Two Short Stories

I read the three short stories that Dr. Sexson recommened that we read for class tomorrow. They are all very interesting stories and in true short story style they have a lot of personal interpretation in them and the endings are never concrete. You never know what happens to the characters or what they do next.

I started with A tree. A rock. A cloud. I found that this story grabbed my attention from the beginning when the man asks the boy to come sit by him. I thought, as Leo seems to think, that the man was after the boy for some kind of perverted sexual encounter. This idea was only strengthened by the fact that the Symposium is about the love of men and young children. However, that is not what the man has in mind. His idea about love as a science is something I have heard before, although not quite in the same way. I was watching the news one day and this story came on about a dating service that matches you to other singles based on your DNA. What the man is this story is talking about is slightly different. His idea of the science of love is that it is a learning process and that we must start by loving smaller things before we can move on to the much more complex ideas that love has. This brings to mind the quote that I have heard many times in many places "You must love yourself before you can love another." I believe that love is a learning process and that we must have many different experiences before we truly understand love and can fully take advantage of everything it has to offer us.

Another story we were supposed to read is the Joyce Carol Oates story. This story I found deeply disturbing. I felt like I was in a horror movie and the whole time I wanted to yell at the girl to run or to stop talking to the man and shut the door and go inside. I was constantly wondering the whole story what it is about this man that keeps her at the door. They always tell us as children that you can never tell who might be a kidnapper or murderer. Some of the most notorious serial killers where harmless looking men. As a child I was told to never talk to strangers and never go with anyone I didn't know. My parents even came up with a code word so that if they couldn't come get me then I would know that they had really sent the other person. In today's world we have become obsessed with keeping kids safe, but Connie is not really a child. She is 15 and feels fully able to handle herself in the situation that Arnold Friend presents, but soon enough we watch as the situation slips out of her control and she spirals into terror. As a character Arnold Friends seems to have mastered the art of phsycological manipulation and allows Connie to think she is safe for quite sometime. He is a great orator like Socrates himself in the Symposium and can make others believe everything he says. Overall this story gave me the creeps and I will be interested to see how it is discussed in class tomorrow.