Short Stories
"Shoot"
This is a story about school shootings. Im not sure I should really talk about this... It might incriminate me... I mean, if the right
person read this, they'd know that I got my hands on a "never supposed to be released" piece of literature and then I'd be black bagged and tortured Inquisition style until I revealed my sources, which by the way I'd never do, so I'd die with that knowledge...but for my grade's sake, I'll take the chance. This is a story about school shootings. It depicts the mentality of the youth of today, and expresses the need to blame something for violence. But why does it have to be one thing? It also shows the callousness with which today's youth see death. It shows a boy who brings a gun to school and, instead of stopping the killing, the students around him just "wait for the bullet." Even the victim takes no action. He just stands there and says "shoot" as if he's just glad that in a world absent of emotions and feelings, He'll at least feel the sensation of dying. This is a piece that is very reminicent of the problems that are occuring all around the country. If only it could be released in the midst of these tragedies. Maybe it would help some to cope with the anger and sadness that they are trying to overcome, before they take desperate action and hurt more than just themselves.
"Victimology"
This story really hit home for me. Its a story of a young girl who witnesses a murder and is told by her older "whore" of a sister to not tell anyone about it. This severe happening in the young girl's life results in her acting out and exhibiting pent up agression. This leads to her being teased . She then stabs a fellow classmate, who is teasing her, in the back with a pencil. Due to a loving father, who is never home, a self-absorbed mother, a psycho hose beast aunt, and a whore sister, the young girl never has the chance to deal with her problems in a healthy environment. And it all gets worse. During her halloween outing, she is left by her sister, who is more interested in fornication than candy, she is attacked by the boy whom she stabbed with the pencil. After a skirmish, she is left for dead in the woods.
This hits home for me, because this same kind of thing happened in my high school. This kid watched his parents fighting his whole life and became the quiet kid. Then in high school, he wrote a book about all the ways he was going to kill the popular kids in the school. It just goes to show you that severe emotional trauma should be assesed and treated at an early age because those things never go away.
Sin City: The Hard Goodbye
Chapters 1-4
The stroy starts off with the anti-hero Marv, who just got lucky with a woman if you know what I mean. The woman, named Goldie, gets killed by some rogue and now Marv has to find her killer. First he drops by Lucille's place to get his medicine...although he doesn't really need any. The next hing he does is go to a bar to give a message to some guy named Weevil. He gets held up in the bar by some hitmen and escorted out where he beats them and kills them for information. (And their coat.)
Chapters 5-7
We discussed Marv's role as both a detective and and an anti-hero. Marv is brutal and heavy handed in his search for information relating to Goldie, much like Rorsach. They are both very physical detective, using pain, fear and torture to meet their ends. The brutal means to establish the ends establish both of them as anti-heroes. We also discussed Marv as a religious figure, as he always wears
Chapters 8-9
In the last two chapters of Sin City: The Hard Goodbye, we see Marv fulfill his promise to Goldie by destroying those who killed her. The reward he gets for his actions is a few long months of painfully slow trials in which he is made an example of. They accuse him of not just the murders that he committed, but also of those that he was avenging. He has one final moment of bliss, however when Wendy- the sister of Goldie- visits him on death row. The next day, he is given a decent steak, a brew and the electric chair. I imagine he died peacefully knowing his work was done and Wendy/Goldie approved.
In class, we discussed the religious symbolism of Marv’s cross, or indeed the lack there of in later chapters. It is clear that Marv has a religious back round as made apparent by the cross around his neck and the bible in his childhood room. He seems to be a man of generally good convictions, though they may be seriously distorted at times, i.e. “you can’t kill a man unless you have a good reason to.” Towards the end, Marv is no longer seen sporting the trademark cross that has been with him since the beginning of the book. It was speculated that Marv has been disillusioned from faith in God by the corruptness of certain clergy. For a more optimistic view however, you could opt to say that though Marv never truly lost his faith, he began to view himself as unworthy of a reward in his afterlife. In this sense, he is similar to Rorschach of the Watchman novel, or even the assassin from Serenity.
Another basic theme from the novel was Marv as an anti-hero. He is indeed the hero in this particular story, though rather ironically as in a different situation, he might be seen as the antagonist. Marv is obviously a very violent man who enjoys using brute force with little need of provocation. It is worthwhile to explore how he developed into the “monster” of a man that he is for most of his life. There is the idea that he was born with such a violent nature, but again I would prefer to take the optimistic route. In line with the Thomas Theorem, which states that “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” then Marv is really just a product of his life in Sin City and the perceptions of others. Nonetheless, he is the hero of our story and as such should be applauded. His past behavior is resolved in the end as Marv starts using his skills for the fine and noble cause of avenging the death of a prostitute.
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