Fiction Packet 3

These are all very interesting stories. Very different than what I am used to. It seemed that a lot of them were maybe written in a  different language and then translated. So they are not American stories.

The first story, When It Rains, It Rains a River, was very repetitive. It used the words, "brother", "mud", and " girl" a lot. The sentences were also repetitive, for example, "we fish, when it rains, and us brothers, in the rain, fishing like this, this makes the earth turn t mud". the story seems to take awhile to move on because it does repeat a lot of words and phrases. However, because it does repeat, it was difficult for me to focus on the content and I'm not even sure what the story was about. I know there was a girl that the boys made and there things they did like when she turned into a "cave"and they made her all muddy. The Singing Fish was another part of the story and that one was even more confusing because it started talking about words and then about talking fish. It was definitely different.

I liked the The Falling Girl most of all because the language was a little easier to understand, however, the content made you think a little harder. My thought was that the girl was committing suicide and she was jus seeing what she was missing out on either in her past or her future. I thought it was interesting and different twist that she was an older woman at the bottom floors but only in a matter of one night. The time was a really difficult thing to understand because it was only one night and she was just trying to make it to the party at the bottom on time. At the end, the older man even says you can't hear her thud so it makes you wonder if she actually fell or if she stopped herself and took someones help.

The story, August 25, 1983, was very interesting. the man was seeing himself as an older man who was dying because he committed suicide. The old man told the young version of himself all about their life but told him they wouldn't remember it because it was all a dream. My question is if he really was dreaming because he never really wakes up. I thought maybe he really is dying and the old man is hallucinating. There are so many ways you can interpret the story though.

The last story was also very interesting. I didn't quite get it. I did not understand why there were different titles that had different stories behind them. It got very repetitive o it was not a story I necessarily enjoyed. The language was very different, however and I kind of liked that aspect. One part that stuck out to me was when she said, "in my craving to encounter the statues which my perspiring night has erected". She uses language that has multiple meanings and it makes you read twice.