There were several moments of deep description throughout the piece that caught my attention and I simply enjoyed reading. One of the first moments that stood out to me was "[b]ehind me, the girl's screams rose in intensity, disconsolate, incriminating, the screams of Sabine women, the Christian martyrs, Anne Frank dragged from the garret" (Boyle). Upon first read I was startled by the comparison of the girl's screams to such extreme examples. The Sabine women, the Christian martyrs, and Anne Frank being grabbed from the garret are all examples of people who endured extreme horror and pain. Comparing the screams of the girl to these people has an incredibly powerful impact and paints a vivid picture. Another line that stood out to me was, "[i]n one of those nasty little epiphanies for which we are prepared by films and TV and childhood visits to the funeral home to ponder the shrunken painted forms of dead grandparents" (Boyle). It was gruesomely vivid when referring to shrunken dead grandparents, but I had a good understanding of the feeling of horror and disgust that the narrator was feeling. By using this extreme detailed comparison, the author is able to effectively convey his feelings to the reader. A third line that stood out to me was "[i]t lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a vanished civilization" (Boyle). This line had a profound impact on me. It painted a vivid picture in my mind of what the scene would have looked like and I felt as though I was standing in the road looking at the car myself. The vivid descriptions that the author uses left impressions on my mind after I finished reading and I could not stop thinking about it.
The way the characters are developed through the first person point of view gives the reader a unique perspective on the main character and the supporting characters. The narrator keeps referring to himself and the other guys in the story as "bad characters". He lists off all the "bad" things they did such as smoking pot, drinking beer, and keeping a tire iron in the passenger seat. In doing so he makes it seem like he wants the reader to think of him as being "bad" because being bad is a good thing. Also because the narrator is talking about the events that unfold from only his perspective the reader does not get a complete picture of the situation. The reader is more inclined to go along with what the narrator says and how he feels about what is happening. I think that is one reason why I enjoyed the story so much. I liked that after I read it a couple times I began to think about how the story would have been different if told from another perspective. For example, what if it had been told from the perspective of the woman, or as he called her, the fox ? I was intrigued by how much the author probably left out in order to protect himself. Readers discover what kind of person the narrator was and what kind of people his friends were based solely on the narrator's word. I found it to be very interesting to think about the potential bias involved.
The combination and vivid descriptions and point of view made Greasy Lake my favorite short story. I do not think it was my favorite plot, but I thought it was incredibly interesting. Its complexity made me think about it long after I finished reading.
Your blog is very well organized, and this organization helps with your analysis and explanation. You chose good passages in your discussion of imagery that are exemplary of the story's description. I think some of your wording in the second paragraph could be less textbook like (you start some sentences with one of the transition words for our ninth grade list that makes it sounds as if you are just going through and listing facts). The third paragraph is on the characterization, so it might have been helpful to have shown the character's growth through the story in this paragraph. You have a really good analysis of the impact of point-of-view on the validity of a retelling. It might also have been beneficial to go into more detail on what the impact of the imagery was rather than just how well written it was (or if it was on the writing quality, say so). You could discuss the emotional effect the story had to strengthen your argument.
ReplyDeleteYour use of examples to prove your point was extremely effective, and the quotes that you used were perfect: not too long to be wordy but not too short to be misleading or confusing. I think some more details about the story's plot and message could make the thesis even more effective. Overall, this was a very strong argument and I enjoyed reading it.
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