You can find this story here:http://www.amazon.com/Sudden-Fiction-American-Short-Short-Stories/dp/0879052651/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243402825&sr=8-6
So much was encompassed in this story in only a page and a half. Not a single word seemed unnecessary; everything was taut, focused, pared down to its essence. As a writer who leans naturally towards long synonym-filled sentences of descriptive prose, this writing style struck me as powerful in its tacitness, and as something I would like to try in my own writing.
It also was a story that left me with many questions and an overall feeling of ambiguity. I felt like the sitting people were supposed to symbolize something, but I could not grasp what it was. The people are described as just sitting there, staring, indifferent. They do not say a word throughout the entire story. They sit through sun and rain; when the police take them away, they are back in the morning. There is a creepy, other-wordly quality about them – you never see them do essential human things like eat, sleep, or communicate. By the end, it seems the man who lives there simply resigns himself to their sitting on his front step.
The ending was powerful for me – it gave me a clear visual image, like something out of a movie, of a camera drawing back over hundreds of houses, with anonymous people sitting on the front steps of all of them. However, again, I felt like there was a touch more meaning to this image that was just beyond my grasp – that if I only knew a bit more about the sitting people and what they meant, I would be able to unlock a deeper understanding of the whole story. Perhaps that is part of the writer’s intent: if you are not exactly sure what the sitting people represent, you can apply them to all sorts of different things happening in your life, as varied from a stubborn problem that won’t go away, to a resilient truth that won’t let you escape it. This story also showed me that it is possible for the reader to enjoy and relate to a story without even wholly understanding it; as a writer, I don’t always have to explain everything to death.
As you said, the story is very general and ambiguous, where reader response plays a large role in interpretation. To me, this could represent life itself, that we are never fully aware of why something occurs and we would always long for a clear explanation of why things are the way they are to help us better understand and accept our lives. In the end, however, we are still able to enjoy and cope with life even though we are shrouded with uncertainty, just as you've shown in the last paragraph. Another point I'd like to raise is that life, just like the story, may seem simple on the surface, but there is in fact so much more meaning and complexity as we continue to delve deeper into trying to understand it.
ReplyDeleteI had the same visual image of the ending as you did. Along with Francis' concision, to me, this felt like a powerful piece. However I also feel as if something is missing. Like you said, if there were just a bit more information and detail to the story - a deeper understanding could be "unlocked".
ReplyDeleteI think one point most readers can all relate to is the feeling of unsettlement while / after reading this short story. The fact that we know extremely little about the characters or the setting, and the desolate atmosphere in the story contributes to the alienness we feel towards it. Perhaps this was the author's intention - to simply create an unsettling atmosphere amongst his readers.
Do you think that the author created the story that he is trying to imply something or is he trying to make the audience make the story mean something in their own vision? I believe that the author is trying to make us think of our own meaning of the story, but it would be interesting to hear your opinion.
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