Here are the guidelines:
- Reading responses must be AT LEAST 200 words.
- Include your full name at the end of your comments. Unnamed comments will be deleted.
- From the "Comment As" drop-down menu, choose Anonymous, then click "Publish."
- Reading responses are due by midnight on the night PRIOR to our discussion of the required reading.
These three short creative nonfiction stories not only informed me but vividly brought to life their experiences in a unique manner. Beginning with “In Bed” by Joan Didion, this author took descriptive writing to another level and truly made me understand the pain and severity of migraine headaches. Prior to reading this story I had limited knowledge to what a migraine felt like and merely thought it was a headache. Not to mention, last semester I had a professor that said she would get migraines but that she learned to deal with them overtime. Bringing me to the beauty of the author’s story and how she chose to not deny the truth but rather embrace her struggle. On the other hand, “In the Dark” by Pico lyer, took readers into the magical darkness of an island in Bali. Although this story was a bit confusing, I found the concept of traveling into the unknown to be one of great importance for humanity. I believe exploring what you do not know and opening yourself up to new opportunities is a part of growing. As the narrator states, “You go into the dark to get away from what you know…”(lyer). Although I am not sure what really happened in the darkness of Bali, there is truth to that final quote. Lastly, what I enjoyed about in “El Toro Rojo” by Dinty W. Moore, was that he wrote the story in second person point of view. As a result, I was able to feel more connected to the story and understand the violence that comes with killing a bull. Moreover, the twist at the end where he appeared to regret what he did is what made it even more sad. Overall, these stories all did a great job of explaining their journey to a new understanding.
ReplyDelete-Natalia Martinez
The three essays all had a well amount of imagery as they were all very descriptive. The first essay of, “In Bed,” migraines are a big part of the author in which she describes it as an imaginary illness. I thought this was quite true as having a migraine is not obvious to anyone, but the person going through the symptoms. I remember when I was a sophomore in high school taking medical term, I learned that signs and symptoms are not the same thing—in which people think they are. Signs are the obvious things, like having high blood pressure, but a headache is a symptom because no one can ever observe it. On page 222, she describes her husband having migraine being “unfortunate for him but fortunate for me.” She obviously does not wish him bad, but for her, it is an advantage having someone feel and understand your pain. The second essay, “In the Dark,” what I understood mainly is everyone has different experiences in their environments. The character of Wayan sees the dark as a get-away in Bali, away from NYC. Getting back to Manhattan, he realizes that the peace in Bali is unlike his reality in NYC and he will never get it unless he is back into the dark in Bali. The final essay, “El Toro Rojo,” the ending where the writer describes death as a moment, I am thinking that Moore probably wrote his essay as a moment he experienced with life and death as fear is right in front us, as it was for the red bull.
ReplyDelete-Karen Lamas
Every one of the three stories were educational. Detail is significant when recounting to a tale about your life or even one that isn't genuine. The story "In Bed" was my preferred simply because the creator composed this story contrasting things with the circumstance she was in when clarifying what having a headache resembled. I never realized how awful a headache can get however perusing this caused me to understand that it is a genuine condition and that we ought to be progressively mindful of the manifestations of a headache. The second perusing "In the Dark" was likewise intriguing to peruse in view of the subtleties that were given to depict the area of the story. I am an enthusiast of fiction stories, so this was exceptionally stunning to me and despite the fact that I can envision what was happening, I was frustrated with the story behind it; it worked superbly depicting the scenes in the story. "El Toro Rojo" was a great story to envision in your brain, that is the thing that I call an enticement. Simply the title itself brings consideration as you read it. I appreciated perusing this since I genuineness envisioned it well in my mind. It was elegantly composed and quite certain. Telling us when characters change and simply exact with recounting to the story. Happy with this perusing.
ReplyDelete-Gilbert Sanchez
After reading all these three essays, I realized that they all shared a form of literal device known as Imagery. For example, in “In Bed” by Joan Didion, the essay was mainly describing the difficulties of going through migraine experiences and the different causes of it. “The actual headache, when it comes, brings with it chills, sweating, nausea, a debility that seems to stretch the very limits of endurance.” I strongly was able to relate to this essay the most because I happen to suffer from vertigo spells where migraines are very prone to frequently happening. As for “In the Dark” by Pico Iyer, I was a bit confused on what the essay was really trying to say but I managed to understand that the author was describing different events in Bali. I felt like it was some sort of love-story that explained the incidents of how he visited Bali and met a girl that he couldn’t take with but he would have had to eventually leave it all behind as a simple memory. Lastly, in “El Toro Rojo”, this story was very fun to read because it enhanced the imagery very well in describing the different roles each person had to do in order to take down the bull. It made me imagine a beautiful woman instead of a big scary bull because of the words he used to portray this imagery. Very well done.
ReplyDelete-Ana Silvia Mears
These three short stories use descriptive language to explain their experience through non-fiction creative writing. Joan Didion’s story “In Bed” she talks about what it’s like to live with migraines and while reading, it sort of reminded me of a tutorial on how to get rid of migraines since the tone was very informative. I learned new things. She provided a solution to those that go through the same situation to just take on the pain. Pico Iyer’s story “In the Dark” was a bit harder to understand only because the whole story was described in a very mystical way that I couldn’t grasp if his experience was real. After learning a bit about Iyer and that he’s a travel writer, it made sense that the story was about a trip to an island. Honestly, reading the story reminded me of Scooby-Doo when they went to Spooky Island. “El Toro Rojo” by Dinty W. Moore gave me sports announcer vibes, in the beginning it sounded like a sports commentator narrating the bullfight, but after reading it twice I noticed it started off by bringing the reader into the story as if we were the ones experiencing it. I think that was really cool because through that, the writer is able to include the reader.
ReplyDelete-Bethzaida Ayala
I like how Didion showed us her daily experience with migraines within just one sentence, in page 221. She showed us the struggle and pain she dealt with; it felt as if I was in her shoes and experiencing this myself. She describes it extremely well, for it makes the reader imagine the exact moment she is describing. I loved how she ended the story, she acknowledges (and implies) that migraines make her a stronger person. She perseveres through the pain, and it made her realize how much of an incredible human being she is. On the other hand, Iyer’s In the Dark left me a bit confused. It was a wonderful story, yet I don’t really know what to make of it. Was Wayan really a person? Was this experience real? Maybe Iyer was imagining his walk with Wayan? Or even Wayan herself? Was this story an allegory meant to represent something more? Anyway, it can be said, Iyer described the moments in his story so well, that it left his readers in the dark. (At least in my case.) I feel like he left me in the dark not knowing what to make of the story, again I only read it once, but it was really good. Lastly, in the story El Toro Rojo, Moore instructs his reader to actually experience this scene, to feel what’s going on. He instructs us how to think in the scene, he killed off our dad, and he made us clutch an empty can of beer. It was awesome. Even though it was a short story, it was a very memorable experience.
ReplyDelete-Jasmine Hinojosa
In reading the three stories I only liked the first one, "In Bed". I liked how the author Joan Didion describes her everyday life with migraines. As a person who does not get migraines, I can only sympathize with people who do. But thanks to this story I am able to empathize a lot better with people with migraines and actually that not only do they struggle with excruciating pain in their head but also have to deal with people criticizing them. The author then went and explained that a person with migraines can even just end up befriending their headaches and accept them. Maybe not most people, but in the author’s case, she was able to accept her migraines as a person on their death bed accepts death. The story “In the Dark” sounds like it might be an interesting story, but on the contrary, I found it very boring. I did not like the story at all as I couldn’t find myself getting into the story. I tried as it talked about the island being an enchanting one. It mentions ghosts, the “Balinese equivalent of the Styx”, which sounds very appealing, but the deliverance of the author just didn’t do it for me. On the last story, “El Toro Rojo”, mentions bullfighting and death. Not sure what the author was trying to get at, but I got that people fear death but enjoy witnessing it when it is not them. The last sentence did confuse me though. I don’t know, I wasn’t too fond for these stories. Maybe the first story, but for sure not the last two.
ReplyDelete-Miguel Garcia
Im these three stories that all had their unique forms of drawing the readers attention. The first story The Bed informed me with the disasters of Migraines.”Once an attack is underway, however no drug touches jt “(Page222) I realized how much of a affect a migraine can have with ones ability to do things, think clearly, and causing such a distraction to the mind, because of how much pain you can be in. Ive never experienced it but my mother has and when she would get them she would get in a mood and would not want to leave her room. It caused such a bummer for her day and she couldn’t do what she needed to do that day.
ReplyDeleteIn the story in the dark I believe its about a man going to Bali and finding whats in the dark and he digs deeper and deeper and at the end because of his Curiosity he ends up digging a bigger pit into failure. “You go into the dark to get away from what you know, and if you go far enough, you realize ,suddenly That you'll never really make it back into the light.”(Page225)
In the last story Reyes Mendoza is showing us the beauty of bull fighting, In this second point of view it shows us how the process is while in the situation of the rituals of bullfighting. The beauty of the unaware animal about to be slaughtered. These three stories have the informational texts on point and show us an exaggeration of their presentation of rituals, neurological disease and exploration can have risks.
-Max Garcia
The three stories went into depth on the writers’ experiences which I enjoyed reading. The first story talked in detail about migraines and just the way they explained exactly how it feels I basically experienced it. The different examples they used gave me a clear overview of how exactly it feels to have a migraine. What I understood from the second story was how peaceful Bali was and how the author wished he was in that peace always. I didn’t like it as much because it didn’t appeal to me. It seemed quite boring despite it kinda having a ghostly vibe to it in a way, but at last, I didn’t enjoy reading it. The last story is kinda set to be a Y/N type of vibe where you the reader is the one who is experiencing the event taking place. It was short, and I can’t say I enjoyed it because I don’t like to think about or ever experience being killed or killing someone as such. I did indeed like the way the writer writes it into us being the person experiencing this even I thought that was really cool. Out of the three stories I can say my favorite was the very first one because I like the way the writer wrote it, the examples they spoke about to get a feel of what they felt, and just knowing a little bit more about migraines.
ReplyDelete- Yaretzi Diaz
In reading these three short stories I felt myself relating the most to “In Bed,” by Joan Didion. I myself suffer from both chronically dry eyes and near sightedness which in combination often leads to searing headaches, especially when staring at the computer for so long. I’ve found in my own experiences that people do tend to write off headaches as a sort of minor inconvenience, often suggesting some kind of every day pain killer as the author describes, and there is nothing more annoying than having your experiences invalidated by someone who doesn’t care to listen to the full details or to be given a one-size-fits-all fix. I felt that these experiences were really mirrored in the text, especially with the colorful way she described the pain and her own solutions to it.
ReplyDeleteI found “In the Dark” to be the most interesting reading of the three, enjoying just how descriptive of a piece it was and how it took a trip that a lot of us may never experience and wrote it into something that made it feel as though it was our own memory. What I enjoyed the most about this reading though was how it described the author’s meeting and time with Wayan. Even if it was brief, it was nice to see the comparison between how magical and beautiful he thought the island and its features to be as opposed to how casual and even possibly mundane it seemed to a full-time inhabitant.
As far as “El Toro Rojo” goes it was my least favorite of the three, but only due to its content. I quite enjoyed the writing of this piece as it took something as brutal and gory as a bull fight and almost turned it into something like art, or a dance as he describes it when writing about the second matador.
-Raven Quintanilla
When reading all three of these short stories I noticed I related more with “In Bed” by Joan Didion. Just like her, I used to suffer from migraines when I was a child and they weren’t a walk in the park. I would get these ugly migraines daily and it got the point where I had to lay down in a dark, silent, and cold room. If I even heard a little noise I would start crying and screaming because to me, it felt as if they were screaming next to my ear. I tried my best to not bother me because to me it was annoying since all I wanted to do was play. I remember in school when I got the migraines I cried and screamed at my poor classmates to be quiet because I felt my head was going to explode. So, reading this short story made me remember all those tough times where I felt that those migraines were never going to stop, but just like the author at the end of the story the pain did come, but it also went away. In the second story “In the Dark” by Pico Iyer I really liked the quote at the end of the story but didn’t really understand the story just like the last story as well. In the last story I know it was about how they killed a bull, but in my opinion, I don’t really see a meaning behind the story.
ReplyDelete-Melissa Garcia
These three short stories were stories that were quite strange and I never imagined reading something like this. The first one talked about migraines, the second talked about a trip and the last one was about bullfighting. The first story was basically her experience with migraines and how she dealt with them. She over dramatically explained how her migraine comes because of hereditary. Both of her parents had migraine as well as her husband. She would get migraines so often she considered it an unwanted friend. The second story In the Dark by Pico Iyer was weird for me to read. There was a part that was similar to the first story. In the both stories they lay down in bed because they are in pain of some kind. The second story talks about a trip to Bali that took place in the dark. To me this story meant that is you go too much into a dark place it is going to be really hard to find light again. The last story was my favorite story because it reminded me of the movie a book of life because of the bullfighting. They would bull fight to show that they had no fear and to prove to them and others that they were “macho”.
ReplyDelete-Maria Ramos
These three stories that I have read were all very confusing but they were full of imagery. In bed by Joan Didion was a very odd short story. It was about a girl who did not know how to handle her migraines but, instead she learned to accept the migraine and embrace the pain. She spoke about what caused her migraines, how Thomas Jefferson had migraines, how she would lie about not having migraines every day and how she believed it was inherited. Her whole family from father, mother, grandfather, and even husband suffered of migraine headaches. She also spoke about how it affected her driving and made her a hazard on the road. Toro Rojo written by Dinty W. Moore really got my attention because of the sport of bullfighting. He was very detailed on how the matador lured in the bull just to kill it. As much as I hate bull fighting I loved all the detail that was out into describing this short story. And now “In the Dark” writer by Pico Iyer was my least favorite of the three. I feel the author was very creeped out after visiting Bali as he mentions throughout the whole story which makes mw question why he would return back to the place that creeped him out.
ReplyDelete-Noe Ramos
The story of "In Bed" shows very similar scenarios I have myself with depression and anxiety. I have experienced migraine headaches in my life, but only a handful throughout my entire life. Unlike the narrator who lives with them on an almost daily basis. Where they experience headaches, I suffer through social anxieties and depression. Almost everyday I ask myself, "Am I doing anything right? Are people happy to see me? Why do I not commit to the tasks I have set and just loathe around, making it all pile up to then crash onto me?" It's because my anxieties and self doubts control these parts of my mind that I am a prisoner to. I just need to find a way to break away from my prison cell. While reading "In The Dark" I didn't really understand what was being said. It wasn't until halfway through that I realized that the narrator was a tourist that traveled to another country for vacation, most likely to be a party animal and party the nights away. Whenever they mentioned the native women I came to the assumption that the narrator probably likes the woman, but at the same time is afraid of committing to a relationship with a person they just met and has no idea who they truly are. So having the narrator put themselves into isolation would be the safest way to gain a sense of safety not just for themselves but for the people around them. "El Toro Rojo" is short but to the point. The way it describes what might be an everyday life of a bullfighter is simple and clean. Just hearing the title "Bullfighter" gives the person an idea that that job is dangerous and violent. Either you die or the bull does. Maybe on a not so rare occasion, both parties die.
ReplyDelete- Raul Salazar
Out of the three short stories I was able to connect more “In Bed” by Joan Didion. I personally do not suffer from migraines but my mother does. I guess you could say this story hit close to home. I find it pretty weird how the girl learned to embrace her migraine pain and no longer get to her and my mother is the exact same way. If she was having a migraine she’d stay home in bed but now when we’re out in public my mom puts the pain at the back of her head and continues with what she’s doing. She learned to live with it, I guess, I can only imagine how horrible it is to have something like a migraine control your life. A big difference between the girl and my mom was that the girl would get her migraine everyday and my moms would just come and go, until finally they never came back. Reading tho short story really made me feel for people who suffer with migraines, I used to think my mom was overreacting but while I fed “In Bed” I felt people’s pain and suffering, which is why I liked this story the most it made me feel for the protagonist.
ReplyDelete-Daniela Rios
I found all three stories to be a little confusing, while reading the first one “In Bed” I was trying to figure out what I was going to get out of the story itself, I figured migraines were going to be a metaphor to something else, but then it finished, and reading the second story the one thing I could relate to the first was the in depth descriptiveness to the short stories. While reading you can actually try to imagine what they’re feeling just from their words that they use to describe the scenery, and even the physical feelings. In the short story “In bed” one of the first sentences she tells us “I feel the sudden irrational irritation and the flush of blood into the cerebral arteries which tell me that migraine is on its way.” As someone who experiences headaches or migraines occasionally I can sympathize with her the feeling that you get, and it’s like alright here we go kind of thing. Which eventually that’s how she feels, she gives into the migraine and instead of fighting it she lays “down and [lets] it happen.” Something I’m not quite sure they all have in common is this general acceptance of their surroundings by the end of the stories.
ReplyDelete-Michelle Rodriguez