Reading Response 4: A Story About the Body

I was shocked at the superficiality of the boy in this story. I was expecting him to have compassion for this woman who he was so called in love with. He basically had none for her. He asked no questions, showed no concern and just walked away from her in the end. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

In the reading before the story, it talked about how every poem or short story is motivated by trouble, not perfection. A perfect day isn’t a good story. This particular day for this woman was a tragedy. She was an innocent elderly lady who happened to go through some things that altered her physical appearance, but not her personality. She had her eye on the prize (the boy) and she was going to get it which is why she approached him in such an assuring way. I, as many other readers, presumed that he felt the same way from what he’d been saying about her. He liked the way she moved and talked and he was interested in her which is why he showed up at her door. (Notice how all of the things he described about her were physical.) I am, as a reader, left dazed and confused as to why the idea of her not having breasts is a turn off for a man in love. Obviously this man is naïve to what love truly is.

This was an example of what the Story & Revision passage was saying about there always being a character on a journey somewhere and once arrived they come to the realization that it wasn’t what they were expecting. In this case, that seems to be true. In his mind, he made her out to be a vision of perfection, but no one’s perfect. When he made that discovery, his dreams were shattered.

In the end, when she left the dead bees with rose petals on top in the bowl on his porch, I felt satisfaction. I feel like it was symbolic of his character. He had neither compassion nor wisdom when dealing with relationships, therefore he was superficial. He presented himself well on the outside, but he was dead on the inside, just like the bowl of dead bees.