Reflection # 3: "The Cask of Amontillado"

This week was an interesting one. We read two good stories but “The Cask of Amontillado” was more interesting to me. It was a crazy story of a man named Montresor who is planning to take revenge of his friend Fortunato. What did Fortunato to make Montresor angry and full of revenge? The author doesn’t give a clear explanation and description about what Fortunato did.

The way that Montresor planned the revenge was very crude. He planned it step by step. He knew that nobody will notice that because everybody was at the carnival and he knew that his friend Fortunato, the victim, was going to be drunk so Fortunato would not be able to notice Montresor’s perverse plan. Another interesting thing in this story was Montresor’s family symbol. Yeah, the foot crushing a serpent. That give us an idea of whom and how was his family. They all were sick peoples, sick of hate and revenge and Montresor inherited his family’s characteristic. And also the motto “No one wounds me with impunity” gives us a clue of the outcome of the story. Montresor started to make the wall to lock his friend and Fortunato though it was a joke. Of course if my friend tries to lock me in a crypt I would think it is a joke. After all Montresor locked Fortunato on a crypt and eventually he dies. It’s crazy to thing that a man is trying to do that to his friend. Montresor is a sick man. He is crazy and a very vindictive man. The story was very interesting and full of horror and suspense and I really liked it.

Reflection #2 "The Grandmother Told You Not to Go that Way"

This was a horrifying, deadly, poisonous and disturber week. Starting with “A Rose for Emily” a short story about a woman who sleeps with a dead body and finishing with “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” another short story about a family who were killed by a group of three criminals. The most incredible about this is that a woman also named Emily, here in Puerto Rico, did the same as Emily in the story, slept with a dead body. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! How crazy, maniac, and psycho one should be to sleep with a dead body. If that is incredible, what about killing a whole family, including the children. That was what happened in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and what I’m going to write about.

Everything started when the family planed to go to Florida. The grandmother adverted her son not to go to Florida because there were a murderer so she wanted to go to Tennessee but her son denied to, so all the routes pointed at Florida where The Misfit, the murderer, with his gang members were looking for their next victim, in this case victims. What capture me the attention is that, like most places, there’s a place to stay a couple of hours for entertainment and to take some food. I’m talking about The Tower, the Red Sammy’s restaurant. That’s biblical, that was like the last dinner they had before dying. Of course that nobody, except God, know when where or how you will die, but what I want to show you is that looked like the last dinner.

The funniest thing of this is that the grandmother though they were going to Tennessee, so she told the family about a house with a secret panel causing the children to get interested in it. I think she had Alzheimer or something like that to not to recognize the area and that was critical and probably what moved them to a tragic future. They were the people with the worth lucky in the world to have an accident in the worth place in the worth moment. And this man, The Misfit, with his sick mind and with the help of his gang members kills them crudely and with no reason.

The question is why he kills them? What did the family to push him to do that? The father, the mother and the children, he killed them all. The most impacting moment of the story is when the grandmother tries to persuade him to not to kill her, but to start praying and to believe in God. This was an interesting part because, in a difficult moment like that, the grandmother was telling to The Misfit that God is the right way and that he should start to pray when, in a certain form, she was also loosing her faith. What leaved me with some doubts was that, after The Misfit killed the grandmother, Bobby Lee said “Some fun!” and The Misfit said to him “Shut up, Bobby Lee. It’s no real pleasure in life.” Did he suddenly felt sorry of what he did?

Raflection #1 "Strange Title and Humans Actions"

Of all the things we did in the class this week, the short story “Hills Like White Elephants” capture my attention. Not only the title sounds strange and mysterious, but it contents guide you to a dialogue difficult to understand. It doesn’t give you too many details and descriptions and that complicate it. I read it twice and I didn’t understand it. It wasn’t until I read it for the third time that I knew that the author was talking about an abortion.

It results incredible that a girl and a man are not only talking about an abortion but planning it. It couldn’t be worth. The man has mental disease. Or he is ignorant or he has no conscience, but there’s something in his mind that don’t let him see the truth about this issue. All this start when the girl asked him "What should we drink" and he said "Beer". Wait a second, if she is pregnant, isn’t' drinking harmful for the little creature? Trough the story we could see he is always insisting her to abort, in certain form, saying that it is simple and that everything would be like before. After all, the girl ended saying “Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.” Why she get convinced? Obviously because she is just a girl in love with a man who is easily washing her brain in order to do what he wants. This shows that the man has a total control over this relationship and over her. Notice that this doesn't mean that she will do it or not. This only shows that she has a tendency to accept his ideas because he is playing with her mind and trying to control her.

It's difficult for me to understand why someone has such a criminal mind to plan an assassination which results more incredible to believe it is legal. The worth of this is that her harmful activities, like drinking, put the innocent creature in danger. There’s something that captures me the intention. The author didn’t give much detail like how old are the characters, but he offer us two words, girl and man. I think that he is trying to put a distance between the two characters. He is trying to separate both ages. And if this is true, that easily explain why the man want her to abort. He doesn’t want to be in troubles for pregnant a minor. Don't you believe me? So well, think about what he said: "You know how I get when I worry". Worry about what? As if it wasn't enough, the pour girl, because of her ignorance, doesn’t understand that she is playing a dangerous game. The man just wants her to abort and then...

The story has an open ending and you decide how the story would end. In my opinion, I'm not sure if she will do it or not. It all depend if she grow up and find what is right for her, even if that imply to break with the relationship and continuing with her pregnancy. The story was interesting. It was a little difficult to understand but it was totally enjoyable. The only strange thing of all this is the title.