Giving such a large amount of information in such a small amount of time is not an easy task for anybody, but these short stories in the poetry packet proved otherwise. I chose to read the story "But What Was Her Name?" by Dawn Raffel which is a prime example of that. This story is about a women that we are not given much detail about, only that she was lucky to of been born by "some trick of oxygen." Throughout the story you do not receive much more information about the women, only what she goes through in her life. This story was very life-like in the aspect that this story could be very similar to that of many women in the world. This was also a very sad and dark story which really got you to think deeper about the women and her life.
The story tells us the women is married late in her life, and "bore live descendants" which is a very uncommon way to say she had kids. It almost portrays the idea that either she doesn't have a connection with her kids or doesn't think of them as her children. The women is also a house wife and is said to be in the kitchen cooking for most of the story. She does her cooking and over time she grows old and fat and the years just fly past her. This is the life of many women in the world and not a very happy storyline that usually comes with a fiction story.
The ending of the story does not seem to get much better as all the others stories do in this packet. The women's husband is now dead and she will not take off her wedding ring. I feel like this is because the majority of her life was dedicated to serving him and now she is lost without him. It can also be inferred that she is a religious women as she calls out loud "Father?" which could be seen as her referring to asking help from God. Then the final line of the poem is basically her dying so there was an entire life of this women described in about 20 lines of writing, and after you know this women's life story you still don't know her name, as if she was forgotten rather than not mentioned.
great responses here...
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