Lovely Literature

The first thing that came to my mind when I read this story was "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful. I just couldn't get this song out of my head, and now it's back in. Thanks Shoeless Joe. :]



Plot

The story begins with the line "If you build it, he will come," (page 1) in the third paragraph which is the catalyst for the rest of the story. At a first glance or a first read, "He" is thought to be simply Shoeless Joe Jackson, who is the narrator's baseball hero. In the end, the audience realizes that the person who the narrator was actually building this baseball field for was his father. The narrator didn't have the best relationship with his father, but they definitely agreed on their love of baseball. The narrator grew up "...on the story of the Black Sox scandal, and instead of Tom Thumb or Rumpelstiltskin, [he] grew up hearing of the eight disgraced ballplayers..." (page 4). His father influenced him to fall in love with the game of baseball, even though he was not particularly the most coordinated baseball player. When the narrator hears the voice that tells him to build "it" [the baseball field" and he will come, the narrator also believes that this is in reference to Shoeless Joe. The narrator, with his supportive family behind him, does build this field because he and his wife see a kind of magic at work. The point of the plot is to illustrate the themes of love, passion, hardwork, and the relationship between a parent and child.



Point of View
This story is told in first person point of view by the narrator whose first name is not given. We can figure out his last name because he says his father's full name, Glen Ullin. This vantage point is very effective because the passion he feels for baseball and for building this baseball diamond shines through his strong, dedicated diction. He makes excuses, similar to his dad, about how there's no way that Shoeless Joe threw the World Series because "He hit .375 against the Reds in the 1919 World Series and played errorless ball," and there was just no way that would be possible if he were trying to lose (page 4). The point of view adds to the theme of the passion the narrator has for his family first and baseball second. He always makes sure it's okay with his wife before he does something and he pays just as much attention to her as to his baseball project.


Characterization

There are five main characters in this piece: Narrator (Ullin), Annie, Karin, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the narrator's father (Glen Ullin).

Narrator

• He is hardworking, dedicated, and passionate.
• He is a family man and would do anything for his wife and daughter. The fact that his wife is behind him in whatever he decides shows their love and devotion to one another.
• When he loves something, he puts his everything into it. He "laid out a whole field, but itwas there in spirit only. It was really only left field that concerned [him]." (page 4).
• He is proof that one does not have to be a great athlete to love a sport. "[He] tried to play, but ground balls bounced off [his] chest and fly balls dropped between [his] hands." (page 5)

Annie

• Annie is the Narrator's wife who is decribed as "soft as a butterfly...with an evil grin and a tongue that travels at the speed of light," (page 6).
• She very much loves her husband and trusts him even if she doesn't necessarily believe what he is doing is completely sane. She not only accepts his dreams but she encourages them; "Oh love, if it makes you happy you should do it," (page 2).
• Annie follows her dreams, knows what she wants, and goes for it. When she was only ten years old, the narrator overheard her talking to her friends saying that she was going to marry him (page 2).
• She is a calm woman who doesn't freak out when something bad happens or doesn't go the way it is planned. "Staying calm makes her able to live with me," (page 7).

Karin

• Karin is a great love of the narrator's life. She is his young daughter who seems to accept and love the sense of magic that surrounds her dad. "The play goes on; her innocence has not disturbed the balance. What is it? she says shyly, her eyes indicating that she means all that she sees," (page 11).
• She is a very innocent girl who, as young children usually do, accepts magic that comes her way.
• She loves her parents very much and they are crazy for their daughter.

Shoeless Joe

• He is known for the stunt he pulled when he was in the minors and took off his uncomfortable shoes and "played the outfield in just his socks," (page 6).
• He is very passionate about baseball. He would have "played for food money. [He would] have played for free and worked for food," (page 9)
• There is an air of mystery about him because there is never a direct answer given about whether or not he actually was involved in throwing the World Series baseball game.

Narrator's Father

• He played in minor league baseball and never really hit it big even though he was a "better-than-average catcher." (page 5).
• The relationship between the father and narrator is not much more than baseball because that is what the narrator was raised on. The father was trying to bring back his glory days while the son fell in love with the sport.
• In the end of the story, in order for the narrator to see his father again, he had to build the field and "he will come," (page 1). In the end, his father would be playing in a dream game with the major league "Black Sox" players.

Setting
This story is set in rural Iowa with "massive old farm homes" (page 2),where "thirty thousand people go to see the University of Iowa Hawkeyes football team while thirty regulars...watch the baseball team perform." (page 3). Most people in Iowa at this time work or live on farms and tend to them. The narrator and his family have a passion for the land, even though the narrator isn't the most seasoned farmer. When he dug a garden for his wife, he claims he "[kept his] hands buried [as he] stirred the earth with [his] fingers and [he] knew [he] loved Iowa as much as a man could love a piece of earth," (page 9). This story is also set around the construction of a baseball field to draw the attention of famous baseball players who are no longer alive. This kind of magic ends up bringing the narrator to his father again and allows his father to play baseball with his heroes.

Theme

• All of these elements add up to the themes of love, passion, hardwork, and the relationship between parent and child. The narrator's love is demonstrated through all of his relationships-- with his wife and daughter, with his love of baseball, and with his farm.
• Passion is demonstrated when the narrator speaks about his wife and when he constructs his baseball field. He stands outside all night so that his grass doesn't freeze over as the water turns "the ice to eye-dazzling droplets, each a prism, making the field an orgy of rainbows," (page 5) and keeps his grass looking perfect. He has a passion to keep this field in tip-top shape in any way possible. He has a great passion for his wife in the loving way he speaks about her and how he calls her beautiful for loving him.
• The narrator is a very hard worker which is shown through his love for his farm and the love for his baseball field. He works for seasons to perfect his baseball field which he is not even sure if it will attract the attention of Shoeless Joe or his father. He realizes that hard work does pay off and he benefits from it by getting to witness this amazing magic.
• The narrator has good relationships with his wife Annie and his daughter Karin. Karin doesn't quite understand what is going on with her father's field, but she is comforted by him and the magic that surrounds them. His relationship with his father is predominantly focused on baseball, which is good and bad. This relationship gave him his love for baseball and allows him to meet Shoeless Joe and build this baseball field. They may not have really connected on a father son level though besides baseball. This field allows the narrator to perfect his relationship with his father by giving him the chance to play with all of these ex-major league players.

Miss Brill is a high maintenance woman who is enthralled in that her life is like a play. She believes all the people are merely actors on a stage of life. She is intriguing because she is somewhat self involved and she appreciate things such as her fur that apparently still has the head on it. There is not much physical description of Miss Brill because she is very involved in knowing what is going on with other people and their lives. She is very concerned with her luxuries but she does not continue on about them with the exception of her prized possession, her fur. Her first name is omitted because it is not something that the town she lives in worries about. The people in her town think she is old, nosy, and odd because of her listening to other people's conversations and her affinity for her fur. They also take her for granted, especially the young people who were making fun of her at the end of the story. There is little to no dialogue between her and an actual person. It is more like a stream of consciousness that continues through the story until the end where she goes home and puts her fur away, hearing it "cry."

Question 2: What stylistic devices create the atmosphere of children's stories? How is this atmosphere related to the story's theme?

Stylistic devices used to make this story sound like a children's story include many phrases that are common in fairy tales or children's books. The title "Once Upon A Time" starts out many fairy tales and children's stories. This story is a pun on that title because it is more like a scary story than it is a happy go lucky child's story. Happily ever after is also an often repeated phrase. It's almost like this story is the story after the man and his wife meet each other and have a child and live "happily ever after"...but this happily ever after isn't exactly as everyone likes to believe. We are all trained to believe that happily ever after means just that, but in some people's cases it goes terribly awry. The story is told without direct dialogue or quotes to show the dialogue. Instead, it is told as if a narrator is omniscient and speaking for all of the characters, like a typical fairy tale or children's story. This atmosphere relates to the sardonic theme of fairy tales and children's stories that the writer is saying she is terrible at writing.

The first thing I thought of when I read this story was this woman is a charity case. Phoenix, just by her name and her independent nature seems to be quite a free spirit. Throughout 75% of this story she is walking through the woods, talking to herself, on the way to town. The walk to town is apparently crazy long because the hunter she meets along the way tells her how she needs to turn back and go home. She also is a mooch because she takes the money from the hunter that he drops and she is somewhat proud of herself for that. Then her shoe is untied, so she has a lady tie it for her when she gets closer to the city. Finally, she receives money from the people at the doctor's office because it's Christmas time and she needs to get something for her grandson. I don't think she actually has a grandson. I think her dillusional sense makes her think she has a grandson so she "gets money" for him and "gets drugs" for his ailment. Phoenix is the grandmother who lives home all by herself and talks to hallucinations. Weird, weird story, but very difficult to dig deeper into.

Question 3: "It was hard word--a hard life--but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life." What about it makes it attractive to her?

The cliche that we don't know what we have until it's gone comes into play with this question. Eveline Hill, at the start of the story, is sitting at her window thinking of "better days" in her childhood that may not have actually been much better than her current situation besides the fact that she didn't have to hold down so many jobs to support her family. Her father is an abusive figure in her life that she now has to take care of because her mother is gone and she feels the obligation to stay with him. She is the homemaker, a shop worker, and a nanny in order to provide for her abusive father and herself. She hates her life, but at the same time she feels as if if she changes it then she will hate it even more.

Eveline's major conflict in the story is whether or not to leave her father to marry a sailor named Frank whom her father says she shouldn't marry because sailors are flighty. She is afraid of the unknown with Frank, and that ends up holding her back at the end of the story when she has the chance to leave her old life behind. Even though her father is crazy and abusive, she has a connection with him because she is still his daughter and will always love him. It seems so much more attractive to stay with the comfortable and the known parts of her life rather than enter into the unknown. She's a very relateable character because she has dilemmas that humans battle constantly.

I'm just as compelled with Bartleby as the lawyer is!! By the way, it really bothers me when they don't give us the name of the narrator when it is in first person. That's TWO stories in this section! Oh well...

Bartleby had a huge impact on the lawyer because he chose to tell the story about him and not about all the other scriveners he has employed in the past. The other three employees were important to show foil characterization and comic relief, but Bartleby was THE story. Heck, it was even named after him! The lawyer says he is not used to people ignoring his instruction or denying his instruction. This intrigues him when Bartleby uses his passive aggresive attitude and skirts his way around saying he doesn't actually want to do anymore work than is required of him. The lawyer is so impacted by him that he moves his own office rather than ban Bartleby or call the police on him. It would have been easy for him to call the police on him, but he was much too interested in Bartleby to let him go away. Even in prison he was connected with him and wanted to know more about him even though Bartleby just ignored him. Bartleby has a past that he will not speak of and that is what keeps the lawyer and the reader so intrigued.

I think there must be more to Bartleby than meets the eye. He is a peculiar character and he is static throughout the entire story. His behavior is motivated by the fact that he was fired from his previous job at the Dead Letter Office. Apparently something huge must have happened that put the thought into his head that he was to copy down and copy down only because he never "preferred" to do anything else. He must have been either coddled at his old job or the other extreme, terribly put down so that he was not confident in what he could do. Then again, he could just simply be lazy and literal, like those Amelia Bedelia books I used to read when I was younger.

I believe the information about the Dead Letter Office is withheld until the end so that the reader can identify whatever they believe with Bartleby. It would kill the story and give the reader a preconceived notion about Bartleby if he added that fact in earlier in the story. This background though is not near enough to describe Bartleby. He had to have gone through some kind of traumatic time to make him so passive aggressive and complacent. It's weird how a character can be so interesting and compelling even though he does not change throughout the entire story and he seems to be very flat.

The purpose of the scene in which Frank and Tub stop at a tavern for food and coffee shows how unsympathetic they are to their "friend" who is dying because Tub just shot him. Kenny is a hard character to figure out because he randomly shoots this dog and then points his gun to Tub, which in turn freaks Tub out so he shoots Kenny before he himself gets shot. Pretty valid thought to me, but at the same time it was a pretty rash decision.

The friendship these three share is very superficial yet realistic. The two guys who are better friends pick on the third one because he is fat and they don't like him as much. They even keep secrets that they don't share with the third one, such as Frank's relationship with the young babysitter that he does not inform Tub of until after Kenny was shot. It is important for Tub and Frank to have the heart to heart they share in the tavern because it is their catharsis in which they express their problems that have been hindering them. On the other hand, they could have gotten Kenny to the hospital first and had their heart to heart just as easily in the waiting room while Kenny received medical care.

This scene shows that Tub and Frank care more about themselves and their problems than their best friend dying. I'm pretty sure I would be freaking out and rushing to the hospital as fast as my car could drive to get my dying friend the medical help he or she needed. I think this scene shows how fragile their relationship was as friends. They were very willing to make fun of one another and ignore one another's feelings to the point of taking a wrong turn and letting someone die. I sure am glad they're not my friends...

I just love sleep deprived weeks :] My sincerest thanks to you, Theater.

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker is a short story that takes a look at African American heritage and the changes that go along with it. The four major characters are the mother,the narrator speaking in first person, her daughter Dee, the rebellious child always causing problems or complaing, Maggie, the slower child who was the main burn victim in a tragic fire, and Hakim, Dee's crazy husband who has converted her to different beliefs.

Taking a look at their past, the mother speaks about Maggie being "ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs" and of the tragic fire that destroyed their original home. Maggie is the "not very bright" daughter who does not speak much and seems to have a mental handicap. She foils her older sister Dee who is outgoing, wild, confident, and demanding of what she wants. Dee's character is always moving with the times, whether it is with fashion changes or with popular religion changes. She becomes very involved in her "new love of her heritage" and renounces her original name to become Wangero with some other nonsense attached to the name. Her new husband is right on board with this culture crazy fad as well.

Dee also foils her mother who is very reserved and does not speak out against her daughter. Dee seems to have been the child that would sort of be the death of her mother. The mother never disciplines her daughter nor does she praise her. More or less, she sits back and lets Dee take her course of action, despite how crazy it is. The mother is not a character who does not know how to get things done. There is no mention of a husband which implies that she had to raise her daughters mostly by herself. She has that capability though because of her independent nature and her "big-boned [structure and] rough man-working hands." The characters of Dee, the mother, and Maggie are contrasting so they better bring out the true nature of one another.

Chris Watters is a symbol for all the boys in the world that every girl wishes she could have but knows she couldn't. He is that bad boy who would never tie himself down to one relationship. He seems to have a girl in every state who is might be engaged to, and they are all chasing him across America. Not only that, but he's a tortured soul because he had to go through the war and trauma that ordinary people may not have had to go through. Edie of course falls in love with him, but her love is more puppy love than true love. She is more infatuated with him than anything else. He is the first boy who ever spoke to her like she was a woman, even though that was just after he saw her dressed up and in makeup. If Edie would have met him while he was flying his plane by where she worked and she wasn't all dressed up, he would not have given her a second look. The fact that he didn't mention that he was engaged was also very fishy because what guy who wants to be engaged doesn't shout it to the world? He is the kind of guy that Edie was able to look back and wonder what her life would have been like if they ended up together, but she knows that the safe, secure bet was to marry her husband, the Carmichael.

This story is told so that it is centered around Watters instead of Carmichael. Watters is the man who made her meet Carmichael because she waited for his letters for so long. I was very happy that Edie was able to admit to herself at some point that Watters was never going to write to her. Many girls spend their lives pining for their lost "love." Edie, on the other hand, found the good in her bad situation with Watters through her husband Carmichael.

Creepy. Creepy. Creepy.

First of all, I wonder where authors get ideas like these to write stories about old women who sleep with corpses. Nonetheless...that freaks me out. Second of all, I do not enjoy stories or movies that contain my name. Especially two-thirds of my name, such as this one and the Exorcism of Emily Rose. Thanks a lot William Faulkner.

Miss Emily is a very peculiar character. She goes in and out of society basically doing whatever she wants. Her father must be of some importance in the town because she is not required to pay taxes because of him. She will go for months shut up in her house with just the servant Tobe, and then all the sudden she decides to give china painting lessons. Miss Emily seems to have some sort of mental handicap that leads her into seclusion away from common societial practices.

Then comes Homer Barron who "wasn't a marrying man because he liked to drink with boys." I didn't actually catch that for a while, but I found it to be incredibly interesting. Miss Emily fell in love with him in some crazy way of hers and kept him in seclusion in her house. When she went to the druggist, she acquired arsenic. This and the fact that there was a rotten smell from her house for weeks leads the reader to believe she poisoned Homer and she has a thing for dead people [she kept her father in her house after he passed for quite a while too]. My guess is that Homer told Emily he would not marry her, so in her derranged way, she killed him so that he would be with her forever, in the physical sense at least. All I hope is that she literally only slept with him and not much more...

This story, while longer than the others, definitely caught my attention possibly the most. The storyline was very interesting because it speaks of how at least two of the characters are unhappy with their lives but not unhappy enough to change them. Yet again, the theme of settling persists.

"Interpreter of Maladies" speaks of the commonness of the broken family throughout cultures. This seems to be a part of the central conflict in which Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das are upset with their lives and they both live through a short fantasy until they snap back into reality. It seems to be fate playing games with the two, bringing them together to meet and realize that they are not exactly happy with their lives. Mrs. Das, 28, has been married for years with the exact same husband as she dated in highschool and college. She had children at a very young age, one not even by her husband, and she never had the chance to travel or even live her life. The same thing happened for Mr. Das, but since he is a more minor character, we are unaware of how he exactly feels about his relationship and his family outside of the fact that he is aloof and unaware of what is going on.

Mr. Kapasi on the other hand is very happy with learning new langauges. He is not as happy with his job though because he does not feel it has the meaning that he wants to have in his life. He has also been with his wife for quite some time and he is not happy with his marriage. When Mrs. Das comes along, he sees how unhappy he actually is, and she gives more meaning to his job than what he believes. She gives him a sort of false hope though because she leads him on until she sees that her son is in harm and then snaps back into reality. The significance of Mr. Kapasi's address flying away is that she never really had the intention of carrying anything on with him even though they both had the fleeting thought of "What if my life was different..."

Along with the other two stories in this unit, I believe this short story has a lot to do with settling. The main theme seems to go along the lines of a person settling for something they eventually love whether or not it is the best thing for them. The plot of the story is about a worker girl at a "farm" who is there to help the family along and be a nanny to the two children. The irony about the farm is that the meaning has changed from a working place to a place that is there merely for the name. The family does not own animals or grow crops in any way, so the farm is not a working farm. Mr. and Mrs. Peebles do not even cook food well enough to Edie's disappointment because they are very concerned with being thin. This marks the cultural shift in which Americans began to look for the glamourous, easy route in life rather than the hard working way. Edie, on the other hand, is from a true working farm family who does not know riches like the people she is working for.

The minor characters, such as Mrs. Peebles and Loretta Bird, help to advance the story along by adding tone and personality to the story. Mrs. Peebles shows how fickle society was becoming during this time period because when she found out that Edie had kissed Chris Watters, she was very cold toward her and would not speak of the "mistake." She seems to not be a very caring woman because she does not show much compassion toward her children as most mothers should, and she treats Edie less than she should be treated after a simple misjudgement. Loretta Bird is a comic relief character who comes off to be the town gossip. She seems to want everyone to wallow in her "pain and suffering" that she goes through with her seven children even though she is not even close to hardworking like Edie knows.