Lenses

Dillard's story called Lenses really shows the differences in the stages of our lives. This particular piece really focuses on two separate lifestyles of this one women. Looking through lenses as a child and then again once she is all grown up. First we are introduced to a little girl with a microscope, investigating all sorts of algae and tiny specimens. She becomes almost obsessed and turns her basement into a laboratory where she spend hours and hours looking into this microscope lens, where she could only use one eye,  only see a little part of what's going on. We can make the claim that she likes the sense of being responsible for something, or having control over something when she talks about how she basically enjoys watching the tiny specimen die under her large wattage light bulb. She says, "When all of the creatures lay motionless, boiled and fried in the positions they had when the last of their water dried completely, I washed the slide in the sink and started over with a fresh drop. How I loved that deep, wet world where the colored algae waved in the water and the rotifers swam" (pg. 106). From that particular passage we can see that this little girl just likes having power. As a child, we don't have control over many things, and by overseeing this whole little world of organisms and deciding when they live and when they die gave her happiness.

The story then takes a dramatic turn to when the girl is now a women who claims the story is actually  about the description of swans. And now, she is looking through binoculars, which you can use two eyes, therefore she is seeing a larger perspective of the world now. She revisits the pond she used to go to as a little girl yet sees everything much differently than before. She looks more into the beauty of it all, slowing down to appreciate that some of these organisms are living an actually life, this is where she becomes obsessed with watching the swans. By looking through the two lenses she can see more detail for example, "It is impossible to say how excited I was to see whistling swans in Daleville, Virginia. The two were a pair, mated for life, migrating north and west from the Atlantic coast to the high arctic. They had paused to feed at Dalevillle Pond. I had flushed them, and now they were flying and circling the pond" (pg.107). When she says she had flushed them she is referring to the many samples of pond water she had just so simple destroyed and threw away, where as now she can just admire the good things about the pond that she had never recognized before. I think overall the two differences in outlooks just represent how we change the way we look at things as we grow with age and experience.

Fiction Packet #3

The Falling Girl
At first glance this story seemed very intriguing in that the first paragraph really catches your attention. It's in depth description of the beautiful city and glamorous life style draws you into thinking the story is going to have a very happy tone. Then once we find out that she jumps off the top of the building everything takes a turn for the worst and the story sort of takes on a depressing tone. The author did a great job of transitioning the two contrasting themes by using examples of them by who she sees when she is falling. The higher floors are the young rich people partying and drinking their "cocktails and making silly conversation." She continues to fall past millionaires and beautiful people, they keep stopping here asking why she is falling so fast, or asking her to stop by for a minute. This part really interested me because the know she is falling, yet they want her to join them, adding on to the original problem that this women is just going through the motions trying to be this certain somebody. I feel like she is falling deeper and deeper until she eventually has just wasted her life on these superficial things and people. To see all the people who just stood by and watched almost parallels into real like when a person is slipping into a lifestyle that is not good for them, yet no one helps them, they just become the bystander who does nothing. As she falls closer and closer to the ground the author also creates a sense of time going by, it is getting darker and darker until it is morning again at the bottom. The classes of people also go from highest to lowest as she makes her way down. At one point a lady says to her, "You have your entire life before you, why are you in such a hurry?" She tries to stop but the gravity keeps pulling her down. She is too far into trouble that she cannot pull herself out and turn her life around. It is truly a sad story about unchangeable fate and the effects that society has on women. It puts this social norm and expectation on us that we feel we need to fulfill to be successful and happy. And when this women spent her whole life doing everything she could to be that "it girl" she realized that it wasn't really her, and she still wasn't happy. So she jumped.

While reading the works by Goldburg, Burroway, and Lamott I chose my favorite stories or section from each and analyzed them.

Goldburg: Blue Lipstick and a Cigarette Hanging Out Your Mouth
          This story really let my imagination wander. The author is explaining how when she is writing she has to wear something different, become someone else, or wear something outrageous. The things way she described things really made me picture everything and a stereotype that went along with that "look". It kind of made me think that when you are writing it is almost an escape from reality, and you can create anything you want, be anyone you want. I know she literally is wearing these crazy outfits and having a unlit cigarette hanging out of her mouth but it makes me think that she does this in relation to what or who she is about to write about. The story has a deeper meaning of simply the art of writing and how it can change your outlook on anything and make you be anything or anyone else. It is an escape.

Lammott: Dialogue
        Basically dialogue can really make or break a fictional story. Lammott talks about how her students can really ruin a piece with some bad dialogue, you really have to know what you are doing. On the other hand there is nothing better than great dialogue. It allows you to actually hear from a character and directly know what they are thinking, where as otherwise you would have to infer or guess about how they feel about something or what their opinion is. Lammott says that dialogue in fiction should be more like a movie, very dramatic. She suggests sounding it out and making sure it sounds good out loud. What a character says should represent who they are. Lammott gives the example to put two people in an elevator who hate each other the most and let the elevator get stuck. This really was amusing to me, but it makes sense. Fiction writing really is a bit more complicated than I thought, yet that is such a simple idea that would be very entertaining to readers. She talks about how what they say has to be believable, and to treat these characters like real people, give them time to meet the other characters, then see how things go. This really opens your mind to a certain way of writing. You have to know the hearts of your characters. Character composition is quite the process. I feel as after reading Lammott's work I need to get started on some of my fiction works and rethink my characters and figure out who they are.

Burroway: The Active Voice
      After the character analysis of Lammott's work I became interested in another author's views. Burroway introduces the active voice. It is basically how we make our characters "come to life". It includes making their dialogue and actions much more detailed an interesting, in depth. We mostly use the active voice in fiction because it makes everything more dramatic, only using the passive voice for someone when we want them to be more of a background character or they are saying something un-important. Burroway talks about how we have to explain an action of a character, saying they are shocked is not enough, we have to explain an action that shows everyone they are shocked. I never thought of this specifically before, I understand how much it could improve a story. He is saying to use action to suggest an emotion. Burroway stresses to make sure the explanation of the action needs to quality though or it will not be as effective.