For this assignment, I went out and bought a collection of short stories by Margaret Atwood. The book is titled, "Bluebeard's Egg". Ever since reading "The Handmaid's Tale" several years ago, I have been hooked on Atwood! This book just proved to reinforce what a talented writer/thinker she is.

I decided to focus on a story called, "The Sunrise". In this tale, the reader follows a 30ish year-old woman named Yvonne. Yvonne is a prolific artist who once sold dozens of paintings, yet has since reverted to following random men on the street and eventually asking them is she can draw them. I would love to go into detail with the plot, but that would take up too much time. Basically, Yvonne has uncovered the magical and mystical myths about life and is therefore somewhat numb to it all. She is disenchanted by everything around her except for the few men she finds intriguing and the sunrise, which she watches religiously every morning.

I found this story to be an eloquent and authentic commentary on art, love, life and death. Yvonne has loved various men in her life, but at one point in the story she has lunch with her most recent ex-lover and watches him as he is leaving. She sighs and claims that he is the last man she'll ever love because loving requires so much energy and work. This is sort of the attitude she has taken toward everything in life. When people are young and fresh, life appears to be one big exciting possibility. As we live on though, we come to realize that things aren't as magical as they may have initially seemed.

Her ex-lover comments on the fact that Yvonne always has so much energy and nothing ever seems to bother her. She replies by saying that her secret is that she gets up every morning to watch the sun rise. At first, I envisioned the sunrise as a symbol of hope, rebirth and even prosperity, but the end of the story deemed me incorrect. This is the second to last paragraph:

"And yet she knows that her dependence is not on something that can be grasped, held in the hand, kept, but only on an accident of the language, because the sunrise should not be a noun. The sunrise is not a thing, but only an effect of the light caused by the position of two astronomical bodies in relation to each other. The sun does not really rise at all, it's the earth that turns. The sunrise is a fraud."

The sunrise, the one constant thing in Yvonne's life turns out to be a fraud. Yet another thing that she viewed as beautiful and mystical is not at all what she thought it was. This is the overriding theme throughout the story. Everything seems to let Yvonne down: love, art ("though if art sucks and everything is only art, what has she done with her life?"), life and even death. She keeps a razor in her art kit and an abundance of prescription drugs in her bathroom as little reminders that she can commit suicide whenever she wants. In her view, if you don't have control over your own death, how can you ever expect to have control over your life? In the end though, even the thought of suicide lets her down because she finds it "morally distasteful".

I do not really know what to make of the end of the story. The final image is of Yvonne watching the sunrise and deeply inhaling the crisp scene before her. I saw this as a surrender of sorts; the shedding of everything that society forces upon us (ex: unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others).

I would be very interested to see how others have interpreted this text. That is definitely one of the benefits of discussing an author's work in class. Overall though, I really enjoyed the story and it's myriad of deeper meanings. Atwood never fails to leave the reader with an insightful assessment of today's world.

For this assignment I decided to try a Canadian author I hadn’t read before, and after doing a little searching online I found Alice Munro. Munro is known as the Canadian Queen of short fiction and she tells stories about people, mainly women, and their lives.
Munro has published 10 collections of short stories. I chose “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001)” if for no other reason than the title. In this collection I decided to focus on the final story, which bears the same name.
“Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” tells the story of Johanna Parry, a wearisome spinster-like character working in Ontario, who unknowingly gets caught up in a web of lies that will change her life.
The story begins with Johanna shipping furniture out West to Saskatchewan and purchasing a horrid, brown ‘wedding dress.’ The reasons are unknown and Munro tells the story backwards to explain.
Plot: Johanna keeps house for a wealthy man, Mr. McCauley, and his granddaughter, Sabitha, a conniving adolescent. For some reason Johanna has fallen for Sabitha’s deadbeat father, who lives out west and whom Johanna has met only once.
Sabitha and her friend Edith decide to play on this knowledge and begin a false correspondence of love letters between her father and Johanna. The prank culminates with Johanna packing up her things and going west to be with this man who she thinks is in love with her.
Sounds a little soap opera but it really isn’t, just a little hard to condense.
The irony of the story? Johanna travels west and finds Sabitha’s father (Ken) who is deathly ill until she nurses him back to health. Though he has no idea why she has come to see him, he decides she is the change he needs in his life and they marry and have a child.
Needless to say, Sabitha and Edith are stunned by this news and that they have masterminded this outcome.
When I finished the story I was not sure what it was 'about'. But I was amazed at how Munro created so many authentic characters in only 55 pages. I liked the style and flow of her writing which started at the present, worked backward, and then finished with the present-day. She used letters (which fit seamlessly into the plot) to explain Johanna’s past, rather than the character simply reminiscing.
The irony of the story is obvious. Yet the writing doesn’t feel forced and in the end I felt that the story couldn’t have worked out any other way, even though it’s a pretty far-fetched ending.
The story also had elements of meta-fiction that reminded me of “The Diviners.” In the story Edith is writing the love letters to Johanna, and though it is not said outright, she is writing fiction that is shaping reality.
I think one interpretation of the story is about finding happiness. Johanna finds it in the most unlikely place, in a man and a love that is completely ‘fictional’. (Again, what is fiction?)
Also, the title of the story refers to a game that Sabitha plays (I suppose a Canadian version of M.A.S.H –hah remember that), which is based purely on chance. I felt that Munro was saying that the actions you take in life, a.k.a the names you write down, are all that you control. And in the end, chance, fate, or whatever you call it will prevail.
Finally I found this particular story interesting because it ends ‘happily ever after’ with marriage and a baby, and I read that almost all of Munro’s other stories look upon these things as confining for women. Hmm…

Ironically, Paul mentioned the story I chose to read in class today. For anyone who missed it it was Roch Carrier's "The Hockey Sweater". Published in 1979, the story is about a young Quebecois boy who outgrows his favorite beat up hockey jersey, the same one worn by Montreal Canadien Maurice Richard. After discovering that the jersey is falling apart the boy's mother orders him a new one from an English speaking company. Something happens in the shipping process and the boy ends up with a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey instead. The boy stops playing hockey because he does not want to be the only one on the ice NOT wearing a #9 Maurice Richard jersey. Finally, he can't take it anymore and he decides that he needs to play. However, the captain of his team doesn't let him on the ice because of his Leafs jersey.
Carrier starts off by describing the boy's life in his small Quebec town. In school and in church he thinks of nothing but hockey. Carrier writes how "real battles were won on the skating rink. Real strength appeared on the skating rink. The real leaders showed themselves on the skating rink". There is obviously a great sense of pride in the game and it has such strong ties with Canada's identity that it would not be and exaggeration to say that the rink in this story is a metaphor for Canada. This metaphor can be refined by reading on a bit more.
Every boy that plays in the pick-up hockey games wears the same Canadiens jersey. To the boys, Maurice Richard is the greatest player that the sport has ever seen. The fact that he plays for a Quebec team allows the readers to see the rink as not just symbolizing Canada, but Quebec specifically. This makes the boys sporting their Canadiens jerseys a symbol for the Quebecois people. This reading gives the exclusion of Carrier's main character that much more depth. It is more than just children's cruelty, it is a statement of their own identity. They are insistant that English speaking Canada (the boy in the Maple Leafs jersey) should not spoil Quebec, which is deeply rooted in the traditions and lifestyle of the original Frech settlers.
When the boy finally does get a chance to play (only after another boy is hurt) a penalty is immeadiately called on his team for having too many people on the ice. Assuming this penalty is called because on his Toronto jersey, the boy slams his stick on the ice in anger. At this point the vicar of the local church, who has been watching the game, comes up to the boy and tells him that "just because you're wearing a new Toronto Maple Leafs sweater unlike the others, it doesn't mean you make the laws around here". This statement is more evidence for the metaphor of English speaking Canada encroaching on the identity of the Quebecois people.
All in all, I found the story very interesting, and seemingly very politically charged for something that was turned into a children's book and animation sponsered by the National Film Board of Canada. It would be interesting to see how popular all forms of the story are in the different provinces.

I read a story from the Best Canadian Stories series. The story, Men of Salt, Men of Earth by Matt Lennox appeared in the 2006 series. This short story is about a Canadian man named Alan Harvey who travels down to the bush of Australia. In the beginning of the story and throughout the story there are prose sections about hunting boars. These sections are extremely violent and gory in the depiction of hounds taking down a boar. While in the bush, Harvey spends his time with a few friends. His partial deaf friend Vic accompanies Harvey throughout most of the story. One of the first actions of the story is when Vic and Harvey go hunting in the bush. While hunting kangaroos, Harvey’s gun misses his targets because the gun’s shaft is bent a few degrees. Later he and Vic return to the campsite on the sand bar where another friend and his cousins are waiting. While with these friends they pray for their food, and sing songs which often feature Jesus. Harvey keeps looking at one of the girls named Jaye, who he had seen at a wool show before hand. When Harvey is asked why he came to the bush, he cannot provide an answer. Later in the story Vic and Harvey go to church, where Harvey feels out of place and wonders if he is incomplete because he has “no touch of grace”. Later that day Vic and Harvey go to dinner at Tezza and Ashley’s house. Tezza and Ashley have caught a bore and plan on cooking it for dinner. The men bring Vic and Harvey out to the back of the house where the boar is being kept. Ashley hog ties the boar and then lets his 11 year old son shoot the boar. The last passage of the story is when Harvey is laying in bed contemplating the events he has witnessed during the day. He then decides he is glad that his gun didn’t shoot any of the kangaroos.

This story is themed around Canadians abroad. Harvey cannot decide why he has traveled to the bush, but it is apparent to the reader that he is trying to find his faith among other barbaric places in the world. The great emphasis on killing the boar shows how different the Australian life is from that of the Canadian life. Harvey finds grace in the fact that he didn’t kill the kangaroos and that he is not part of such a different, harsh lifestyle. The use of the prose intertwined throughout the story reflects how one must lose their grace while trying to survive in the bush. The emphasis of Christianity shows that these people in the bush aren’t harsh by nature, but that they live in an environment which requires a strong survivor mentality.

For this assignment I chose a short story called The Gun Closet by Thomas Ferris. This short story takes place in a barn on a farm and two brothers are shoveling stalls filled manure. The barn has been neglected for a long time and there is four feet of manure on the ground. The woman has agreed with the two teenage brothers to pay them per truck load of manure that they remove from the barn. The boys have lost their father recently, and it has been very hard on both of them as well as their mother. The short story explains that the boys mother has decided to raise them as liberals now that their father has died because she feels they will benefit more from this then from their fathers conservative upbringing. The boys are very different. The older brother, Brad, is eighteen. He is a cowboy who likes to take chances. Gordon on the other hand, is two years younger and very careful. The boys mother says “there is nothing accidental about Gordon. If Brad killed or maimed anybody (she lived with this possibility every time a gun found its way out of the closet), it would have been an accident. ”
The boys enjoy shooting the three guns around the house to kill rodents on their farm and practice their shooting. At the end of the story, Gordon, trying to kill a chipmunk, spots a red fox in the grass. He instinctively points the rifle at the fox and the fox darts into the shadows after it looks dead into Gordons gun barrel. Gordon, with clamy hands, backs up agains the plaster wall, and shortly after puts the rifle away.
In reading this short story, I was not really sure what was going on until the end of the book. The mother speaks about the boys personalities at the begining of the short story as quoted above. I think that the rifles have a significant meaning, possibly related to the death of the boys father. The focus on rifles and their danger is that is emphasised throughout the story. They also do not mention the way which the boys father passed away, and I think that there are several clues in the book that imply the father was killed in a rifle accident, possibly by one of the boys.
The end of the story where Gordon is not able to kill the fox made me wonder if Gordon possibly killed his father in a rifle accident. It says early in the story that Brad, the older brother, enjoys shooting and is relatively careless with what he shoots. This is probably the most common behavior of a teenage boy on a farm who has open access to a rifle. Gordon on the other hand, is much more cautious then his older brother. Where he is two years younger this seems odd to me, especially where younger brothers tend to idolize and model their older brothers. At the end of the book Gordon is aiming out the window, and finds himself instinctively pointing at a fox. I think this is evidence of what may have happened in the past with the death of their father. Ferris writes “ Gordon has sighted the rifle instinctively in its (the fox) path, before he knows it is a fox”. I think this may have something to do with the death of his father. I picture Gordon hunting out the window as he usualy does, and spotting something out of the corner of his eye. Instinctively he pulls the triger and shoots before he knows what is is. Maybe it was his father. Gordon's conservative behavior around the rifle, and the last two paragraphs of the short story have lead me to believe this. It is odd that Gordon does not take after Brad, his cowboy like brother. This may be due to an accident in the past involving the rifle. Where the father is dead, and the story gives no explanation f or his death, I think it is safe to assume the fathers death may have been because of an “instinctive” rifle accident involving Gordon.

For my short story I chose a story in the series "Best Canadian Stories 2002". "Comedian Tire" by Bill Gaston is about the author himself (I believe) whose older brother has recently suffered a series of massive strokes. Growing up 10 years younger than Ron, he was never very close to him and finds himself reflecting on his brother and the lack of a relationship that they had throughout his life. In between this reflection, his minivan is breaking down in all aspects and he struggles to get it fixed at the local garage since they keep messing up and fixing the wrong parts of the car. This occupies the other half of his mind, while reflecting on his slowly dying brother, and he compares the two since they are both breaking down because of age and how we struggle so hard to fix the two when they age.
He has trouble caring for his brother and being there for him often since he currently lives on an island off of Vancouver and Ron is being taken care of on the mainland. The theme of the story to me is distance and decay. True there is a great physical distance between he and his brother, but also distance in their relationship with each other. He knows that Ron is going to die soon, but he wonders if he really wants to be there for his death. Would Ron be there for him, he wonders. In the end he claims to have a religious experience or a revelation that clears his head and helps him except his brother’s eminent death. His car is dying much like his brother, and he realizes that there are points in life where you just have to except these happens and try not so hard to fix what cannot be fixed.

So I posted the first part on accident, so here is part two: I found this short story interesting because the author struggles to cope with the future of his brother's death but at the same time he is trying to find sympathy for him. All around him is suffering, when in fact he is not suffering very much until his car breaks down and he suddenly has no way to get to his brother. In the beginning he starts out with a Buddhist philosophy that there is no beginning nor end to suffering, that is surrounds us and we must learn to cope with it. So he states that there is no beginning nor end to this story. I view this story as not the author venting his feelings or anything like that but him telling us that he came to a realization that life is filled with suffering, sometimes much of it comes all at once. But there is a humor to it, as he says, that I cannot quite understand, but I do understand and agree with his notion that we must learn to live with suffering, coping is normal, but realization is peace.

Sandra Birdsell- Night Travellers

Sandra Birdsell, a Manitoba native, writes about life as a Métis. In her short story, Night Travellers, the main character, Maki, is a woman struggling with a failing marriage and an affair. While she and her husband both betray each other each night, she battles with her emotions, trying to decipher what is right, what is wrong, and what she wants. Within this story, Birdsell is able to share certain aspects of her culture including family relations and religion, and she also reveals the desire to run away from her heritage and find simplicity with a new love.
Immediately in the story Maki’s father confronts her about sneaking away each night. Even in adulthood with children of her own, her parents are still very involved in her life and they live close together, taking care of each other and creating a community. Through this confrontation, we also see how religion plays a large role in their lives. Maki’s father instructs her to beg God’s forgiveness, and while Maki acts as if she doesn’t care, inside she questions whether God could really forgive her if she is not sure she is sorry for what she’s done.
Maki’s affair symbolizes her escape from her traditional lifestyle. James, her lover, is a British man on a temporary visit to Manitoba. He steals her away from the riverside and shows her the city, passion, and a life without responsibility. Maki is tempted by this, considering her own husband also doesn’t even come home at night, but in the end she realizes that home is where she belongs.
Birdsell shares her own fears and values through her writing. The fictional story allows us an insight into life as a Métis, using a situation that allows the main character to question her morals and where she belongs in the world.

Witchcraft by Lily Dougall

Lilly Dougall was born in Montreal and lived in England and Scotland, she held the belief that fiction is a vehicle for ideas and she used this to convey her stance of Christian Moral reform by placing the protagonist in a cmplicated moral situation.
Witchcraft is a short story set in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. A young theological student, minister, from Montreal comes to the town and while at tea with a local family he hears stories of a lack of milk from the family cows. The family hesitantly attributes this to witchcraft, of which there are numerous rumors. The minister has affection for the daughter of the family, Miss Torrance so he pursues the matter, despite his vehement disbelief in witchcraft. The minister, blinded by his affection, aides in carrying out a remedy of witchcraft to heal the cow of its ailments.The most interesting part of the story is how Dougall draws a parallel between an outsider, from Montreal; and the contrast of faiths. There are no harsh feelings towards the minister, but you can tell that he sees the people of Cape Breton as a little ignorant and old fashioned. He finds their beliefs in witchcraft to be ludicrous yet he is blinded by a pleasure of the flesh, which as minister is not proper. One passage in particular lends a picture of a separation from the rest of Canada that the Cape Bretons embrace.
“… the long arm of the sea turned to red and gold in the light of the clouds which the sun had left behind when it sank down over the distant region that the Cape Breton folk call Canada.”

La chasse-galerie by Roch Carrier
Well I took this opportunity to read a short story in a genre that I haven't explored in many, many years: the children's story. Call it a bit of a cop-out, but I haven't read a children's book in a number of years, and wanted to see how all of this literary theory and analysis applied to the genre. It didn't. Either way, the story that I chose was “The Flying Canoe” by famed Quebec writer Roch Carrier. This story is based on the legend of the same name immortalized by Honoré Beaugrand in 1892. In summary, a group of lumberjacks working in the area north of the Ottawa River make a pact with the devil to return to Montreal/Lavaltrie/Beauce (depending on the legend) on New Year’s Eve to celebrate and see their girlfriends. The devil will provide the men with a birchbark canoe that can fly them to their destination on the conditions that the men must not swear nor can they touch any church steeples while traveling. The men agree not to drink rum, which would muddy their minds and cause them to break the pact. Despite their agreement, the men have a rousing night of drinking and have difficulty steering the canoe back, nearly crashing into a number of steeples, causing them to swear, which breaks both rules. The devil never collects their souls. This tale has become a part of Canadian culture and folklore because it deals with a few points of Canadian life. First, it references the hard-working settlers who experienced awful conditions while cutting timber in one of Canada’s economic staples. Second, it deals with the French-Canadian propensity for being religious, both with the pact with the devil and the church rule. Finally, it’s somewhat of a cautionary tale for lumberjacks during that era (this tale evolved in the mid-19th century, contemporary to the men it described) for the dangers of rum. The popularity of this tale has caused it to last over 150 years, now well known by youths across Quebec. While the book was devoid of any depth, it was interesting to read a children’s book from a college student’s perspective, as well as relating the tale to aspects of Canadian history and culture.

“Death by Scrabble” is a short story written by Charlie Fish. In this story a husband and wife are spending their evening playing scrabble in their home. As the story continues the game begins to come alive. As they play each consecutive word, a new phenomenon occurs. The words that they are playing in the game begin to come true. As the husband plays the word “explode,” the air conditioner explodes in front of his eyes. He then begins to imagine coming up with a word to kill his wife. He is consumed by the idea that he now has the power to commit this crime without having to dirty his hands.

This story immediately drew me in. It seemed to be written in stream of consciousness, which I find to be a very interesting form. We see the entirety of the story through the eyes of the somewhat disturbed husband. You really connect with this man and see the way he truly feels about his wife. He is determined that she must die by the end of the story and tries to do everything in his power to make this happen. What I find to be the most interesting is that he fails to realize his wife is catching on. He assumes that he has the power and that he will win in the end and kill her. What we really see is that she succeeds before he has even come close to harming her. In the end his desire to kill his wife clouded his vision to the point where he was no longer paying attention to what was really happening. This story, while disturbing, had a very clear storyline and style. It was extremely easy to follow and fun to read. I would be interested to see what other stories Charlie Fish has written and whether they are similar to this one. One question I was left with was why the husband didn’t just walk away from the game. He could only talk about how much he hated his wife, yet he continued to spend all of his time with her. It did not make sense at all. His only though was of murder and not of getting away from her. I guess I will never know why this happened and he didn’t just walk away. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this story. It was able to draw the reader in very quickly and relay an interesting and unique story.

I decided to write about an author that was new to me. I stumbled upon Barry Callaghan. He was born in 1937 in Toronto and went to the University of Toronto. He has also written poetry along with short stories and novels. I read The Black Queen.
The story was set in Toronto Canada. The basic plot was two males who were living together and shared their lives together. They were romantically involved. The two men are Hughes and McCrae and they have been seeing one another for about ten years. They are proud of their lives together and do not seem like they let outside influences change their relationship and feelings towards one another. They have been living together for quite a while and witness the changes in society towards homosexuality in the 1970’s.
I am a psychology major and I felt that this was a much a case study as a short story. It was about two men struggling to enjoy a homosexual relationship. From what I noticed their relationship and interaction was not significantly different than that of a heterosexual couple. They shared the same interest in collecting stamps, they both took pride in their old colonial house, they both blamed the other for their sudden increase in age, and they joked about bringing another man into the bed to change things sexually. These men were obviously deeply in love and they held true to their values which kept their love so strong. One thing that stuck me as slightly depressing was how they always celebrated Mother’s Day with other male couples. At this time I don’t believe that homosexual couples can raise children so they will not be able to celebrate this holiday. They claimed it always ended bitter sweetly, but left them closer than ever.

Reading Sky Gilbert’s short novel, Guilty is literally a guilty pleasure. From the first line, “It seems to me that I must have killed someone” to the last I was absolutely intoxicated. It is not the gratuitous sex and violence, though I definitely enjoyed that. It’s the way the story’s told. The narrator Jack is a successful drag queen/actor/gay activist who may or may not have killed someone. He leads his life the way he wants to and feels guilty for it. A life led without shame is not a life free from guilt. Jack confesses his crimes, real and imagined, as though the reader is the priest in a confessional and he is the sinner. Like a priest, the reader reserves the right to forgive or condemn Jack.

Jack reasons there are two types of gay people in the world, the “out-and-out sleazebags. And then there’s the ‘nice people’.” (52) The sleazebags embrace their sexuality as well as their perversity and wear it on their sleeves. The ‘nice people’ are usually hypocrites because they hide their perversities and scorn others. Jack takes the position of a sleazebag. Knowing people have a habit of comparing themselves to others in an effort to look better, he willingly accepts the role of “other”.

Jack also reasons that there are two types of people (regardless of sexuality) in the world: “those who are guilty and those who are free.” (145) You can be either a sleazebag or a ‘nice person’ and feel guilty or innocent. You don’t have to commit a crime to feel guilty about it and you don’t necessarily feel guilty if you commit a crime. Jack is a guilty sleazebag. He has crazy sexual fetishes and usually carries them out, struggling with guilt over them all the while. When he commits a more serious crime, he suddenly finds his guilt is justified, and he is free.

In looking for a short story I stumbled upon Gator by Robert J. Sawyer. This story is about a man searching for the alligators that have long been believed to live in the sewers of New York City. He becomes interested after a sewer worker was attacked in the sewer and they find a tooth embedded in his leg. He enters the sewers with only a flashlight in the hopes of finding the creatures. As the story continues, we find that the tooth they found was not actually that of an alligator, but it more closely resembled that of a dinosaur. The character, Ludlum, becomes obsessed with finding these creatures in the sewer to see if dinosaurs really survived the extinction. In searching the sewers he soon realizes that the electrical energy from the skyscrapers has actually has something to do with this phenomenon. He finally finds what he has been looking for. It is a tyrannosaurus living in the sewer and as he places his hand on the side of the animal he is transported to a different place. The energy from the skyscrapers has created a portal to another time and he finds himself in the time of the dinosaurs.
This story is obviously a work of science fiction from one of Canada’s most well known science fiction writers. The story does not follow a clearly chronological path. It begins at a certain time and place and then continues on with a flashback. It continues in this back and forth pattern until the very end. In this way he does not have to give away the turning point of the story in the beginning. He can drag us along and give away the point of the story at a later time. Sawyer employs a great deal of detail to draw the reader’s attention and pull them into the story. He allows us to see a different time and place than where we find ourselves today. It this attraction to the unknown that makes the story more interesting to the reader.
What I found most interesting about this story was the way the author presented it to the reader. He preyed on our interest in a well known myth about New York City. He then moved from something that may be a part of our reality to something completely outside of it. He allowed us to become comfortable with the story of the alligators in the sewer and then switches the story to something completely unbelievable. At the end of the story, however, you are left wanting something more. You want to know what happens to the author when he is in the time of the dinosaurs and whether or not he is going to survive. It is this desire for more that allows you to be interested until the very end. I really enjoyed reading this story, while it may have been outside of the genre that I am normally interested in reading.

For this short story I chose to read Flame Retardant by Micheal McPherson. This story takes place in the village of Lost River, which is currently trapped by a forest fire. The two characters we meet, Kenny and Sarah find their only transport out of the town to be a Bobcat Bulldozer with one of them riding in the front bucket. Worst of all however, the fire has reached the only dirt road leading out of the village and to the highway. The characters bravely find their way through the fire to safety in the end. I thought that this short story contained many elements that I look for in a short story. It was exciting and to the point, not stopping to dwell on elements that were unneccesary to the progress of the story. The story was also told as if the writer was right there in the fire with them and you could feel the sense of urgency, fear and helplessness that is felt when trapped by fire in the words of the writer because he was very careful to choose words that properly fit the situation at hand. In the end he culminated the story by making the characters escape of the fire seem like a great triumph and a trip to a whole new world where there are no problems and nothing can hurt you, much like you would feel after ‘battling’ with a fire and finally finishing the deed. Reading this portion of the story felt much like the high of an adrenaline rush and is one of the better descriptors I have read of how it feels to come out of a fire alive.

Looking for a short story by a Canadian author was both challenging and interesting. I stumbled upon many short stories all of which were well written and deserving of this paper. But the one story that I read and that really caught my attention was a story written in the 1940's by Sinclair Ross. His story "The Lamp at Noon" was an excellent short story.

It is set on the prairie in Canada during the depression, and although the story is only 12 pages long and only takes place over the course of half a day, it is very rich in the way that it depicts the life of Paul and Ellen and their baby. It had been five years that Ellen and Paul had been married and they had worked hard to make a go of their farm. But like so many farmers during the depression, their crops failed, money was non existant, the land once green and full of crops was a barren, desert wasteland. When a three day dust storm hits the prairie, Ellen, afraid for her baby's life, begs Paul to leave before something terrible happens. Feeling as though leaving would be giving up, Paul insists that they stay and work through the "soon to be over" tough times. This results in a huge argument between Paul and Ellen, with false and hurtful accusations flying at each other. I can not say more about the book because doing so would ruin the ending of the story, which did and didn't take me by surprise.

I think what makes this story so interesting is the fact that you don't feel like it takes place in Canada. You feel as though you are reading about a young family in the United States who were suffering similar hardships with their crops. I had never really thought about this taking place in Canada, so it was interesting in that respect. It was also interesting because it is a very well written story with not a whole lot of dialog between the characters, but there is a lot of charater thought that both Paul and Ellen have, which gives both characters a sense of being "real" and in depth in their thougths and emotions towards what is happening to them. This short story is a phenomenal piece of literature, one which I would strongly reccomend to anyone at any age to read, both for its historical content, and for the rich literary way in which it is written.

I am a big fan of short stories and was very excited when this assignment was presented. The Hockey Sweater is a story by Roch Carrier that I have been familiar with since a young age. I first discovered the book at the Dumerston Vermont home of my grandmother who is a french canadian. I knew that I wanted to cover this story from the moment that I went into the library and remembered that this story was an option for the assignment.

The Hockey Sweater is the story of a boy from Quebec who is a die-hard Montreal Canadians fan. He, like most other boys in his area loves the team, and especially loves Maurice Richard, a star right-winger for the Canadians. Richard was a goal scorer and was nicknamed The Rocket and was one of the most beloved Canadians of all time. Comedic descriptions of the boy and all his friends playing hockey, all sporting the Richard # 9 jersey are what I remember the most from my childhood readings of the story. One day the boy's mother decides that his jersey is too small and ripped for him to wear any more. She is worried people will think that her family is poor.

She orders him a new one from a magazine, knowing how excited he will be. The order is messed somehow and the boy ends up with a brand new Maple Leafs Jersey. He is extremely embarassed of this jersey for the Leafs are a team that is hated by any Canadians fan. A favorite part of mine is when the boy's mother tries to explain to him that it is not the jersey on his back, but the tenacity in his head that makes him who he is. He wants nothing to do with this concept. He identifys so strongly with the Canadians that he doesn't know what to do without his beloved jersey. He stops playing hockey for a while because he is too embarassed to sport this monstrosity of a jersey. When he finally gets up the courage to show up at a game he is not allowed to play because of his jersey.

He finally plays because one of the boys is injured, but is hassled by people because of his jersey. Instead of the ending being happy, the boy ends up in church praying that his sweater will be eaten by moths. I found this hilarious, for it shows how dedicated many Canadians are to the game of ice hockey. This boy cares for nothing but hockey and despises his jersey. I can mildly relate to this through my love of the Red Sox, but my team worship is not as powerful as this boys.

This story shows the importance of fitting in and of personal identity as a young person. It also shows Canada's love for hockey; how it rules the life of both the young and the old. It is the national pastime and this is clearly displayed in the story. This story also shows the way that children will pick on the weakest in the pack. This boy was viewed as the weakest because of his mismatched jersey. I enjoyed re-reading this story very much.

For this assignment, I read “Spring Songs of the Frogs,” which is a short story by Margaret Atwood. The story centers around a main character called Will, and offers an episodic view of his world, through a series of glimpses at interactions with various people in his life. Through these interactions and the dynamics between Will and the other characters, who are all women, Atwood not only offers un an intriguing perspective on Will’s life, but also an evocative commentary on contemporary society.

For me, what was most striking about the story was its deconstruction of the main character, Will, as well as the three women with whom we see him interact. Atwood’s aptitude for dialogue allows her to touch on weighty issues while not straying from a sense of realism, which lends to the voyeuristic pleasure in imagining these private, yet everyday moments. This lack of pretense combined with the lack of pretext created by Atwood’s direct style just drops us into the lives of the characters and it is this sense of proximity to their lives that gives their problems real gravitas. For example, Will’s anxiety about the declining health of his niece, Cynthia, due to an eating disorder or Will’s own issues with his divorce and his sense of place, which seems to be in flux, just like his current relationship.

Atwood offers insightful commentary on the modern human experience without shoving it in the reader’s face. Our glimpse into Will’s life, as a series of independent encounters that all influence each other, offers some poignant existential implications and typifies Atwood’s view on modernity.

The story that I picked was "The Grave of the Famous Poet," by Margaret Atwood, one of my favorite writers. In this story, an unnamed couple travels to a small town to see, obviously, the grave of a famous, also unnamed poet. This ends up being a fairly small part of the trip, and they explore other parts of the town as well.

The story is largely about the interplay between the couple, and their deteriorating relationship, but I admit to finding most of these scenes confusing and uninteresting. What I enjoyed about the story was something that was discussed relatively little: the peculiar nature of the small town, that all aspects of it seem morbid, connected with death in some way. Most obviously, the town is only noteworthy, only ever traveled to because of the poet's grave. The bed and breakfast the couple stays at is situated very close to the cemetery, obviously meant solely for the trickle of tourists that come to see the grave site. The couple is very aware of the morbidity of their trip, the narrator whispering to her hostess to ask for directions, as though the request is embarrassing or obscene. The hostess simply smiles and tells her that the cemetery is clearly visible from their window, confirming further that their lodging is meant for those who are there to visit a dead man. In this way, the town is somewhat sustained by death.

Other areas of the town seem as dead as the poet, such as the castle on the shore and the poet's former home that the couple explores. Both of these places, like the bed and breakfast, were clearly luxurious in their time, but are now crumbling, empty, and decrepit. The castle is particularly eerie, huge and empty, though the narrator says that she can see how it was once lived in be "real people." Falling apart and heavily vandalized, the couple clearly feels a presence of some kind, whispering when they talk, even though there is nobody nearby to hear them. It is almost as though the castle is haunted somehow. Whether it is is up for debate, but both places are clear symbols of the town's connection with death, that which has moved on, things that though they are absent still provide sustenance to those still living.

Much of the story, as I said earlier, has more to do with the dynamics between the couple than with death, and these were the areas that I found dull or confusing, neither of which I usually find myself associating with Atwood's writing. However, what was intriguing was very much so, a commentary I have never seen the like of on the relationship between the living and the dead.

The story I chose to write about for my alternate assignment to the Ottawa trip was "A short History of Indians in Canada" by Thomas King which is in the collection of short stories with the same name. I am familiar with his work as I read both "The Truth about Stories" and "Green Grass, Running Water" for Paul's English 182 class last spring which dealt with First Nations writers. King was particularly interesting to me as his writings were all dealing with serious subject matter yet still were funny about it, his philosophy being to me that why cry if one can laugh? The story was about a man named Bob who was staying in a hotel in Toronto and can't sleep so he asks the doorman what's going on in the city and is directed towards Bay Street. There, he witnesses "flocks of Indians" smacking into the various skyscrapers and two city workers bagging the dead ones or tagging the live ones. Basically, the Indians are like migratory birds in this story. Further, they say that you can tell the differences amongst the tribes by "their feathers" and commenting on how they'd clean up "by the time the Commuters show up". The story ends with Bob going back to his hotel. I think this story is an allegory for the history of Native and Foreign relations since first contact centuries ago. The Europeans saw the Indians as not much higher than animals on the evolutionary ladder and thus treated them as such by taking their land, giving them diseases, outright slaughtering them and so on. The line about how you can tell the by "their feathers" furthers this idea. Also, when the two city workers say they've tried to install brighter lights in the buildings so the Indians don't fly into them shows how white people act as if they only try to help the Natives instead of the fact that we are who wrought the majority of their problems on them. The last line of the book, when the doorman comments how the Indians used to "black out the sky" in earlier days. This is representative of the ever declining population of First Nation peoples as their lots in today's society are consistently worsening. King is truly a champion of his people and I hope to read more of his stuff in the future.

The story I have chosen is titled "Distance" by Eyad Hamam. The story is about Hamza, a Muslim man who has moved from the Middle East to Canada. He was told that he would never get used to the cold and asked by his family to observe his religion and that he would feel at home in the local Mosque. Since moving he had not visited a Mosque but his friend Ali has asked him to go for Ramadan.

The story ends with, "'Brr...I hate the weather in this country," he [Ali] says looking up at the sky and hurrying towards the metro. Hamza smiles and looks up into the falling snow. He strains his eyes to watch the snowflakes land on the tip of his nose and melt, then hurries after his friend."

I was surprised by the ending but really enjoyed it. This last part is what made me really think what the story was about because I was not expecting it. It made me think that Hamza missed his culture and religion, especially because he showed up at the Mosque after food and for the prayer, which Ali thought he would come for food and leave quickly before the prayer started. Everyone told him that he was going to quickly hate the cold but after it had come and gone he realized that it was not as bad as everyone had made it out to be. I think he really enjoyed proving people wrong and unlike Ali he enjoyed the snow that was falling and the cold weather and enjoyed going to the Mosque for prayer.

Walker Brother’s Cowboy by Alice Munro

I immediately chose to read this short story by Alice Munro after I did some research and heard a lot of high praise for Alice Munro as a fiction writer. The story is about a young girl, whose family lives in a place called Tuppertown, a poor town in Canada. It is a time of national struggle with the economy, similar to the United States at this time, (the 1930’s), and her family has recent lost the farm that they own. The father now works for Walker Brother’s, delivering numerous necessities for farms on his route. One time, the father takes the narrator, (his daughter), and his son on a route. He ends up visiting an old friend, and they dance and drink whisky. The stories ends as they pick up licorice, and drive home in silence.

This was a very simple story, but a great read. It actually fed off of the simplicity by telling a story that didn’t overcomplicate things, rather told the story in a way that provided a very realistic look at this snapshot of a families life. While the family has fallen on hard times, it shows the power of a positive attitude, as the fathers positive attitude, making up songs about his route and calling himself the Walker Brother’s Cowboy, and simply laughing off an incident in which someone accidentally pours urine on him, really translates to how his family looks at things. His wife is not as positive, yet the power of the father to hold this family together through hard times in the way that he has is a testament to a good attitude. What this is, which makes this particularly interesting, is a snapshot in the life of a family. The span of the story is not very long, yet it is astounding how much can be learned by experiencing these characters in a small moment of their life. It is likely to get better, and worse for this family, as life goes, and to come in at this particular time, and to be included in the way that this family has handled their hardships is quite interesting and makes for an enjoyable experience.

By using the tried and true method of opening a short story anthology to a random page, I selected "A Wedding-Dress" by Morley Callaghan, collected in The Best Modern Canadian Short Stories (1978 ed.).

After reading only one page, I liked Callaghan's writing. It's concise, but not dry, with just enough roughness around the edges to keep the reader interested.

"A Wedding-Dress" is the story of Miss Lena Schwartz, a thirty-two year old spinster, her character judged immediately, because of this, by everyone she meets. She is not without hope though, and has been waiting for Sam, her lover, to secure himself a good enough job so that they might be wed. When he does, she swiftly plans her move to Windsor, celebrating with a trip to the department store to spend $25 on a wedding dress-- a dress versatile enough for regular Sunday use, as well as a wedding. But her budget proves too small for her taste, and for her ambitious desire to please Sam's taste-- she must look beautiful enough so that he will feel proud to be with her. Almost mechanically, however uncharacteristically, while browsing through more expensive French dresses she steals one, tucking it into her coat sleeve. She is followed home by a store detective and arrested, missing her planned departure time the next morning. Sam, though, proves a faithful partner when he comes to her arraignment the next day ready to pay for the dress and a fine if necessary.

This story deals with the concept of self-perception and how a weakened self-image can create difficult, trying issues for a person (often, as Callaghan seems to illustrate, through no fault of their own). After doing only a minimal amount of research of Callaghan, I noticed that he held several law degree (L.L.B., L.L.M., L.L.D.), in addition to being a prominent author, so it didn't surprise me to see him use the court room as a type of laboratory for playing out his own social experiments.

Admittedly, I have never heard of Morley Callaghan before, but his interesting personal history, combined with this tasty writing sample and definitely enough to make me read him again.

The short story I read was called “Railroad” by Michael McPherson. Considering it’s a rarity for me to read anything from the mystery/horror genre this was a good choice because even though it included a scene about guts “steaming” in the air, I didn’t feel as though it was something I had to stop reading because I couldn’t handle the gore.

I think the message of this story was the importance of time in the process of making a decision.
The character that McPherson writes about is named Kenny, he appears to be the main character in most, if not all of his short stories. What I found to be most interesting about the short story was the style in which it is written, it is very different from all of the authors styles we read in class this semester. Yet after reading “Railroad” I would have to think twice before picking up another on of his short stories, nothing against the author personally, I just have never truly enjoyed reading short stories. For me short stories always seem to be written in a style such that the author is holding back on what they want to say. I also feel that with short stories it’s much more difficult to feel any type of connection with the characters since because the story is too short to include any extra ‘fluff’ that gives the character a personality. The reason I am going off on this tangent about short stories is because after reading “Railroad” I never felt any sort of connection with Kenny, aside from the few details McPherson includes in the story I was unable to identify with him.

I also chose to read "The Hockey Sweater" by Roch Carrier. I remembered the story from my childhood, it was one of those books I got from my grandmother one Christmas. Being part French Canadian I grew up spending a lot of time in Montreal visiting family and I have been a huge fan of the Montreal Canadians for as long as I can remember. In this story the young boy is forced to replace his old, tattered #9 Canadians jersey with a Toronto Maple leafs jersey that he gets by accident. I felt that I could definitely relate to this story, growing up in southern Maine I played pond hockey and league hockey all winter. Being so close to Boston, all of my friends were Bruins fans and I was a die hard fan of their sworn rivals. I loved wearing my Canadians jersey to pond hockey games but would inevitably receive quite a bit crap for it, especially from the older kids. The major difference is I chose to wear the disliked jersey and he was forced to wear the jersey of a team he didn't like. This is a touching story and its prevalence in Canada speaks volumes about how integral a part of Canadian life hockey is.

What a great assignment. Anything that gets people reading and thinking about what they read, is a good project.