Themes of the 4 Short Stories

Throughout all of these short stories, the recurring theme seemed to be the relationships between parents and their children. Each and every one of them seemed to have a dysfunctional aspect to them. In the first story, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," the mother ships the daughter off to get married to a man she hardly even knew. In "Rules of the Game," the mother does not think that the daughter should play chess and show her weaknesses, but once she succeeds, her mother parades her all over the town showing her off to everyone. The third story, "The Book of the Dead," included a mother and father who hid the dark secrets of her father's past from their daughter, Annie. A rebellious son with parents who made a wrong decision to send him to a worthless tutor was featured in "Teenage Wasteland." In all of these stories, it seems to be the parents who have made bigger mistakes than the children have. Although there may be cultural differences, like in "Rules of the Game," there is still no reason to go parading your daughter around the town, bragging that she won another chess tournament. That is just embarrassing. The only story where I see that the parents are not clearly at fault is the last one because if Donny would have tried a little harder in school, none of the problems they had would have begun in the first place.

Teenage Wasteland

In this story, Donny is a character who is very easy to relate to. I know that my parents push me very hard to succeed, and they are always checking up on my grades. They want to know where I am at all the time. It gets very annoying, and it seems very controlling, but I know that they do it because they want the best for me. It is just easy to relate to Donny because he doesn't feel like he has any freedom to do the fun things that he wants. I didn't really like the tutor Cal either. It seemed like he was just in it for the money, although he provided a safer hangout spot for the kids, rather than in an alley somewhere or something like that. It seemed like Cal always took Donny's side and defended him, but Cal wasn't doing his job either, He was supposed to be tutoring Donny so that his grades improved, but they only dropped. I thought that it was really random how the story ended. Like one morning, the family just woke up, and their son was gone. They didn't even seem that sad. I know it said that they were still looking and it had been three years, but I think that I would have looked harder at the beginning. I also feel bad for the other girl in the family because it seems like all the focus is on Donny. She just gets pushed off to the side for later, and you can tell by how much she is mentioned in the story. If the parents are not careful, they will have not only one but two runaway children.

The Book of The Dead

I liked this story because it had many twists and turns in the plot that were unexpected. When the father sits down with his daughter at the lake and they talk about his past at the jail, I did not expect him to say that he was actually a guard at the prison. I thought it was weird that the father just went for an eight hour walk and did not tell anybody where he was going. I would have gotten worried too if he was gone that long and no one had heard from him. I think that all the years of lying to his daughter had finally got to him, and Annie's father felt it necessary to reveal his dark past. If I was Annie, though, I don't think I would have been nearly as calm as she was, just finding out that her father has been lying to her for her entire life. I would have also been upset when I found out that my favorite statue representation of him had been tossed to the bottom of that lake. I was surprised to see the two of them still go to Gabrielle's house without the statue, but I liked how the two fathers were related, with the dark stories of their pasts pulling them together. I was surprised to see the Annie's mother so calm in this situation, also. They made it seem like Annie's father did this all the time and there was nothing to be worried about. I also thought it was weird that her mother had been lying to her all of her life about her father, too. I couldn't believe that the two of them hid all of his dark secrets from their daughter, and they still had such a positive outlook on the whole situation.

Response to Other Blogs...

I visited Lisa and Kyrstin's blogs, and they both said basically the same thing. This religion is way over our heads. We all seem to get that they believe that the universe is a stage and God is the director. We get that there is a clear definition between black and white, good and evil. Other than that, though, most of it was over our heads.

I thought it was funny when Kyrstin was talking about how you act in your past life determines your next life, she said you could end up being a king or a grasshopper. That made me laugh a little. I also liked that Lisa mentioned the Shakespeare quote in her entry. I didn't really think about it, but now that she mentioned it, it really applies well to this religion. I just think that this would take a lifetime of study to truly understand, which makes me perfectly content with the religion that I believe in.

Mythology of Hinduism #3

I did get like this one as much as the first one. I thought it talked a lot more about christianity and the bible than about hinduism. I still think that hinduism is a weird religion because they see everything as one big play. The universe is one giant play. I also thought it was weird that he said the universe is just like god playing hide and seek with himself. I picture the universe to be one giant area of empty space, even though I know that there are planets and stuff in it. How is he supposed to play hide and seek? This concept is obviously over my head.

I think it is interesting how they look at life as a big play, while we look at it as creation and it all relates back to how our God built everything. Our religions are kind of similar in that in Hinduism, their god is the director and kind of makes everything happen, which is similar to Christianity. Even though God is not refered to as a "director," he is still responsible for the events that go on in our lives.

Honestly, I think this religion is interesting, even though I don't believe in it, but most of it seemed over my head. At the beginning, I felt as though they were talking about stuff and I should have known what they were talking about, but I didn't. There is so much to this religion that I can't even comprehend all of it. I don't know how these people practice it.

Mythology of Hinduism #2

I was so confused at the beginning of the podcast. I could not understand why they were talking about hide and seek and black and white. I thought maybe I was listening to the wrong thing. When it started getting into how it related to hinduism, I understood a little better. They were trying to explain the clear defininition between good and evil. I thought it was interesting that they related it to the game of chess when he said that traditionally white goes first because black represents the devil. I thought the concept of how the Brahma is reborn every 4,320,000 years, called kalpa, was weird. I don't undestand how that works. I mean, how long have people been believing in this religion, and how would they know that he is reborn after such a long time. It is unimaginable to me. I thought it was interesting that there is a stage in his life where he knows exactly who he is because I think that not only in this religion, but all people are striving to find out who they are. I found it interesting that persona was related to the masks that actors used to wear on stage, but now the word has been completely inverted and refers to the person beneath the mask. Are they trying to say that people today wear "masks" instead of showing who they really are, or am I overanalyzing this? It seems like this religion relys mostly on magic and illusion, and they say that everything is an illusion. I liked the story about the man who got thrown down a hole by one of the faces of the gods, and came out on the other side as a princess, but woke up again as himself. I thought it was weird, but I liked it. I thought it was kind of cool, althought I don't believe in it, that they said death is just the phase where you forget everything to be reborn again. I also liked that they said how you live your current life determines what you will be in your next life. For example, if you are good in this life, you will be reborn as a king.

Rules of the Game

This story was extremely weird, and to be honest, I think that Chinese culture is a little bit weird. It was mentioned in this story that they ate five course meals every time they sat down at the table. How are they so skinny if they eat all that food all the time? I also thought it was weird and gross that the pharmacist-like healer of the Chinese culture had a store where he sold insect shells, leaves, and other things from nature for people to heal themselves with. I could not believe that the kids sat in the alley and looked into the store, watching the owner of the shop count out the bug shells and give them to the customers. Another thing that I found disgusting was the way she described the fish market. The fish were all just sitting out in the open in containers full of ice, and she described the one type as having two eyes on one side just sitting there looking up at you. That would make me never want to eat a fish again, but I guess that is just the difference in cultures. I thought the little girl's name was weird. Her parents could have been a little bit more creative in coming up with her name than just calling her the street they live on combined with their last name. Waverly Place Jong would not be what I want to be called for the rest of my life! I found it a little creepy when Waverly asked her mother about Chinese torture, and she said that Americans were lazy and the Chinese had the best business, medicine, art, and torture. I thought that was a creepy combination. I think it would be confusing to be a Chinese American because they have different calenders, so you would be a different age in the two different cultures. For example, Waverly was seven in America, but she was considered eight by the Chinese calender. She seemed like a very smart girl, especially for her age, and I was very impressed with her dedication to learning the secrets of the game of chess.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

I didn't really like this story or Mr. Shiftlet. I thought he was a very rude man, and he just acted like a respectable person to get Mrs. Crater to give away her daughter. It did not seem like this is the first time Mr. Shiftlet had stolen a daughter from a mother. It seemed like he may have had some prior experience. I thought that Mrs. Crater had a good first impression of him, and she should have stuck to it. Mr. Shiftlet seemed like he thought he was better than everyone else, even though he only had one arm and he went around doing housework for people. Mr. Shiftlet thought of himself more highly than he should have. I thought it was incredibly rude that he just left his newly married wife laying on the counter in the diner, especially since she was deaf, she couldn't talk, and she had no idea where she was. Then what made the whole situtaion worse was that he went and picked up a hitchhiker, like the little boy was better or more interesting than his wife. I know that she was deaf and she could not talk, and that would be a recipie for an incredibly boring marriage. He still married her though, and he should have a loyalty to her, more than what he showed when he left her sleeping on the counter. Although Mrs. Crater seemed like a smart woman, she did not show much judgement in choosing a husband for her daughter. She married her off to the first man who came along and showed the least little bit of interest, and it goes to show that was a bad decision. It would be terrible to be in the daughter's position because she does not know what is going on, and her mother controls her life.