“Save the Reaper” was an interesting story. From the very beginning, I found myself able to relate to the kids. The game they were playing in the car really reminded me of the kinds of games I would play with my siblings when I was little. It was a good portrayal of what kids do while they are bored in a car for so many hours. The kids saying that the guy in the truck was an alien set up a good mood for when they actually go inside that house. That scene had a kid of alien feel to it. I also liked when he said that the dog was an alien too. It sounded dramatic despite the fact that it was just a game. It also set up the idea that no one is to be trusted. In a way the kid is similar to Eve in that they don’t really trust anybody. She was so critical of the girl in the car. She was positive the girl could be dangerous. Only as she was leaving, did Eve finally realize the girl was harmless. That doesn’t cover everything that is happening in the story, but I really liked the game the kids played and how it related back to the adults. It goes to show that even Eve treats everyone as if they are aliens.
I’ll agree with Ryan in saying that “Save the Reaper” was “interesting.” I’m okay with assigning it such a bland adjective because I didn’t find myself completely invested/fascinated/confused/ drawn in as I did with Barthelme’s three stories. At the same time, I can’t say I was fighting sleep, either. I found the deeper meaning behind “Reaper” to be pretty straightforward, so I didn’t the Barthelme-induced desire to dive too far into interpretation.
Throughout the story, we see hints of duplicity/ contradictions/false realities/ finding more than what’s just on the surface. We’re set up for this kind of reading from that opening scene, where we see the characters create this alternate reality in which anyone could be an alien. They’re making it all up, and enjoying it, but for a while, take it all with a grain of salt—after all, nobody they’re “targeting” is actually an alien. Munro continues this “hidden identity” over and over again as the story continues, in seemingly insignificant details like “B.M.” standing for “bowel movement” and “Big Mama,” in the priest who was pretty easily seduced, in the carving-out of the dead turtle to preserve the shell, in the “positive minefield” in 767, etc. The examples are everywhere, but I think the point here is that these characters are trying to preserve the “shell,” the “lilac crescents” they hide underneath their eyes. They create these scenarios, making the banal into something dangerous because, as Munro says on page 781, that just makes things “more interesting.”
I guess we could stretch this into a commentary on the art of fiction itself, and say that Munro’s point is that there is something risky/dangerous/ troublesome-for-our-perspective on reality in fiction, but that it’s just fun as hell to invest ourselves in it. We don’t read or write to re-create reality point-blank. There is something cathartic, (or at least something entertaining), about losing ourselves in stories.
The beginning of "Save the Reaper" confused me. I couldn't figure out how characters were related to one another for a while, which was partially due to a bad reading on my part and partially due to the fact that Munro doesn't really clarify relationships at first. I thought, for a while, that Eve and Sophie were sisters and couldn't figure out whose children Philip and Daisy were. I reread the first few pages once I did catch on, after it was established a few pages in that Sophie was Eve's daughter. It was frustrating and I blame Munro at least partially.
There are so many threads in this story and I had trouble seeing each to its conclusion. I would like to discuss this story in class because there are so many layers here and I feel like I missed many of them. Sometimes Munro states big ideas flat-out - "But it could be just that still, and always, she hankered after love" - but in other cases I'm left wondering what the glass pictures mean ultimately. There's a lot packed into twenty pages. While I don't think I understood these characters as well as I could have, I could picture them, could feel them, and was left wondering what they would go on to do, what else would happen to them. I don't normally feel so engaged by short story characters.
I read Munro's "Walker Brothers Cowboy" for Intro to Fiction last year; it was less confusing, more subdued, and less engaging in terms of character. I think I would prefer a balance between the two and I wonder if "Friend of My Youth" would meet that.
I wasn’t terribly enthralled by “Save the Reaper. I had similar problems that other people had with it. It took me a little bit to figure out who was related to, and what was going on. So much of the story was spent explaining the background of the characters and I wasn’t sure what the significance was. Not that I didn’t appreciate the information that was being given. I found the consistency of “flyby fathers” between Eve and her daughter Sophie to be a very intriguing and clever idea. But I felt like many of those little anecdotal stories did little to move the story along. I felt like there were connections that were missing. Not quite in the same way that Barthelme added in details in his fiction. Perhaps because I expect his stories not to completely make sense because his stories tend to contain elements of surrealism. I didn’t see anything like that in this story, although Eva sometimes seems to see the world through this romanticized lens. Perhaps this is because she is a person of the theatre and as such believes all the world’s a stage. It just seemed like these random events were strung together without any or clear sense of reason or significance. Towards the end some sort of progression of events starts to take form when they get to Harold’s house but the situation itself just didn’t make sense in my head. I will say though that I did like Phillip. I think Munro did a great job at capturing the mind of a seven-year-old, from the game with the cars, to the skinning the turtle, and how he was instantly wanted to play with in the dog Trixie, made him the most interesting character to me.
Like other people who have posted already, I felt very disoriented at the beginning of the story. The relationships between characters were not clear at first, and I felt like I needed to draw a map or family tree to figure them out. It wasn’t until a few pages in that I realized Eve was Sophie’s mother and not a friend. The way they acted and spoke to each other reminded me of two friends, and I thought Eve was helping Sophie out with her kids. So naturally I was surprised when I hit the section about Eve and Sophie’s father. But I think misdirection and pretending play a big part in the story. Philip and Eve play a game about aliens while they’re driving down the highway, Philip insisting that they’re on the trail of aliens in the bodies of people that can switch hosts at any time. Eve goes along with it, even planning her own “ending” of the game, perhaps in a park with ice cream. She says, “There would have to be some remaining danger, or else Philip would feel let down, humiliated.” She keeps the game going for his sake.
Towards the middle of the story, Eve tries to stop the game by insisting to Philip that the aliens aren’t real. This comes right after the conversation she and Philip had in another scene about Sophie. Sofie has left the kids with Eve and has gone to see her husband, and Eve asks Philip about it. He says he heard Eve say, “I can’t stand it here, I’m sick of it, let’s figure out some plan to get me away.” The theme of what you see vs. what is really there is everywhere in the story, like the girl that Eve had originally thought was a man jumping into Eve’s car. Maybe this is part of the effect Munro wanted to create, making her readers feel as disoriented as her characters.
“Save the Reaper” was an interesting story. From the very beginning, I found myself able to relate to the kids. The game they were playing in the car really reminded me of the kinds of games I would play with my siblings when I was little. It was a good portrayal of what kids do while they are bored in a car for so many hours. The kids saying that the guy in the truck was an alien set up a good mood for when they actually go inside that house. That scene had a kid of alien feel to it. I also liked when he said that the dog was an alien too. It sounded dramatic despite the fact that it was just a game. It also set up the idea that no one is to be trusted. In a way the kid is similar to Eve in that they don’t really trust anybody. She was so critical of the girl in the car. She was positive the girl could be dangerous. Only as she was leaving, did Eve finally realize the girl was harmless. That doesn’t cover everything that is happening in the story, but I really liked the game the kids played and how it related back to the adults. It goes to show that even Eve treats everyone as if they are aliens.
ReplyDeleteI’ll agree with Ryan in saying that “Save the Reaper” was “interesting.” I’m okay with assigning it such a bland adjective because I didn’t find myself completely invested/fascinated/confused/ drawn in as I did with Barthelme’s three stories. At the same time, I can’t say I was fighting sleep, either. I found the deeper meaning behind “Reaper” to be pretty straightforward, so I didn’t the Barthelme-induced desire to dive too far into interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the story, we see hints of duplicity/ contradictions/false realities/ finding more than what’s just on the surface. We’re set up for this kind of reading from that opening scene, where we see the characters create this alternate reality in which anyone could be an alien. They’re making it all up, and enjoying it, but for a while, take it all with a grain of salt—after all, nobody they’re “targeting” is actually an alien. Munro continues this “hidden identity” over and over again as the story continues, in seemingly insignificant details like “B.M.” standing for “bowel movement” and “Big Mama,” in the priest who was pretty easily seduced, in the carving-out of the dead turtle to preserve the shell, in the “positive minefield” in 767, etc. The examples are everywhere, but I think the point here is that these characters are trying to preserve the “shell,” the “lilac crescents” they hide underneath their eyes. They create these scenarios, making the banal into something dangerous because, as Munro says on page 781, that just makes things “more interesting.”
I guess we could stretch this into a commentary on the art of fiction itself, and say that Munro’s point is that there is something risky/dangerous/ troublesome-for-our-perspective on reality in fiction, but that it’s just fun as hell to invest ourselves in it. We don’t read or write to re-create reality point-blank. There is something cathartic, (or at least something entertaining), about losing ourselves in stories.
The beginning of "Save the Reaper" confused me. I couldn't figure out how characters were related to one another for a while, which was partially due to a bad reading on my part and partially due to the fact that Munro doesn't really clarify relationships at first. I thought, for a while, that Eve and Sophie were sisters and couldn't figure out whose children Philip and Daisy were. I reread the first few pages once I did catch on, after it was established a few pages in that Sophie was Eve's daughter. It was frustrating and I blame Munro at least partially.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many threads in this story and I had trouble seeing each to its conclusion. I would like to discuss this story in class because there are so many layers here and I feel like I missed many of them. Sometimes Munro states big ideas flat-out - "But it could be just that still, and always, she hankered after love" - but in other cases I'm left wondering what the glass pictures mean ultimately. There's a lot packed into twenty pages. While I don't think I understood these characters as well as I could have, I could picture them, could feel them, and was left wondering what they would go on to do, what else would happen to them. I don't normally feel so engaged by short story characters.
I read Munro's "Walker Brothers Cowboy" for Intro to Fiction last year; it was less confusing, more subdued, and less engaging in terms of character. I think I would prefer a balance between the two and I wonder if "Friend of My Youth" would meet that.
I wasn’t terribly enthralled by “Save the Reaper. I had similar problems that other people had with it. It took me a little bit to figure out who was related to, and what was going on.
ReplyDeleteSo much of the story was spent explaining the background of the characters and I wasn’t sure what the significance was. Not that I didn’t appreciate the information that was being given. I found the consistency of “flyby fathers” between Eve and her daughter Sophie to be a very intriguing and clever idea. But I felt like many of those little anecdotal stories did little to move the story along.
I felt like there were connections that were missing. Not quite in the same way that Barthelme added in details in his fiction. Perhaps because I expect his stories not to completely make sense because his stories tend to contain elements of surrealism. I didn’t see anything like that in this story, although Eva sometimes seems to see the world through this romanticized lens. Perhaps this is because she is a person of the theatre and as such believes all the world’s a stage. It just seemed like these random events were strung together without any or clear sense of reason or significance. Towards the end some sort of progression of events starts to take form when they get to Harold’s house but the situation itself just didn’t make sense in my head.
I will say though that I did like Phillip. I think Munro did a great job at capturing the mind of a seven-year-old, from the game with the cars, to the skinning the turtle, and how he was instantly wanted to play with in the dog Trixie, made him the most interesting character to me.
Like other people who have posted already, I felt very disoriented at the beginning of the story. The relationships between characters were not clear at first, and I felt like I needed to draw a map or family tree to figure them out. It wasn’t until a few pages in that I realized Eve was Sophie’s mother and not a friend. The way they acted and spoke to each other reminded me of two friends, and I thought Eve was helping Sophie out with her kids. So naturally I was surprised when I hit the section about Eve and Sophie’s father. But I think misdirection and pretending play a big part in the story. Philip and Eve play a game about aliens while they’re driving down the highway, Philip insisting that they’re on the trail of aliens in the bodies of people that can switch hosts at any time. Eve goes along with it, even planning her own “ending” of the game, perhaps in a park with ice cream. She says, “There would have to be some remaining danger, or else Philip would feel let down, humiliated.” She keeps the game going for his sake.
ReplyDeleteTowards the middle of the story, Eve tries to stop the game by insisting to Philip that the aliens aren’t real. This comes right after the conversation she and Philip had in another scene about Sophie. Sofie has left the kids with Eve and has gone to see her husband, and Eve asks Philip about it. He says he heard Eve say, “I can’t stand it here, I’m sick of it, let’s figure out some plan to get me away.” The theme of what you see vs. what is really there is everywhere in the story, like the girl that Eve had originally thought was a man jumping into Eve’s car. Maybe this is part of the effect Munro wanted to create, making her readers feel as disoriented as her characters.