The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Sadly, Without Brad Pitt.

Plot

The plot of the story emphasizes the eccentricity of the storyline. The climax which takes place when he discovers "baby of threescore and ten" seems out of place because a climax typically occurs at the end. This odd strategy emphasizes the oddity of a seventy-year-old baby being born. Also, there is very little conflict during what would be Benjamin's teenage years. Normally, conflicts would be rampant in a story about a young adult, but his life seems to have very little conflict, especially with his parents. The typical rocky relationship between a parent and a young adult does not exist between Benjamin and his father; they're described as "companionable."

Point of View

The narrator is third person omniscient. The narrator explains in the beginning that Roger hopes the baby will be a boy so that he can go to Yale (chapter one, paragraph three). The reader is also informed of the fact that Benjamin feels "more at ease in his grandfather's presence than in his parents'" which could not be known by a limited narrator. This serves to create an emotional connection between the reader and Benjamin. By knowing his feelings, the reader feels the awkwardness of aging backwards and becomes more engaged in the story. It makes the story both more understandable and more interesting for the reader. Personally, once I started to understand Benjamin, I was much more interested in the story and finishing it than when I started.

Characterization

Fitzgerald uses direct characterization to give the reader an immediate sense of what each character is like. Roger Button is characterized as a coward from the beginning. When the doctor blows him off and implies that something is wrong with the baby, Roger loses "all desire to go into" the hospital because he doesn't want to face the circumstances. By presenting the reader with an immediate picture of each character, Fitzgerald is sure to evoke the reactions he wants. He doesn't give the reader the time or the reasons to doubt his evaluations of each character. The reader has almost no choice but to agree and see the characters as they're meant to be seen because there is no room for interpretation.

Setting

The narrator tells us on page 5 that the story is set in 1860. The setting makes the story somewhat more believable because a birth defect seems more likely. The time period also makes the family's disappointment more realistic. Roger Button would have hoped to pass his wholesale hardware business on to his son, but having a son with some sort of defect would ruin the possibility of that. Socially, the Buttons could be ruined by the fact that they had an odd son, and in the pre-Civil War era in the South, social status was important. Because of the setting, Benjamin's situation is exacerbated, and it becomes a huge issue in every aspect of his and his family's lives.

Theme

The theme of the story is that life is about perception. When Benjamin looks fifty, he's happy. He's not experiencing a mid-life crisis, and Hildegarde even says he's at "the romantic age." Most men at fifty perceive their lives as half over, and have a much less cheerful demeanor than Benjamin does at fifty. At the same time, he feels like he's missing out on the activities of a normal twenty-year-old's life. He perceives certain ages differently than everyone else does. He proves that a person's attitude about life is based mostly on his or her perception of life's events.

Once upon a Time

Once upon a Time is a satire of children's stories. The story begins "Someone has written to ask me to contribute to an anthology of stories for children." The setting of the story is not one of a typical children's story, which indicates satire, but the final paragraph is what solidifies the satirical tone. I mean, seriously? The kid hears a bedtime story and then gets shredded trying to reenact it? It's definitely a good satire. It's almost funny how ironic it is, in a weird, gruesome way. The narrator's point is that a children's story is usually pictured as a fantasy, but the true story of a child is never a fantasy.

A Worn Path

(Question 6) The child who wrote to the author questioned the grandson's death because Phoenix's grandson is still alive to her. She picks up medications for him because she is trying to keep him alive in her mind and in her reality. Phoenix tells a nurse "My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself." She believes that her grandson is still alive although the medicine she picks up is just a soothing medicine. A soothing medicine would not be necessary for that long. It seems that everyone else knows that her grandson is dead. Based on the way people regard her, she seems like the town crazy lady/everyone's grandma. Her grandson is alive in her mind, but that is the only place where he is alive.

Eveline

(Question 1) In the first short paragraph, Eveline sits by a window staring out at the twilight. The first sentence is in active voice, but the second and third are in passive voice. This represents Eveline's shift from a desire to leave her current life to her rejection of Frank and return to normalcy. Active voice is a stronger voice similar to the strength required to make the decision to leave one's family. It makes sense for Eveline to start out that way. The fact that there are two sentences in passive voice shows that Eveline is more comfortable there. It's as if she tries the active voice and then doesn't like it. It's the same with her life. She tries to escape and then prefers her comfort zone. The word "invade" is used to emphasize the discomfort which accompanies the active voice and the discomfort that affects Eveline's life.

Miss Brill

Miss Brill is an English woman living in France. She teaches English in a French school. In the story, Brill is portrayed as a naive character intent on observing others. The French setting sets her apart from those she observes. It distances her from everyone else and makes the reader sympathize with her. When the teenagers make fun of her on the bench and refer to her as "that stupid old thing," the reader can see that she is out of place, and her reaction shows that this feeling makes her feel ashamed and self-conscious. The contrast of the setting with Brill's nationality characterizes her as a vulnerable woman who copes by pretending she's an actress. She is convinced that she is an actress on a stage, so why wouldn't she believe that the people around her were just actors playing a role, not people who look down on her?

Maggie

I like Maggie's character a lot. She's quiet and shy and timid, but she seems strong to me. She's a million times more conscious of her heritage than Dee is, and she loves it. Although she wouldn't say she wanted the quilts, she got her opinion in too when she said "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts." This was a sort of jab at Dee for her initial rejection of their heritage and then her need to have African things because that was the only reminder she had since she distanced herself from it. Maggie doesn't expect anything at all. She is almost a foil of Dee because she loves her heritage and is quiet and shy, and this makes her even more likable. She's content with a simple life and the fact that she's black. She sees no reason to be ashamed when she can embrace it and enjoy it.

Everyday Use

Dee is a jerk. She seems to despise everything she used to be which she makes obvious when she says "[Dee's] dead." By taking on a new name, she thought she could become the person she wants to be and leave her simple life behind. While she keeps trying to push her past away by rejecting her name and the house where she grew up, she also seems to be seeking her heritage. Her search for heritage seems fake. If she hated the quilts when she was offered one, why would she become so upset when she couldn't have them? She's trying to impress the man she's with by showing a love for African things like the quilts her grandmother made even though they hold no value for her. She has been ashamed of her heritage and race for her entire life, and her mother knows that. She made the right decision in not giving "Wangero" the quilts.

Bartleby the Scrivener

The other three workers in the Lawyer's office are introduced before Bartleby in this story. The author wants to set Bartleby apart from the rest of them. Turkey is a good worker in the morning, but he doesn't work well at all in the afternoon. The Lawyer must yell "[b]ut the blots, Turkey" because of Turkey's sloppiness. Nippers, the exact opposite of Turkey, is always the victim of both "ambition and indigestion." Nippers wants to be a good worker, but the indigestion which he endures in the mornings makes that impossible until the afternoon. Ginger Nut is twelve, so he doesn't count. The author contrasts Bartleby with each of these characters. He's a hard worker and produces more than the Lawyer could have imagined. By showing the reader the seemingly sub-par workers first, the author makes Bartleby seem like the ideal worker. This increases the reader's surprise when Bartleby refuses to review the copies he's made.

Hunters in the Snow

I'm going to answer the eighth question for this one. In the final two sentences of the story, the narrator confirms that Tub and Frank had no intention of helping Kenny. The narrator tells us that "[t]hey had taken a different turn a long way back" when Kenny believes he's being taken to the hospital. The use of the word "different" implies a kind of choice rather than an unintentional mistake. Tub and Frank don't want to save Kenny's life. If they wanted to save him, they wouldn't have stopped at a tavern on the way to the hospital or chosen a different turn. The stop at the tavern was a hint that Tub and Frank were not concerned about saving Kenny's life, but the last two sentences confirm that they truly were not. This final twist makes both characters seem like liars. When Tub shot Kenny, he seemed to want to help, but both Frank and Tub become less trustworthy as the story goes on.

Short Stories So Far

So far, I like the short stories unit. The works we've read (I know it's only five, but still) are more interesting than poems were. Edward was creepy, but Emily Grierson won that battle when she kept a corpse in a bed in her house because Colonel Sartoris was a control freak. He made his own daughter crazy by driving away all suitors. I guess her way of keeping a man in her life was killing him while he was surrounded by items she bought for him (page 289). It makes sense that she would want him to have a part of her since he was the only man she ever had any relationship. The fact that she could lay next to a corpse and feel like she had company is disturbing even though it seems almost logical in a crazy kind of way. Was she actually crazy, or did she just have daddy issues?

Interpreter of Maladies

I guess I should have expected that Mrs. Das wasn't faithful to her husband. I kind of feel like an idiot for missing that. Anyway, she is emotionally almost completely separated from her family. I can't imagine how a mother could become that way. Based on Lahiri's description of Mrs. Das, her life isn't bad at all. I think that the Das family represents the idea of the typical family trying to appear to be perfect at the beginning of the story. At the end, the family sounds absolutely crazy. Bobby's incident with the monkeys and the parents' reactions and physical descriptions create a disheveled image. The story is about the change in Mr. Kapasi's attitude toward Mrs. Das from admiring her physical features (page 158) to surprised (page 163). He didn't really know her at all, and as her attitude changes, his infatuation loses intensity.

How I Met My Husband

I think I'll take number seven for this one. Firstly, I don't like Alice Kelling, and I think that Munro created her that way on purpose. Alice is definitely an antagonist once she enters the story. She seems to create an immediate threat for Edie when she arrives and picks up the relationship Edie wants with Chris Watters. Alice's presence also seems to give Chris a strong desire to leave as quickly as possible. It's almost ironic that Alice becomes so upset when she believes that Edie has been with Chris (she calls Edie a "filthy little rag" and a convenience of society on page 144) because Alice is just like Edie except for the fact that she follows him. Alice truly believes that she and Chris have a real relationship. Wouldn't he tell her where he was going if he wanted to be with her? Alice sped up the plot of the story and also foiled Edie. Edie was able to give up on Chris eventually, but Alice follows him like a sad puppy looking for love.

A Rose For Emily

First of all, I doubted that this story would be as creepy as it sounded. I was wrong. Way, way wrong. I'm gonna go with the third question from the assignment sheet for this one. The conclusion of the story was definitely foreshadowed. It seemed to me that Emily would still have her father's body in the house based on the way she talked about him. When she said "See Colonel Sartoris," I thought before I finished the story that she had easy access to his body. That coupled with the horrible smell which came from her house led me to believe that she had kept her father's body in the house until Barron was introduced. When the narrator said that Barron was last seen at Emily's house, I still thought that her father's body was in the house too. The fact that Barron was never seen leaving was a huge clue that his body had to be in the house. The fact that she had never had much of a relationship with a man before Barron makes her actions slightly more understandable and predictable but still incredibly creepy.