Junyoung Ro World Lit Journal

Snowman, by Seo Yoo Mi (2012) Rating 9/10 This short story showed the inside of the Korean society of office workers. I want to talk about two things. First, the symbol of snow. Climate changed on Korea so it snowed a lot, even people couldn't go to work. However, the main character digs the snow and try to go to work. I think the snow means pressure for Korean office workers, or even all the people in the society. They have to get rid of this pressure and go to work. Yoo couldn't withstand this pressure and finally he died.  Second, the irony of the New Year's Day. In this short story, the setting is 1/1. Genarally, January 1st is the happiest day of the year. People began the year and they make new year plans. They expect the year can be fine. Unfortunately, this day became a nightmare because of the snow. The main character and Yoo's effort fell down with the snow. The specific date of this story made the characters more ironical. (167 words)

 Caring for Plants, by Hye-Young Pyun (2017) Rating : 9.7/10 This story was the most interesting short story that we have covered in World Lit. First, I liked the arguments which the readers could think differently. For example, about the hole's role. I thought that the hole which mother-in-law was digging at the corner was a hole to put Oghi inside and kill him. It was because mother-in-law saw Oghi in very suspicious eyes, tried to hide the hole in front of other people coming home, making people near Oghi leave and forget him, and talking about money and her difficulties of caring Oghi to him. However, on the other hand, some say that it's just Oghi's delusion. Because of his accident, he became to sensitive to others. To the mother-in-law, it may be just a popular behavior but Oghi brought it too sensitively. Second, it's a Korean story so the background culture was easy to understand. Husbands get afraid of their mother-in-law in Korea. This background was appeared...

 A Manual for Cleaning Woman, by Lucia Berlin (2015) Rating: 7/10 This story was not very interesting to me. Especially, the writing style did not satisfised me. Its writing style was the reminiscences of the narrator, by looking at the buses passing through her. This made the short story complexed. Short stories are too short to know about the sub characters, especially like these madames in theins story. Their description is not very long to know about them and how the narrator felt about them. If there were more specific descriptions, I think thw story would have been fun, because there are some funny episodes like finding the puzzle piece etc. And also, it was difficult for me to understand the theme of this story. The narrator thinks about her past, and watches the laundry room and the people riding motorcycles, and she cries. At first, the final ending developed too fast to understand. After listening about the discussion, I realized that she felt a lot of things, for example...

I think George Saunders' short stories are very reflective of our society now. For example, in 'Puppy', it felt like seeing our moms. And in 'The Semplica Girl Diaries', the narrator's behavior was like envying the rich and being a car poor. Like this, his short stories are very related to our society. I think this is because his short stories, which we read, were all written in the 21th centuries and these writing moments were hard to read at World Lit 1.  Also his writing style was diffrent from each short story. In 'Victory Lap', the point of view changed a lot by skipping each characters' brain. This part made the readers, especially me, difficult to understand the story. However in 'The Semplica Girl Diaries', the concept of the diary was easy to understand. Also in this short story, the sentence length was mixed up. Sometimes it was really long and the other was short like two words. This part made the story's development more rapid...

 After reading Afternoon in Linen and The Lottery, I knew that why Shirley Jackson was a horror writer. The first story looked not like a horror story to me. Maybe the child's lie may be like a horror theme because their family believed her but it is kind of a betray. In the second story, the genre of horror really appered. The ways of describing popular looking villagers but how they change when they throw stones, it was a horror story. Also the talks around villagers are just popular but we know the end when we read, that it felt scary when reading along the story.

  A Mother, By James Joyce (1914) Rating: 8/10 Mrs. Kearney felt like a Gangnam Mother in our society. She takes too much care of her daughter. This is the way that can stop her daughter's future. Now and then, people don't like interference from a person's family. The person doesn't have any feelings, but because of her family, she may be on the black-list from the committee.  In my experience, I also don't have good attention to whom are like mama boys. They grew up as well as to communicate with us, but their parents think that they are still young to give their opinion. This is the reason why this story is best related to me and easy to understand. I also felt that mothers who are like that were still there a hundred years ago.