"Coming Home Again" by Chang-rae Lee

 "Are they sleeping? Or kissing? Are they all right?"

This story, while written as a straightforward narrative, has a lot to say about the parent-child relationship and the concept of growing up. The narrator is a good representation of the child in our modern world, especially one of non-white parentage. He progresses through his life aiming for success - leaving home for school at age fifteen -  and not really looking back until later. That's not to say it was his fault; his mother sent him to school, and he went along with it. In order to survive in this world, you have to adapt yourself to society's expectations and standards, and staying with your parents is not one of them. This is something with which the mother struggles throughout the story, and that the narrator discovers after the fact. Parents often will hide their struggles with you growing up, and choose your success over their desire to remain a family. The child only finds out about this after he or she grows up. "Coming Home Again" does a great job showcasing that dynamic.

The quote above is the last line in the piece, and it shows how the narrator still doesn't fully understand how his parents feel. His mother was upset by seeing her child go off and be without her, and his father was too. The narrator, being the child, is unable at this point to fully understand the depth of his parents' feeling of loss at him leaving. He primarily saw Exeter as his path to society and success. 

Another interesting theme in this piece is that of breaking gender stereotypes. There are multiple instances of unexpected actions based on gender. Near the beginning, the mother says to her son that he should go outside, because the kitchen wasn't his place. Later, though, the son is the one doing all the cooking. Instead of becoming the man who can't be seen cooking, he looked up to his mother and aspired to be like her, despite the stereotypes. There was also the basketball scene, where the son expects his mother to go play with his sister, but instead she shows him her basketball skills. Again, we find broken gender boundaries. This seems to exemplify how the son sees his mother. She is not confined or defined by the expected rules of her gender; she is his mother, and more well-rounded than that. 

As a whole, this is a lovely and nostalgic piece. As a reader, I could feel its authenticity and its relevance, despite my life not being much like this man's. It's written in such a way that anyone could connect it to their own life.

"The Cariboo Café" by Helena Viramontes

"Because we are going home. My son and I."

Out of all the stories I've read, this one is written in possibly the most unique perspective. It shifts between three first-person characters -- Sonya, the owner of the café, and the mother -- and a third-person narrator. Each character tells a part of the story, never chronologically overlapping. What makes this shifting of perspectives interesting, though, is the information that Viramontes leaves out in each perspective. We start with Sonya, and are told about her and her brother walking around the city and ending up in the café. Then, we are told from the perspective of the café owner about a little girl and boy with a woman, whom he presumes to be their mother. There are hints that the kids are Sonya and Macky, such as their age and her protectiveness, but we have no idea who the woman is -- she seems to have appeared from nowhere. This makes it all the more interesting when the café owner finds out that the kids have been reported missing. 

With gaps of information like that one, the story is told without directly being told. We are told about two kids lost in the city, about a café owner's moral dilemma, and about a mother's longing for her son, and we must connect the dots to figure out what is actually happening.

The detail I find most interesting is the mother's conviction that Macky is her son, Geraldo. We know that she is desperate to get her son back, but the question the story doesn't answer is whether or not she is aware that Macky is not her son. My interpretation is that she is aware, but is very delusional in her misery and chooses to ignore that fact. She has a gap in her life that can only be filled by her son, and conveniently, these two children, one of them a boy her son's age, happen to be wandering nearby. The mother is a very interesting character in this way; she is so deeply devoted to her delusions that she fights with the police over a little boy she doesn't actually know. It makes an interesting statement about the lengths to which people will go to heal heartbreak -- pretty damn far. The quote above is one that really hit me, and defines the mother's character well. All she wants is for her and her son to go home. The minor detail that Macky is not her son is irrelevant, because she is so desperate. It's sad and a bit crazy at the same time. 

True to its indirect style, the story leaves the ending open. You get the feeling that the mother has lost, but what will she do next? Will she simply continue looking for a replacement Geraldo? Will she herself get taken away by the police? And what about Sonya and Macky? My question from the start was why they were wandering in the first place -- did their parents forget them? Clearly there was somebody waiting for them, since the news that they were missing went out so quickly, but why were they alone in the first place?

"Seventeen Syllables" by Hisaye Yamamoto

"Rosie, covering her face, began at last to cry, and the embrace and consoling hand came much later than she expected."

This story paints an interesting picture of the effect that parents have on their children. The story starts off showing the disconnect between Rosie and her mother; their speaking different native languages is representative of their differing lifestyles and views. Throughout the story, Rosie witnesses trouble between her parents; her father does not very much approve of her mother's deep interest in haiku. What makes this conflict more interesting, though, is the fact that during all of this, Jesus reveals feelings for Rosie.

Rosie is very unclear and probably unsure as to whether or not she reciprocates Jesus' feelings. She runs away after he kisses her, and hides from him the next day when they are working. At first glance, this seems like a basic reaction to the girl's first romantic encounter, but the unsureness could also be representative of confusion caused by her parents' rocky relationship. 

Then, at the end, Rosie's mother tells her the unhappy story of how she ended up with her husband, and tells her never to marry, leading into the quote at the top of this post. Upon seeing that Rosie didn't quite agree with her mother's views, the mother comforts her daughter, but reluctantly. She had hoped she could pass on her wisdom as well as her language, but neither seemed to get through to Rosie, and that disappoints her.

Rosie's unsureness in her potential relationship with Jesus could have been caused by her parents' less-than-perfect relationship, exemplifying and somewhat serving as an allegory for the way the lives of the parents can influence those of their children.

The story also raises a question of art versus productivity, and different viewpoints of the world. Rosie's father shows strongly work-oriented opinions and values, while her mother places a strong value on the art of haikus. The two cannot seem to agree to disagree on the subject, and so allow it to become a rift between them. This is representative of how we as a society can't always seem to balance art with objective work, and must consider them separate things. There is often, in the modern world, a conflict between what we love to do and what we have to do. Many people struggle to balance or combine the two, much in the way Rosie's parents can't seem to come to a middle.

"Saboteur" by Ha Jin

"'For the first time Fenjin thought of Mr. Chiu as an ugly man.'" 

 

This story has a very nice theme involving the loss of faith in government (and, through that, in people as a whole). At the start, Chiu is fairly trusting. He is willing to overlook the fact that the police officer dumped tea on his feet and lied about it, because he has faith that this officer is an outlier, and that the system as a whole will be fair and rational about the situation. Chiu himself has that innocent, logical mindset at the start. Instead of making assumptions based on the one officer, he chooses to hope for the good.

Chiu's quality of seeing the good in things is displayed through metaphor in the paragraph about bedbugs. Ha Jin writes that Chiu is afraid of ticks, mosquitoes, and cockroaches, but not bedbugs or fleas, and that he was never severely bitten by them the way his colleagues were. This seems to be symbolic of the fact that Chiu is not bothered by the realities of the corrupt government; he manages to maintain his faith and innocence where others might not have. 

 

Eventually, though, the officers manage to break him down. Their incredible unfairness toward Fenjin is what breaks Chiu down. It's interesting to note that the injustices directed at Chiu himself did not hurt him significantly; he did not lose faith in the system until he saw it harm a friend of his who he knew was trying to do good. This suggests that Chiu was unselfish.

 

When he finally did break down, though, Chiu turned around completely, going so far as to poison innocent civilians. This is where the quote above comes in: Chiu's change of faith made him an uglier person. 

 

As a whole, this story maps a man's loss of faith. He endures many significant injustices and still holds his faith, choosing to believe in the good and rationality of other people. But, when he sees his friend harmed, he is woken to the unfair truth, and becomes bitter. It's a very sad but commonly true storyline; Chiu's action of giving other people hepatitis is representative of the cold and unforgiving mindsets people will fall into when they are disenchanted by something in which they once strongly believed.

"Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it." 

This was a very poignant story. All you really hear about Brokeback Mountain is the sex scenes, often in a very derogatory way. Personally, I had negative connotations associated with the story because of word of mouth before reading the story. They were pretty detailed, but nobody complains about the heterosexual one, which is arguably described in more depth. Just goes to show how people will let judgmental mindsets take away from a great story.

The story presents a solid conflict between love and duty. Ennis and Jack know they have something, but they don't acknowledge it until after they're both married with children. As such, they know they must stay where they are. It's a very sad but universally relevant plot point: the love that can't be, if you will. 

However, you have to question what the "thing" between Ennis and Jack really is. On Jack's end, it seems to be love. He wants to be with Ennis, to live their lives together. Ennis, on the other hand, is too afraid of what people will think (although he does have fair reason, which I will get to later). So, the love vs. duty theme can be broadened to love vs. fear. Jack is relatively fearless. His father said that he had been planning to live with a different man, before he died. It would seem that he ends up dying because of his determination to be himself, if Ennis' thought that the locals killed him is true. Even before then, he always wanted to go off elsewhere with Ennis; he wanted the freedom to be who he was.

Social judgment is another prominent theme. Almost everything Ennis did (and didn't) do was because of what everyone else wanted. He stayed with Alma because she expected him to, and because living with Jack would be frowned upon by others. Even after she left him, the child support payments kept him from freedom. His only actions that seemed to be motivated by what he wanted were his trips with Jack. Through the social judgment theme, Proulx makes a strong commentary on public view of homosexual people. It wasn't illegal or harmful for two men to live together, but at the time, it would mean literal social suicide. Today, we as a society take a less violent stance, but often the basic ideology of "different is bad" still remains. Gay people still have to formally "come out," and they are still judged for who they are. The aforementioned reaction to the gay sex scene says it all.

"Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

"He would have liked to teach her a lesson that would last her a while, but there seemed no way to continue the point. The Negro refused to come out from behind his paper"

 

Julian is a character of great pride, but not much spirit. His relationship with his mother has a fairly typical theme -- she has given him all he has and wants him to love her, while he just wants his own identity and freedom. At the start, it seems as though Julian is in the right here. He is described as intelligent and forward-thinking, embracing social change and bored with the frivolity of the world, which he primarily sees in his mother. And his mother is frivolous, and struggles more than we in retrospect feel she should with the concept of integration. She cares deeply about images

 

What Julian lacks is empathy. Racism is a terrible thing that should be done away with in all situations, and the mother is certainly racist. However, she grew up being told that this racism was right, and as such, she struggles to understand black people as a whole. And as for the obsession with looks, that's also a value system she was likely trained into. Society cares about looks, and she tries to work with society in order to achieve the best possible life for her and her son.

 

Early on, Julian appears to be in the right; he takes on the position of supporter to the oppressed. But all of his supposed attempts at openmindedness are really just thinly-veiled attempts to make his mother angry. He tries to use black people as a means to the end of upsetting his mother. As seen in the quote above, he takes a disconnected and unsympathetic stance on the black man's role in his mission. He assumes that all nearby black people should be ready and willing to play into his petty game with his mother. Sure, Julian has progressive ideas in that he doesn't think blacks and whites should be separated, but that doesn't mean he is any more genuinely welcoming than his mother is. He patronizes the black people; he tries to use them as pawns.

 

When it comes down to it, the main action here is the psychological battle between Julian and his mother. The black people, who Julian claims to be the focus of the dispute, are marginalized. Through that marginalization, we see the theme of the story: the mistreatment and judgmental perception of black people. In the end, Julian's mother collapses and suddenly he is affectionate toward her and afraid of losing her, which serves to illuminate the uselessness of his attempted rebellion and how disrespectful his perspective on black people really is.

"The Voorman Problem"

"We're going to change positions. You can juggle time, gravity, waves and particles. You can sift through the trash cans for tiny specks of originality. You can watch glaciers form and continents pillaged in your name..."

I don't know what I was expecting coming into this film, but this wasn't it. I knew it was about an inmate who thought he was a god, and that Martin Freeman's character was investigating him. I might have expected a Silence of the Lambs sort of deal, where it's a look into the psychology of the criminally insane. I did not expect Voorman to actually be a god.

This film presents a very interesting take on the concept of gods. The typical monotheist God figure is some type of benevolent judge, who determines right from wrong and watches over us from a separate plane of existence. But religions such as those have always left room to question why it is that this god created mankind and the universe -- it seems a fairly pointless endeavor. The Voorman perception of God is that of a being who created the universe as his plaything, as a means of entertainment for himself. This is a really interesting portrayal; the all-powerful but slightly mad god. He's driven himself crazy by living in a world that he controls and therefore can never truly be a part of. It's kind of funny when juxtaposed against the Christian god; one has a plan for all humans and is organizing things for the best, while the other is just messing around in whatever way pleases him. In a sad sort of way, the Voorman god seems a bit more likely to me.

What I wonder, though, is what happens next. In the quote above, it sounds as though Voorman, by switching places with the doctor, is giving him all of his godly powers. Will the doctor become the new Voorman? Does he now have the power to wipe out countries on a whim? And if so, what will he do with that? We know he's not about to get out of the prison, and will probably get shipped off to the asylum if he doesn't stop shouting about being a doctor. It also brings up the question of whether Voorman was always a god. Was he in a similar position to the doctor, with his power transferred to him?

All in all, I love the concept of the omnipotent, omniscient god being a madman. Not so in love with the filmmaking -- the story feels rushed and far too simple for such a creative subject -- but it makes you think.