Response 2 Character & Setting

I have to say that I really, really enjoyed the reading for this week. All of the short stories were fun, but I'll just focus on the three that had the most impact on me: Thread, Prue and the Werewolf.
My classes at Mason stressed close reading above everything else, so I found it pretty easy to pick up on a lot Burroway discusses in terms of character and dialogue. However, Carter's story, although fascinating, really made me feel like I was missing something.

Little Red Riding Hood's revenge is all I could write in my book, until the last couple of paragraphs where I scribbled in "wow." I really hope we talk about this one in depth in class.

Now for Thread, which, for me, is filled with close read juiciness; as well as the "character as conflict," that Burroway discusses, in addition to the discussion about the way in which character relates to setting. It seems as if Dybek leaves no opportunity to provide us with subtle information unexploited. I could predict the character's resolution/ end of the story just by interpreting and analyzing Dybek's word choice.

For one thing, the character starts off by informing us that his younger self joined a group that pretty much all the other boys did, which translated as: he is a sheep or part of the heard. When he describes his location "sunless concrete," immediately read to me as the character being in a position of mental density, or being "not so bright." The way the nun is described conveys her authority over the boys (the matriarch), and everthing the narrator describes himself as having to do also suggests this. Even his description of the boys' voices speak to the impressionable nature of the protagonist. His naitivite is described in the phrase, "mystery made perfect sense to me."

The alcoholic Father suggests tension, just as lightening flashing through the stained glass angels informs us that something major is about to happen. The whole story was dripping with foreshadowing: the way the boy tries so hard to stop the unravelling, the way he thought he would taste one thing after swallowing the thread and got another, the way he "broke," and he was tryign to "test if the balance" (or the relationship between the thread that symbolizes religion and himself) has changed, or whether he is instead off-balance. I like that Dybek let me play a kind of guessing game with his story.

With Prue, the character herself is so intricate and awesome. She is described as having these traits that, most people (at least I do) notice and appreciate in others, but that for some reason do no get talked about; like the fact that she is so good at making peopel feel good with her "bizarre" uninstensity. Authorial interpretation is at work combined with the a narration that informs us of who Prue is by taking on a voice that like Prue, doesn't really want to make anything into a big deal.

That's another thing I found interesting: the "phenomenon of desire," and asking what does the character want? With Prue, I honestly have no idea beyond the fact that maybe she enjoys coasting through life as opposed to being emotional or dramatic. But that's why I love her as a character, because she is so intersting in the way the author described her, and the weird habit of stealing things that mean nothing to her.

One more thing I almost forgot to mention; I didn't really find anything about the setting chapter to be that informative. It seems obvious to me that where you put your character matters and that how they relate to that place is indicative of what's going on...