Term
| Conversations With My Father |
|
Definition
| The father tells his daughter to tell her a story. Each time she tells a story, it ends up with a happy ending, and it upsets him, because he wants her to come to terms with the fact he is dying. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The story where Joan is both literally and figuratively "Death." She is friends with Jack throughout his whole life, as each time he sees her with someone else, he doesn't put two and tow together that it is because that person is dying. By the time Joan visits him, he realizes its too late, and dies |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This story is about the dumbass who starves himself for "art". When people realize that that's stupid and lose interest in him, he cannot let go, and he ends up dying (shocker there). But in all seriousness, the moment the people lost interest in his art, was the moment he truly "died." |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This one was about the boy who never really fit into society. He was brilliant, love the theater and plays, but was never "scholastically smart." He hated school. He ends up killing himself by jumping in front of a train, thinking about the things he never did. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This one was about the guy named gregor who woke up one day and was a weird bug thing. It put a major strain on his family by doing so, as he then needed them to take care of him. At first, once they get past his odd appearance, they don't mind, but over time Gregor becomes more and more of a nuisance. Eventually he dies, and the family is relieved. In addition to his death literally, his life figuratively ended the moment he was turned into a bug. The family goes through a "metamorphosis" of their own, when they realize how mature/different they are without Gregor |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This one was about the two brothers who were best Friends, Lyman and Henry. They were stupid like Joe and loved cars, but this time it wasn't a girly Jetta, instead Lyman and Henry split a red convertible. But one day Henry gets drafted for the war, and he comes back a completely different person. In order to restore what they had, Lyman breaks up the red convertible and makes Henry fix it. Thinking things are crystal clear, they go on a ride to somewhere with a river. They get into an argument, and Henry revealing his true unhappiness, Jumps in the river and kills himself. Lyman then puts the red convertible in the river as well. Although Henry dies when he jumps in the river, he "dies" when he went to war. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This one was by Kurt Vonegut, so that should remind you it was odd. It was about the futuristic society where the government made everyone "equal" by handicapping people. Either by weighing down the people who were stronger, covering the faces of the hot people, or shocking the people who were more intelligent in the head. The story involves two parents who are watching TV, when they see that their son is under arrest for being without his handicaps. They see on TV that Harrison is the strongest and apparently smartest person ever, so his simply handicaps don't work. Harrison knows this, and tries to take over the world. Except the government kills him on live TV, and then erases the memories of it from the parents lives. Harrison literally died in this story, but the real "death" was the government taking the lives of everyone, and turning Harrison into a monster. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This is the story about the girl named Mabel who hates her life. She has to hide her feelings because of her family, and overall is very trapped and neglected. One day, she goes to a lake to kill herself. She almost succeeds in drowning, when this doctor named Jack Ferguson saves her. She wakes up and is a completely different person, she loves him. Although he does not want to love her, being a doctor and all that jazz, but he cannot deny it. The girl Mabel almost literally dies when she drowns, but the old Mabel does figuratively die in the lake. When she is saved, she is reborn, as a new person |
|
|
Term
| Everything That Rises Must Converge |
|
Definition
| This one was about the douchebag son who thought his mom was the racist but he was actually the racist. His mother made him take her to wellness class and ride the bus with her because riding by herself made her uncomfortable. Assuming her discomfort was racial, the boy sits next to a black women on the bus, in an attempt to make his mother uncomfortable. At first he succeeds, but she ends up being fine when a little black boy, the women's son, sits next to her. As they exit the bus, the mother offers the little boy a nickel, and the boys mother freaks out on her. Most likely from shock or possibly embarrassment, the Mother walks away and ends up dying, before the douchebag guy can realize what he did to her. She literally dies when she falls on the street, but when she comes out of her shell that the world has really changed, is when she "dies." |
|
|
Term
| Hills Like White Elephants |
|
Definition
| This one was about the couple with the American and the foreign (i think british women), and the American wanted her to get an abortion. He tries to tell her how happy they'll be after she has it, and how its not even a real operation. One important quote from it is "Once you take it away, you never get it back" in reference to not only the abortion, but what that'll do to their relationship. The women ends up deciding she wants to keep the baby, saying that nothing is wrong with her and shes never felt better. There is no literal death in this story as she picks to keep the baby (and if your pro-choice its not even death anyways), but making that decision to keep the baby is going to change the lives that she and the man once knew forever. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
All down my balls makes all these bitches crawl- oh wait.
This one was about the snakes. The husband and wife resented each other. He verbally and even occasionally physically abused her. He takes advantage of his wife's fear for snakes. One day he buys a poisonous snake to kill his wife, and ironically it ends up killing him as his wife watches. The guy literally died when the snake did his thing on him, but both of their lives died when they decided to marry. The wife is reborn when she is ridden of her husband |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This story is about a guy named Darling (last name) who could never grow up. His highlight moment of his life was an 80 yard run he had on the practice field of his high school football game, and he can't move past it. He can't connect with his much more intelligent wife, he can't really explain things using big words, his life is stuck on that 80 yard run. He never physically died in the story, but once that run was over, so was his life. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This one is about the boy who was convinced money was everything, so he became obsessed with gambling on horse races. He actually was really good at it, winning a good amount of money. However, the money was still not enough for his mother, the reason he tried to continually earn the money. One night, his mother finds him rocking on his old rocking horse, rocking over and over and over trying to figure out who will win the next big horse race. When he does figure it out, he puts himself in a level of exhaustion and dies. He physically dies when his mother catches him on the horse, but really "dies" when she tells him that money is what brings happiness, and he becomes obsessed with horse race gambling |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Snow was a story about how a couple who live in the city end up moving to the countryside. However, when they move, everything changes, as they realize that living in the country isn't as easy as they thought it would be. It ends up driving the two of them apart, as the winter in the countryside was too hard to live in. This shows how snow literally covered what they once had, and how they're relationship completely changed when they moved to the country. The change made them lose everything |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This was the story about the guy who was obsessed with the girl named Judy Jones. Throughout his life, whether he was a young boy working on the golf course, or as a man who lets her come in and mess up the life that he has, he would always drop everything he was doing to be with her. Eventually he marries another girl named Irene, and all his dreams of being with her die, but he still sees her as the "glitter that distracts him from reality". One day, way later in life, when someone mentions that Judy Jones is a depressed, older housewife, it tears this person up. His "dream" of her is destroyed. Although he doesn't physically die when marrying Irene or hearing that Judy is just average, his world significantly changes and lessens during both events |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This is about the guy who lives a super boring life, where his one escape is playing bridge once in a while with his acquaintances. During one of the bridge games, one of the guys brings up "Impulses" or like giving into urges we all have but know we can't do, like for example stealing something. The main character sees this as really interesting, and in an attempt to get out of his boring life, ends up trying this and steals something. However, he gets caught, and gets put in prison. He gets a letter that his wife is leaving him, and his life basically falls apart because he gave into this one Impulse. Him stealing the item did not "kill him" but it did destroy his life. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A spinster is a girl that never gets married. This story is about a girl who is growing up in a household filled of guys, trying to deal with "Mr Speed" or puberty. The whole story involved her trying to control Mr. Speed, her puberty like impulses that she does not understand. She doesn't get things like why guys are starting to stare at her, but she is starting to become attracted to the opposite sex. She ends up locking up Mr. Speed because she is unable to deal with her disorder in her life. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| I personally remember this story as the story where the guy told his mom "No" when she asked if she loved him. Its about the soldier who comes home and cannot readjust to real life again. He was treated as a man, killed people, and got girls with other soldiers easily just for being American soldiers. Now he has to come back to barely being able to use the car, and his parents expecting him to get back into working society again. He simply wants the lifestyle he had at the war, but he cannot have it and he is struggling. Going to war completely changed him, and when he got back the life he had adjusted to was simply gone |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This story, simply put, was a reflection on how as you get older, you experience a reverse revolution. The women would notice that the older her lover got, the less independent he was and the more he had to take care of him |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| This was about the girl who ends up marrying the much older guy, and completely resenting her life for it. They lived in Boston, and she always wanted to do things in the city, but she had to just stay in because he was sick and couldn't go out. Due to this age difference, they simply had nothing to talk about, as the man connected more with his doctors than her. As their relationship went on, Daniel, the guy, would guilt trip May, the girl, into taking care of him and being around him saying things like "It is not my fault that I'm sick." This is about how deciding to marry him was the thing that ended "killing her," and the rest of her life with him isn't really "living." |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| I think you know this story brian, and i frankly don't see myself using it |
|
|
