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- Reading responses must be AT LEAST 200 words.
- Include your full name at the end of your comments. Unnamed comments will be deleted.
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- Reading responses are due by midnight on the night PRIOR to our discussion of the required reading.
In “Tunguska” by Robert Paul Moreira I loved the vivid descriptions of the boy’s love for the words (closed captions) on the television. Although it is never directly stated the reader can infer that the boy might have a disability. Throughout the story it mentions that he cut off the cat’s tail and dismembered frogs with no apparent remorse for his abusive actions. One thing I found interesting was the lack of sound in the story to further represent how the boy sees the world around him. The ending was the most captivating as it went from a dramatic wind that blew him to the floor to the boy pronouncing the title of the story. Indicating that the title is of importance to the story having to do with the explosion in Siberia. Furthermore in “Shoes”, I must say it was by far my favorite story that we have read so far. The plot/plot twist is very intriguing and would definitely be the kind of intense and suspenseful movie I would want to watch. Cynthia’s revenge was very much deserved. Lastly, in “Hollywood Ends” I somewhat liked the different structure of the scenes. However, I didn’t like the story as much as I was confused with all the movie references. Regardless I still feel that I got the main point of the story which was that these coworkers all wanted to escape their job and live the lives of their favorite movies.
ReplyDelete-Natalia Martinez
While reading the first story “Tunguska” by Robert P. Moreira I instantly went to google the title. What I got from it was that it was a random explosion or possible burst of air of a small asteroid or comet that took place in Russia in 1908. In reading the first paragraphs what I picked up from the boy was that he would use closed captioning which led me to believe that he was possibly deaf. Words used such as “those words on the screen,” “word after word,” and the Author spelling out the words in Caps so that he could emphasize on them. In the last page I see the connection of the title to the story, and was able to place them in a home in Russia, in 1908 when the explosion took place and he then pronounces his first word, “ TUNGUSKA”. “Shoes” was my favorite of the three stories, I enjoyed reading it and was hooked from the first paragraph. It was suspenseful throughout the story, and made me curious as to how Cyn could be so oblivious to the fact that her husband would spend time in the basement. The ending caught me off guard because I didn't think that she would just give up her mother that way, and the shoes he has her put on connect with the title and the fetch her husband had with them.
ReplyDelete- Michelle Rodriguez
In “Tunguska”, the imagery created by the author is beyond impressive. I really felt as if I was sitting there, watching the scene unfold and happen in front of my eyes. Right in the first paragraph, "[he] held out his hands and took in the kaleidoscope light as it showered his fingers, dove into the crisscross creases of his palms, and rushed up the length of his arms.", the reader can observe the illustrative details painted by the author of the story. In the second and third paragraph, we get to create a better picture of the character (the boy), for we learn that he is more than likely disabled due to sentences like: "He pressed the Closed Caption button on the remote, just as his mother had shown him […]" and "[…] his mother found him and ripped the scissors and bloody remnant from his hands […]". After reading the last paragraph, I was left astonished. Did the mother kill herself? After all that has happened, (just from my hypothesis) she perhaps was tired of dealing with her son and decided to end her life? She was pregnant and maybe lost her baby, due to her son's harassment? In “Shoes”, right in the first paragraph: “He undressed. He raised his eyes to it and grunted but once at the end of his mess.”, the reader learns that Brudos has a fetish for shoes. Also, he indulges and releases himself with his temptations. He is a very interesting character, so far. In the last paragraph, one is left to think about how Cynthia knew of Brudos fetish and doings. This story is quite sinister, for it contains a bunch of dark content: serial killings, sexual assault, and overall disturbing scenes. Nonetheless, it was written extremely well; the author created the images of the scene with the use of very descriptive diction throughout the entire story. In “Hollywood Ends”, it felt as if I needed to know what the author was talking about first before reading it. I had to google most of the actors and movies mentioned, yet I still (sort of) understood the superficial part of the story. However, it is a bit confusing from just reading it once. I'll have to reread it in order to further inspect it. Overall, again (like the previous stories), the descriptions are incredible, due to the images it creates in the reader's mind.
ReplyDelete- Jasmine Hinojosa
Tunguska by Robert Paul Moreira is a very interesting story. I thought it described perfectly the way you see closed captions on the TV. In paragraph three “Oh, but those words on the screen! How the boy loved them. They were made up of blockish letters, white on thin strips of black like tiny, broadcast bones, and assembled at the foot of each scene and face and image, stacked under one another like Tetris but upside down.” I took so much of the imagery of the story. It was honestly very different from anything we had read to this point. The ending was confusing for me after reading it twice still. I do like how the dramatic event of Tunguska is told “A tranquil, wooded forest beneath countless miles of cotton-white snow.” The next story was one of my favorites “Shoes.” I liked how Brudos obsession with women’s feet in heels was. It was creepy in some parts and disturbing, but the imagery was so complex and interesting. I liked the twist in the end where Cyn has her mother put on the shoes, so Brudos in my opinion can get lust and kill her because of her feet in heels. In page 5 when Cyn tells her mother about the abuse she delt with and the anger she had towards her father was interesting. I thought the dialogue between that argument was one of the more realistic, impactful, and precise pieces we have read all semester. “Hollywood Ends” was a bit difficult to totally understand because of some of the references that I heard to look up for older movies. I do like though that these characters were escaping real-life and imagining their favorite movies. I love the passion they had for cinema, because I also feel like that. The structure was perfect for showing the love of these famous Hollywood movies, as in putting each chapter of the story into a “scene” instead.
ReplyDelete-Gilbert Sanchez
Reading “Tunguska” was very interesting because I didn’t really understand it and I had to read it several times. The boy in the story seems to be experiencing some type of psychosis disorder and maybe I’m overanalyzing, but in the first paragraph it says, “…held out his hands and took in the kaleidoscope light as it showered his fingers, dove into the crisscross creases of his palms, and rushed up the length of his arms.” Kaleidoscope are mirrors and pieces of colored glass, this gives me the impression that he was hallucinating this, and hallucinations are one of the symptoms of psychosis disorder. Which could explain his disturbing behavior towards his mom and animals. But then again, I could be wrong. It was just fun to dive into and try to understand the meaning of the menacing like story. “Shoes” has to be my favorite out of the three. Apart from the dialogue, the title definitely threw me off. At first, I thought it was going to be about a vacation or the character’s favorite shoes, but it actually turned out to be quite imperil. There was a hint of resentment coming from Cynthia towards her mother, perhaps over something that happened to her when she was younger that could have been handled or stopped. The ending intrigued me leaving me with questions. I wanted to know more. The last story “Hollywood Ends” was my least favorite only because I’m not used to reading in play format.
ReplyDelete-Beth Ayala
Tunguska has some really good descriptions. I could feel like I was there witnessing what the little boy felt or saw. I was a little disturbed with the way the mom had the cat or maybe it was a metaphor for something else that I didn’t quite catch on. “Then she turned to her side and he saw it. He saw the cat, tailless, still furry, still dripping red, stuck between her backside and thighs. He reached in with his thumbs. His mother quaked, then jumped. Her maw made up of the hottest breath ever, she flailed at him, over and over. The boy giggled and played along,”I was really confused because did she actually have the cat or where they both imagined it. This story left me with a bunch of questions. Shoes is also very dark. I don’t really know the main point of the story is because it starts out about her husband and then the murders that happen around with women who don’t have any feet.Then at the end it was about the wife and her mother; she had resentment towards her since she was making her sign something. The last essay seemed very confusing since I already have a struggle concentrating and having it in play format does not help. I had many questions over what was happening also.
ReplyDelete- Yaretzi Diaz
“Tunguska” by Robert Paul Moreira is an extremely fascinating story. I thought it portrayed consummately the way you see shut inscriptions on the TV. In section three "Gracious, however those words on the screen! How the kid cherished them. They were comprised of blockish letters, white on slim pieces of dark like small, communicate bones, and amassed at the foot of every scene and face and picture, stacked under each other like Tetris yet topsy turvy." I took such an extensive amount the symbolism of the story. It was altogether different from anything we had perused to this point. The completion was mistaking for me in the wake of perusing it twice still. I do like how the emotional occasion of “Tunguska” is told "A serene, lush timberland underneath innumerable miles of cotton-white day off." is the story "Shoes". The plot/plot contort is extremely fascinating and would be the sort of extraordinary and sensational film I would need to watch. Cynthia's retribution was particularly merited. In "Hollywood Ends", it felt as though I had to realize what the writer was discussing first before understanding it. I needed to google the greater part of the on-screen characters and motion pictures referenced, yet I despite everything (kind of) comprehended the shallow piece of the story. Nonetheless, it is somewhat befuddling from simply perusing it once. I'll need to rehash it to additionally assess it. Once more, the depictions are unfathomable, because of the pictures it makes in the reader's brain.
ReplyDelete- Julian Marroquin
As for the first story "Tunguska" by Dr. Robert P. Moreira, the title itself made me confused up until I had a chance to being able to look it up and finding the meaning of the word. So, behind the meaning of the word, Tunguska, it meaning an event back in 1908, it happens to be a river in Siberia that happens to flow Northwest to become a tributary of the Yensei River. I did feel like this reading did have some sort of relation to this event and it did an incredible job at giving imagery and giving details to this event as well. One of the near to the last paragraphs on page 2, one of the sentences that caught my attention the most was "The Boy struggles to pronounce the word. He stares Unblinkingly at the television screen. A date. July 30, 1908." giving away that the event that took place behind this date was the title all along instead of looking for ideas of what it might of meant if someone hadn't known what the word meant. In "Shoes" I got the whole serial killer vibe when reading this story because of how the obsession that Brudos has with Women in heels or the way the shoe is seen. I remember seeing a show once on tv where they re-enacted how serial killers feel when they kill their victims, this was by far my favorite story to read because of it being real. lastly, for "Hollywood ends" I had a hard time following on what the author was wanting to get across but I feel like if their would of been an actual play of all these scenes, I would of been able to understand it a bit more. over all I really enjoyed reading the different style reading which in my opinion I didn't feel like they had anything in common besides them being real life events.-Ana Silvia Mears
ReplyDeleteReading post 11
ReplyDeleteReading shoes was a great story. I recognized the name but I was not sure where I had heard it before then I remembered that Jerry Burdos was a serial killer. One of the first actually. He was known to kill women and women only because he liked to wear women's clothing. The story itself was great, we saw that in the story the mom ended up paying the ultimate price for just being a bystander to the traumatic events that happened to her daughter. The heels used a trigger point to activate the itch on his nose which I took that was similar to the itch to kill. I did not really understand the third story however the first story was another good one. I thought the way the setting was described put a scenario in the reader's head that could help him feel as if he or she was there while the explosion of Tunguska happened.
- Alex Rodriguez
After reading “Tunguska”, “Shoes”, and “Hollywood Ends” I found myself confused with all three. I think the one I understood the most was shoes but then I got confused towards the middle. This story kept me engaged the most because it had some suspense in there. I was not sure what the first and last story were trying to tell and I did not enjoy reading those. I did however notice that “Tunguska” had a lot of imagery and detail when explaining the boy. I really could see what was going on and I could see the captions on the tv. That is something I would like to practice with my own writings so that the reader can mentally see what it is I am trying to describe and they can feel like they are there. These stories felt like they were all over the place well for “Tunguska” and “Hollywood Ends” they did not really follow a sequence. I especially did not like Hollywood Ends because I did not like how everything was just thrown into there. I also did not like how there were scenes why couldn’t it just have been out into paragraphs or something.
ReplyDelete-Maria Ramos
All three stories were quite unique. I had to read the first story numerous times to make me understand some of its plot or message. The title “Tunguska” is kind of symbolic to the story as I googled it and it refers to an explosion that happened a century ago in Russia. I feel that the child in the story has some kind of disability or isn’t all there as the cat is “tailless, still furry, still dripping red…” meaning he cut the tail and then “giggled and played along” (1). I don’t think he really understands the extent to the cat’s pain—but then again, his age must play a factor in understanding the severity of it. In the end, I believe the “Tunguska” explosion takes a toll of his setting as Moreira describes the imagery of smoke and ash all over, but it could’ve meant the child’s life is ruined as his mother is maybe dead? The second story of “Shoes” was quite my favorite because I love the genre of suspension, etc! Reading it, I actually got hooked and understood that Brudos is actually the killer. His wife, Cyn, is kind of blinded to see him spending all this time in the basement, when he’s actually obsessed with women’s shoes and of course, the dead women on the news happened to be missing them. The last story of “Hollywood Ends,” was a little difficult to understand as we haven’t read in that format. Although the dialogue is not in quotations, I would like to believe I quite understand the dialogue and conversation back and forth.
ReplyDelete-Karen Lamas
Robert Moreiras story “Tunguska” was pretty vivid and descriptive. I couldn’t help but imagine being the little boy and being able to see and feel what he did. With that being said, one thing I’d like to point out is that at first, when I saw the title I had to go google what the title meant and when I did it spoke about an explosion that occurred in Russia in 1908. As I kept reading I understood that the boy was deaf, or at least that’s what I assumed from the part that mentions he used closed captioning words. I also thought he might be mentally ill or not all there when it talks about him cutting off cats tails and felt no remorse, which obviously isn’t normal. As I was reading I kept thinking how this is related to the title but at the end because the little boy pronounces the title after the wind blows him down which is part of the explosion. It was an interesting and different read to say the least. I was pretty amazed by how the meaning of the title and the ending of the story connected.
ReplyDelete-Daniela Ríos
To me “Tunguska” seemed to be the story of a boy and his interpretation of the world in relation to what he sees and reads on tv and how that affects his interactions with others. From the very beginning its plainly said that he sits in the living room alone with the tv on as he sets up the captions, so the reader can only be left to assume that he has come across a few strange or age inappropriate programs at some point during his channel surfing which could be an explanation for the ways he acted out.
ReplyDelete“Shoes” was the most interesting story of the three in my opinion. At first I found myself feeling a little nauseated at Brudos’ fascination with the shoes, feeling as though the fetish would be the only focus of the story, but when he heads back upstairs to find his wife Cyn watching the news the story really caught my full attention. I’ve always had a love for shoes like Criminal Minds and NCIS where the focus is on the mind of the killer and what brings them to commit such acts so its interesting to see Brudos’ motivation for the murders he was alluded to having committed. What’s even more interesting though is how Cyn seems to have put at least some of the pieces together and gone on to use his fetish and willingness to commit such acts to her own advantage.
“Hollywood Ends” interested me in a different way than “Shoes” had in that at first it seemed to be an almost episodic description of events, possibly happening to some actor or writer in Hollywood working alongside his peers. The ending seems to show another possibility though, the possibility that this main character is simply suffering from a mental illness or a disability such as Tourette syndrome or some form of schizophrenia that causes him to repeat or live out scenes he may have seen in movies or on tv.
-Raven Quintanilla
All three of these stories were an interesting read but all three were also very confusing. The one I enjoyed the most was “Shoes”. I believe he killed the lady that was being described on the television and he also cut off her feet and stole the shoes, and those are the same shoes that he had at the beginning of the story. Cynthia’s mother was a character that I did not like at all. She complained about everything and would even call out Brudos. So as I read I was very glad that the mother fell and hurt herself due to wearing heels which I believe were also the same heels at the beginning of the story. “Tunguska” was a story that I somewhat enjoyed but then I got lost as I was reading. Let me start off by saying that this story had very good imagery right from the beginning. At first I believed that the story was just about some kid watching t.v. who was going to go on an imaginary adventure but then the kid does some weird things. Then there was also a tailless cat who wouldn’t stop bleeding so I had no idea what happed at the end. And the last story “Hollywood Ends” I had no clue what was going on. It was written in a different way at that completely confused me.
ReplyDelete-Noe Ramos
Okay so after reading all the stories I can honestly say that story 1 and story 3 made me very confused. I kept reading but had no idea what was going on. Although reading the first story again I noticed this is a little boy who is having flashbacks about things that make him smile while he is watching tv. I do wonder maybe this little boy has a disability since he is drooling a lot and is having to read the closed captioning for the tv. I also do hate the mistreatment of the family cat because as a cat person I really don’t want to see or read about people abusing them. The second story was the most interesting to me because it starts off with a murder and now, I’m dissecting the main characters to see how to react for the friend’s murder. I kind of already knew the husband was the killer, but not that the wife was basically his partner in crime. In my opinion, they shouldn’t have killed the mom just maybe beat her up a little bit, but still sign the papers so she can get the perverts money. Now for the last story I tried to reread it, but it just confused me all over again
ReplyDelete-Melissa Garcia
The story “Tunguska” reminded me of one of my cousins. When he was younger he would act somewhat the same. He wouldn’t cut the animals tails off, but he was rough with animals. My cousin had a speech disability, he would always get tongue tied and he would always watch TV, it's how he would entertain himself. I really like this reading, there was a good amount of details in the story. Although the ending was a bit confusing, I don't know what it was referring to.
ReplyDeleteI think “Shoes” has been one of my favorite readings so far from all of the ones that I've read. It was really intense and even though it didn’t specifically have action, I knew what was going on. It was very interesting and mysterious, which is what I like. I also liked how much detail there was in this reading. I think this man was working on shoes, shoes that would probably break peoples’ feet and then he cuts them off. But I’m not sure, that's just what came to my mind as I was reading it. I really liked the ending, I like how it was intense!
When I read “Hollywood Ends” I was confused, but I feel like that was the point of it. It seemed to transition from person to person. I stayed wondering why the author did that, why were they talking about movies? Why are all the conversations based on discussing actors and movies. It really left me wondering all the answers to these questions, I wish there was more to the story.
Max Garcia