woman and her daughter. I wasn't sure how he was going to do this, but he kept referring to the car, and I thought that may have been some sort of foreshadowing. However, after Joe mentioned the old lady and how she tried to give her daughter away, I sort of feel as if she tried to use the man as well. She seemed to be almost pushing him to take the daughter, which leads to how I agree with Sam. Throughout the course of story, the actions of several characters, the woman and man particularly, just made me mad. I am not sure why, but they did. Really good summary, though, Joe.
First of all, it's egregious. Sorry, I just thought I would point that out seeing as Mrs. Fox has spelled it out on the board numerous times. As far as the story goes, I agree with you about the mother. I don't think Mr. Shiftlet is as noble as you make him sound, though. Although it wasn't obvious, I think he was after the car the whole time, and I probably would have mooched money of a crazy lady too if she practically forced me to marry her daughter. I didn't realize it at first, but I'm starting to think that the purpose of the little boy was to show Mr. Shiftlet's true feelings. He was sort of silent throughout the story, but then when the little boy came along he vented. He probably picked him up because he needed to talk to someone and his wife, that he ditched, couldn't listen to him because she was deaf. However, he apparently needs to work on his people skills because he managed to scare the little boy off within a matter of minutes.
I agree with everybody that has commented so far I did not like the story very much. It was very random. I agree with Aaron when he said that the old lady was trying to give her daughter away. I felt bad for her and I felt that she did nothing to deserve that. Although, he did help the old lady a lot, I was kind of getting the hint that he had bad intentions.
You called Shiftlet fishy. I used the word shady, but they are alike. He just is not someone that I would really trust. I didn't really like the story either. How random was that kid jumping out of his car? Do you have any clue of the reason for this? Shiftlet definitely has some problems. He was one of many though. With all of the short stories that we read there were so many characters with so many different problems. I'm sure that all of their problems made you just as angry as they made me.
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