American Literature

The Sladen Suit

A lot of unknown in the story.  The Sladen Suit is basically a wetsuit for a diver, used to be able to breathe underwater. The Sladen Suit just happens to be in the captain's quarters, which nobody has been.  Overall, a lot of assumption goes into this stories.  No clue what happened to the characters who entered the Sladen Suit.  The suit is for survival...the signifier is changing in the story.  What is representing survival and safety is now death. What is on the other side?  Pugatory, the future, death, entrapment? 

Hurlock's Law

The Narrator is a person who is watching a man known as Hurlock.  It involves pieces of papers based off of propositions.  Using these propositions he comes up with this phrase "Red Haze Nimbly."  He searches for this phrase and becomes obsessive about it.  Hurlock ends up disappearing one night.  There is a lapse in the camera feed and who ever is watching Hurlock comes back, and he is gone.  They have a weird robot thing called a "construct." It is half mechanical and half organic, and it would take it memories by going in his ears.  He thinks he will eventually disappear himself.  The story ends without us knowing if the narrator is taken.  Are they taken or transported to another world?  He uses all of these rules to give himself meaning.  The robot wears the skin of a human...and maybe the robot symbolizes jealousy.

Knowledge

About three people: a detective, a pathologist, and a district attorney.  It divides into three themes of knowledge.  The detectives episteme can be summarized as "To know is to reveal the truth."  The district attorney's is "to utter is to create the truth."  The third episteme of the pathologist is "knowledge is control."  It seems like the author gave every character their own definition of knowledge and assigned it to them.  The corpses were used as a symbol or main point of an idea.  He would say he doesn't believe the pathologist, and the pathologist would prove his findings, and he always asks why.  He just gets frustrated with the district attorney.  The pathologist tells the D.A. the facts and the D.A just says okay and agrees, where the detective is angry and does not believe this.  The last line: "Which is precisely why I have not written my detective novel."At the end you expect to come to some sort of conclusion, and there was no conclusion at the end of this story. Is the reader trying to tell us something here?

Baby or Doll

He's on the floor and sees his tooth bloody.  It goes into conversation with his therapist.  He doesn't know the difference between a baby or a doll.  He doesn't know which was isn't alive.  Later on we come to find out as he goes on figuring it out, he sees a reflection of himself.  Was everything he experienced real or not? Just like most of the other stories in this book. There is no truth in anything.  In the beginning he finds a comfort in false truths. Author tries to distract us from the main points, by putting in these gruesome images.  Ignorance is bliss--when you find out the truth what do you do next?  Maybe the therapist was just the thoughts in his own head talking to himself. He's in a sense of what is going on so he can move on.  

The Tunnel

Starts off in a tunnel with three different characters told in three different perspectives.  Lindscold, the Old Man & Jansen are three of the characters.  "It was if none of them knew what was really happening to them."  It is very interesting how similar all of these stories really are. There is also an old man in the story and they don't know whether he is alive or not.  

South of the Beast

"South of the beast he poured through the bodies, searching for occasions where, in the membrane still integumented between flesh and bone, language had become caught and not yet worked free of a corpse." Lots of creative language and vivid imagery throughout the story.  Started off really intense talking about the beast and flesh and bone.  Living up to your own name and finding your own words. It's often difficult to find the right words to tell somebody something.  The end was a little gruesome with his fingernails peeled back.  He was trying to tell you his issues and experiences, and insecurities of his own writing. 

Class Discussion:

"There was a day she noticed a discrepancy between sound and image on the television, and found no matter how she messed with the tracking, she could not make it go away." (Evenson, 86)  The wife in this story is having problems with sounds matching up to images.  When she eventually goes to the doctor to find out what is wrong, all the doctors keep asking her if she is happy.  She always gets angry when they ask her that, because she feels it is irrelevant to what she is there for. The doctors keep reassuring her that "everything will catch up at some point." I think this can relate to her life and not just the TV.  It could mean that eventually this is all going to nip her in the butt. (Ex. the cheating on her husband with Bob)  

Quote from the doctor: "It is a problem, he said affably. Perhaps there is too much occurring in your head.  Perhaps not enough of this is coming out of your mouth.  Is enough coming out of your mouth?"  (Evenson, 88) I sense extreme frustration from her because she feels like this is not helping to solve the problem.  She continues to say "I am doing my best."  Maybe this is all she can do.

I think this is one of the more realistic of Evenson's stories.  Nothing is too far fetched or fiction sounding.  I think it is more realistic in terms of marriage and couples.  She also thinks that continuing to sleep with Bob will uplift her and make herself happy.  She also says "Maybe this will help, maybe it will shake things up a little."  Is this to shake things up for herself, because she is not happy in her marriage?

Nothing ever happens when she needs it to.  "Everything would eventually arrive, but it would be a long time, if ever, before anything would arrive again when it was actually needed." (Evenson, 92) I get a sense of her life is just passing by and slipping through her fingers.  

What I thought:

-Author uses lots of vivid imagery, very descriptive

-Author asks a lot of questions

-Story very strange and random

-Different than other stories we have read so far...written in a more conversational form.

-Forgets the sister even exists

What is memory? Thoughts from a past event, collections of thoughts and images throughout your life.

In all that distance who could recognize the tiny bursts of light sparking up the sky.  They illuminate the Earth with their dazzling.  They stare down at all of us and seek to lift our souls.  They come out only at night to show their true colors, and turn their backs to the sun.  So far away, yet so visible no matter the distance. 

Document

Made class think of waterfire.  How that might be an illusion to her past.

The Messenger

Lots of references to the beach and the ocean.  Metaphorical day to night transition in the story.  Imagery is really important to the story itself. Almost a relief in this poem. The spacing of the lines in the page are open more.

Light is the First Animal of the Visible  

Seeing the light as a better place.  "Your room in the Glass Tavern, a view of heel clicks heel clicks heel clicks air. " Glass is fragile, maybe she's breaking free. Her finding herself and that everything is going to be okay towards the end. "Swallows have found their throats again." Feeling like they can finally breathe from all the travel.

Legal Counsel

Author finally finds a place in which she can finally breathe. She's tired from traveling for so long.  

The Return