THE ART OF FICTION

Wow. This is great. Imagine waking up as an insect you can’t immediately classify and then deciding to just go with the flow. That’s what Gregor has basically done so far in the first four pages of  “The Metamorphosis”. Gregor has woken up to find himself an insect instead of the human man he went to sleep being. Shockingly, Gregor doesn’t seem very upset, to reiterate, THAT HE’S AN INSECT. His thoughts throughout the morning are mostly gripes, not about him waking up from the last night’s sleep as an insect, rather he finds it more fitting to complain about life as a traveling salesman and the arrangement and responsibility that he’s family has bestowed to him to fulfill a debt owed to his terrible boss. What has really struck me so far is that Gregor feels like inexplicably turning into an insect isn’t a valid enough excuse to call in sick to work. Humorously, even as a bug Gregor is planning out the remaining time he needs to spend working as a traveling salesman in order to give his family reprieve from their debt owned. Gregor seems to break new ground as far as his dedication and willingness to endure, or better yet ignore, anything it takes to get to work. So, consequently, I think it is a fair assumption that Gregor will try to compensate for the small inconvenience he has been dealt and go about his day as if he weren’t an insect. What I don’t understand is why Gregor has the body of an insect and the mind he had while he was a man. I further am confused by, but concurrently respect, Gregor’s ambivalence to the fact he is a bug. Maybe Gregor’s preoccupation with all things mundane is an attempt to suspend the approaching acknowledgment of the ramifications that him being a bug spawn.

Kafka’s Metamorphosis seems to be a very interesting piece of work, seeing as how the main character, Gregor Samsa, had been transformed into that of a monstrous insect. The novel is expressed in a third person point of view and through this we generally see what Gregor is thinking. His general perceptions are that of limited to the mind of a normal salesman, but is also limited by his transformed body. The contrast between his human thoughts and transformed body seems like it’d be an important topic that would later on be explored in the novel. The first interesting thing that happens is not simply just turning into that of a bug, but of his reaction towards it. His reaction was that he wasn’t altogether too surprised at the fact that he turned into some sort of parasitic insect, and he was more concerned about what would happen throughout his general day. What’s funny is that he even considers sleeping in for the day, and complains about work, as if it’s another ordinary day. Throughout his inner monologue, it’s as if he truly is going through another day in his life. However, the word “human”, pops up once in a while and it astounds me how he seems to neglect to see how it affects him. His change in body has affected his habits, such as sleeping on his right side, which is very difficult to do with such a monstrous body. I feel as if, his apparent lack of mind over his apparent transformation will be a foreshadowing of what’s to come in the future. Perhaps, we can see how his family and co-workers react over his new appearance, and see how it changes how he would think. In my opinion, I believe they’d show extreme distaste against his new appearance and possibly fears or shows him disgust for it.

This was such an interesting and pretty decent story but yet violent. As I got further and further into the story it reminded me of parts of Africa such as Sudan where the first Sudanese Civil War was in the year 1955 to 1972. This was based on two men who committed the crimes, one was tall, handsome but in a vulgar way and also vicious. The other guy was short with a weasel-face and sly. In addition, these guys wandered into villages and started wars, and an underage kid stood up for himself and ended up getting decapitated. It was basically war and crimes against them. My final thought to this was, it was almost like a horror story that occurred in a village where people had no rights or any form of protection.

I thought this was a great story overall. It was a great story but it was really sad and violent. This story reminded me of war and war crimes. These two men were really bad men that came to the village to do whatever they wanted to whomever they pleased. One kid got his head chopped off for being brave and trying to stand up. It was the tall one who committed this crime he was very vicious as described. The sly one was the nicest but he seemed like a rapist because at the end he put his hand on the girls breast. He seemed to Lure her in with a fake story of how they are similar and then most likely had sex with her without her wanting it. In my head I envision the tall guy as an abusive man and the short one as a sneaky pervert. It seemed like these two men were soldiers of the opposite side and we’re committing war crimes. It seemed to have taken place in Africa because of the use of machetes. Usually by now most solders would have fire arms. It reminded me of the type of stuff that goes on in the world now and it really saddens me.

The short story A Cheater’s Guide to Love, opens with the word ‘your’ establishing the reader as the audience. The use of the second person point of view forms a connection between the main character of the story and the reader. The story is written in the form of a journal with timely recording of the events.

In my opinion, the narrator is not objective as he is hugely influenced by his emotions and feelings throughout the story. The opening paragraph creates a distrusting imagery of the narrator and portrays him as disloyal. Along with this, the serious and pessimistic tone in which the story is narrated makes the reader question the narrator’s reliability. The story is somewhat biased as the reader never learns anything about the situation from any other characters point of view but the narrator. For instance, the story greatly revolves around the narrator’s fiance who can be perceived as cold and heartless due to the lack of a different perspective of their relationship.

Correspondingly, the narrator also has prejudiced perceptions of not only his emotions but also of others. He doesn’t put too much thought or effort into evaluating the situation and the effect it has on people. One of the main instances where I could see the limited perception was when the narrator brought to his friend, Elvis’s attention the actuality of him being the father of the boy. Due to the fact that the narrator was in a similar situation with the girl from Harvard, it can be assumed that it contributed to his discordant reaction.

The narration doesn’t seem to be intended to please the reader, instead to just tell the story or take out the frustration through writing. Some parts of the story may even make the reader feel as though the story was never meant to be read by anyone. The narrator uses his regional language promiscuously throughout the story which once again reveals the narrator’s carefree technique of telling the story.

Lastly, the story ends while giving the reader the freedom to either despair or sympathize with the ‘lying cheater’ as he hangs on to some hope and plans to start over.

This was based on a Dominican professor who resides in Boston finds himself in a state of deep depression after his financee leaves him upon discovering his disloyalty.

This story was written from a second person perspective that targets the main character Yunior. In addition, the second person’s point of view helps to make it work well for this case which brings about the feeling of a first person. This was basically based more on a sense of shame that later made the story much more powerful. although Yunior who was the main character was a false hearted guy, I still felt a certain sympathy for him only because he was fully aware of his untrustworthy behavior yet he was critical about it and was helpless when attempting to correct it. Later on he was searching through his Doomsday book and old emails he sent to his women.

The most interesting part about this is the plot that involved the issue of the false paternity, that occured with the law student who tricked him into believing that he was the father of her child only to reveal the truth to him in the delivery room, where she kicked him out. This is prevented him from enjoying physical activity adds to the sympathy we had for him.

The storytelling and his language was very strong. although it was difficult for me I basically managed with no knowledge of spanish. But this story in my words was the most interesting story i’ve ever read.

Danny O’Hara

The Art of Fiction

Due 9/14/2016

Point of View Analysis

In “The Cheater’s Guide to Love”, by Junot Diaz, Diaz makes the interesting decision to write the story using a second person point of view. While the second person point of view is not seen often in literature due to it’s difficulty to master, Diaz presents the story beautifully, and the point of view allows the readers to empathize with a rather nasty individual.

The narrator, Yunior, is addressed sparingly throughout the story. Instead, Diaz writes as if he is speaking to you, and it makes the narrative much more potent. If it were a third person omniscient point of view, with feelings and thoughts being stated as facts, the character would be rather hard to like. He is crass, he treats women as if they’re objects, and he has a tendency to run away from issues and hardships. None of these are qualities that the typical reader looks for in characters, unless they get their comeuppance in the end. However, Yunior gets his comeuppance in the beginning, and we get to explore how he deals with that over a period of a few years. This is made much more personal by Diaz’s decision to use the second person point of view. The text reads as if Diaz is speaking to us, and about us. We get to experience Yunior’s mistakes, his faults, and his life on a much closer level. If we weren’t placed so closely to his thoughts, and his habits, then he would be much harder to sympathize with. Who cares if a cheater got caught? Why should I worry about his self-destructive tendencies if he refuses to learn from his past mistakes? Diaz realized that his narrator may be hard to connect to, so he speaks as if the reader is the one in the story. This enables the text to strike a chord with many readers. Someone may not usually care if a cheater gets caught, but that opinion changes quickly when the cheater, so to speak, is themselves.

In “The Cheaters Guide to Love,” the story is told in a very untraditional way. Diaz writes the story from the second person, saying “you” to refer to us as if we were talking to ourselves. The story reads almost like a journal, where we read about the different events that happen within each year to the character of Yunior. Though, we don’t often see the name of the main character, because this allows us to put ourselves in the story, instead of constantly thinking about Yunior. There are also very minimal characters with names in this story. We only have the names of the two best friends, and one of their wives. We never learn the name of the many women Yunior sleeps with. Because the story is like a journal and you read year after year, you never question the events that are told to us. Whenever good things happen, another bad thing will take it away. Its realistic in a way where you feel like a good friend of yours is talking to you. The second person and the format of the story allow you to build a relationship with the reader. Also, Diaz isn’t afraid to use other languages when he wants. The character would often use words in other languages to express himself or between his friends. This also adds to the relationship the reader can have to the main character. In the beginning, you don’t have much sympathy for Yunior at all. But as you keep reading year after year, you begin to feel bad for him. Diaz doesn’t write in a classical way to tell a story, but writes in a way a journal would be written. Its intimate and engaging because of how informal the writing is.

In the short story ” The Cheater’s Guide to Love” by Junot Diaz, the author writes the story in a second person narrative. In this particular case, writing in second person narrative was very beneficial to the audience. The author allowed the audience to build a connect through the story with the main character, Yunior. As a reader, we connect with Yunior because by using the word “you” creates the feeling of him talking to you in a one on one scenario. By using the word you the author creates the connection as if you are doing all these horrible thing the character Yunior has done. Another key component the author uses is the lack of names. By doing that he author forces the readers to create a character based of the description given throughout the text. Also, using the lack of names throughout the stories connects male readers to Yunior because the author wants to show that those men in the world related to Yunior lifestyle will not remember all these females name, but instead can only remember parts of the body like female breast. The author wants to point out that some of the male race are like that, that not every man looks to connect emotional, but instead physically. That how big your breast our, is more important than building a relationship and connection to last a life time. The author also uses Spanish words throughout the story to make readers fill in the blank and figure out what the word means as if we were engaging in a Spanish conversation. For example, readers are suppose to be able to fill in the world “sucia” as a dirty slut based of the way the conversation is going before the Spanish words are throw in the conversation. Overall, writing the short story in a second person narrative allows readers to development the goal of the author which is to create a connection with the character Yunior better than first or third person narrative could.

In the short story entitled,  “The Cheaters Guide to Love”, the type of narration that was used was 2nd person. In this narration, it allows the reader to have a connection with the Narrator. The narrator is somewhat reliable but mostly unreliable because the point of view is limited. In this story, the reader only gets the mans point of view not the exs point of view. Throughout the story, not many names were mentioned besides his friend Elvis, a woman he was interested in named Noemi, and his friend Arlenny. As the years went on in the story, it only depicted scenes of him either trying to move on or dealing with the ex. The narrator uses the informal language to create a relationship with the reader and narrator by placing the reader in the narrators shoes. Using the 2nd person narration helps contribute the meaning they hope to convey because it makes it more relatable to the reader and it makes the reader feel some type of emotion in the story. At one point of the story, the reader feels confused and upset that the narrator is going through a tough time with his breakup. On the other side, the reader is aggravated because the narrator is making more bad decisions based off of his previous relationship. All in all, this use to narration was well conveyed throughout the story of “A Cheaters Guide to Love”.