"The Ledge"-Lawrence Sargent Hall

"The Ledge" written by Lawrence Sargent Hall is about a father, his son, and his nephew.  The story takes place on Christmas day and for their celebration, they have decided to go duck hunting.  The wife of the father isn't ecstatic about them going, seems how it is Christmas, but allows it anyways.  The boys had both gotten brand new guns for their Christmas presents and are ready to use them!  The guys, and the family dog,
 head out early to go to their duck hunting spot, which is an island.  Once arrived to their destination, the guys are race ready to start shooting some ducks.  The first round of duck hunting goes really well.  They shot many, many ducks and were ready for the next round.  Things started off well, but then things turn terrible.  A storm comes to the island and bring lots of water with it.  The guys would have scooted off in their boat, but a problem had occurred with it.  By the end of the story, the father has been rescued, but the two younger boys and their dog had all died.  The only one to survive was the father.

The author of this story, Hall, had worked and operated a boat Marena on the coast of Maine until 1993.  His story, "The Ledge" is about a man and his boat.  Hall liked to write about things that were in his interest, and boats were definitely one of them.  Hall also writes with concern with the behavior under pressure.  He writes about how human beings handle tense situations.  This is all very true for his story "The Ledge."  The father is put into a tense situation when everything starts to turn horribly wrong.  The father handles this tense situation by trying to do everything in his will to save his son.  With the storm coming in heavier and heavier, his main concern is to save his son.  By doing so, he puts his son on top of his shoulders so he will not have to withstand the freezing cold water that keeps coming in.  Hall also makes his characters mostly uncommunicative.  They are usually gruff men who are skilled at their professions but unskilled at interpersonal relationships.  This is very true for the father.  He is a very gruff man, who is definitely skilled at what he does.  He knows how to hunt very well, and is hoping to teach the boys.  The only problem is that he lacks interpersonal relationships.  He is a good father, but he does not know how to communicate very well with his son and nephew.  A lot of the times, he is yelling at them or disapproving in some way.  If he were to have the interpersonal communication skills that most people have, there might not have been as much frustration in the story.

Lastly, Hall's themes of his stories are those that usually revolve around manhood.  His characters usually test themselves, mostly at sea.  This hits the theme right on the dot.  The father is the one who is trying to protect his manhood.  He wants to show the boys how much of a man he is.  He wants to be the big man on campus.  The character of the father definitely tests himself at the sea.  He gets them all there to their shooting destination, but once everything starts to go wrong, the tests start.       

1940-1949: A Look Into Their Time

"Miami-New York"-Martha Gellhorn

Around the time that this piece was written, America was officially becoming involved with the war.  In this story, the narrator talks about the plane ride home from a base where she was visiting her man.  On the plane are many people, or men, that had served in the war.  This connection between the time period and the story make great connections of what the time was in the 40's.
Another thing that shows the time periods of the 40's was one of the very first scenes we are given.  "The man, finding her face closed against him, turned away, pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, and made a great distance between them, smoking and looking straight ahead." (265)  Now-a-days, there is no smoking allowed on planes, no matter what.  Even if you served in the war, there are no exceptions.  When about to lift off in a plane, the no smoking lights will even pop on.  In 1998, smoking was finally banned on flights.  


"The Peach Stone"-Paul Horgan

The way that Horgan writes shows that he is a character-driven author.  In his stories, he cares deeply for the development of people inhabiting his stories.  This is shown very good in "The Peach Stone."  Horgan shows us all of his characters, giving us great detail about them all.  Throughout the story, he then gives us development of his characters.  We learn more about them, more about their problems, and more about what's going on around them.


"The Hitch-Hikers"-Eudora Welty

The story "The Hitch-Hikers" is about a man, well known, who picks up hitch-hikers.  The two men that Harris picks up one evening are anything but normal.  One of the men carries around a guitar, and the other man doesn't talk.  After Harris picks up the two men, he brings them out for a bit to eat, and soon after he finds a place for the two men to sleep, a hotel owned by a friend by the name Mike.  Once everything is all set up and Harris has found a spot of the men, he goes out to his truck, that wasn't there because the two men had decided to take it, to tell the men, when he sees something that wasn't expected.  The quiet man had hit the other man with the guitar in the head.  Now their concern was to get him to the hospital and to question the quiet man on what the heck had happened.

The way the Eudora writes is often happy, full of love, celebrates childhood, and has the idea that people can be saved or changed.  To compare the way Eudora writes and her story "The Hitch-Hikers," the theme here is that people can be saved or changed.  Harris, the good man that he is, picks up these two hitch-hikers, hoping to save them.  Hoping to save them from a long walk, a empty stomach, and a dry mouth.  Only to his surprise after helping the men, they have changed his whole outlook.

Main Themes of "Here We Are" and "That Evening Sun Go Down"

While in class, we went over some of the main theme(s) of each story we had read for that class.  Elaborating on them more is needed:

"Here We Are"-Dorothy Parker

• One of the main themes, the most important theme, for this piece is marriage.  (The tenuous nature of marriage.)  The newlyweds have just left on a train to New York for their honeymoon.  This is the first time they have really been with each other, and only them.  They always had other people around.  Knowing this is their honeymoon, you would think things would go great!  But that is the exact opposite.  As soon as the are boarded, the fighting begins.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  First off it's the wife's hat, then it's one of the bridesmaids, then the fighting keeps going back and forth from one to another.  Other little things also come into play with their fights. 
• Second, uncertainty and self-doubt come out as one of the themes in "Here We Are."  The wife is very, very uncertain.  All the time she is either doubting herself, her newly married husband, or even her sister and friend.  There isn't much uncertainty from the husband, but the wife sure does pick up his slack.
• Lastly, the startling realizations that come with sudden "togetherness."  Like I said before, the newlyweds had never really been together, alone.  There had always been other people around.  Now that the two of them have embarked on their honeymoon, it is only the two of them together.  No more Parents.  No more Friends.  Just them.  This is when the startling realization of sudden "togetherness" comes into play.  They had been together for years, but they really only been together, together for about five minutes.

"That Evening Sun Go Down"-William Faulkner

• The most important theme I thought was family.  Throughout the entire story, there is always mention of a brother, sister, mother, or father.  In this story, the kids stick together as a family.  This is seen in more than one scene.  Also, when the kids decided to actually go over to Nancy's house, their father is the one who comes and picks them up.  I feel like this shows how important family really is.  The father was the one to get check on the kids, make sure they were okay and not hurt in some way or another.  If the father hadn't shown up, I feel like this theme may not be as important.
• One of the biggest themes in this story is racism.  Racism had become stronger than ever in the South during the time in which this story was written.  Not only was the racism becoming worse in the South, but in the North it was increasing too.  More and more African-Americans were loosing their jobs just to make enough for the white folks.  Nancy, the black girl in the story, works for the family.  She is in fact lucky to still carry her job.  That is if Jubah doesn't change things...

What we just didn't get to finish in class...

Discussion Questions

2.  The quote "She was worth it.  Beautiful nigger gal.  Why nigger?  Why not, just gal?  No, it was because she was a nigger that he went to her." means that Bob Stone went for Louisa because she was a black girl.  Louisa is a servant for the Stones.  Seems how Louisa is their servant, Bob thinks that Louisa is hers.  Tom, a black man from the same "factory town" has feelings for Louisa and is willing to try and do anything to help save her.  Bob Stone goes to Louisa because she is a nigger because of Tom.  Black people could only have a choice to whom to be with, but white people on the other hand could have who ever they wanted, no matter what race.  This is why Bob wants Louisa, because he knows it upsets Tom.  This reflects thinking at the time because back then there was a lot of racial tension, social class competitors, and lots of conflict between the blacks and whites.  These problems are seen all throughout "Blood-Burning Moon." 

3.  In "The Killers", Hemingway is trying to tell/show us that during this time period a job was a job.  If you were getting paid, then the job would get done.  He was teaching us about what it meant to stay alive.  Back in the 1920's, there was a lot of violence which was usually caused by mobsters.  In "The Killers", Mr. Andreson knew that something was wrong; he knew his time had come.  When someone betrays, steals, etc. from the wrong person in the 1920's, it meant business.  Assuming from what the killers were talking about at Henry's, Mr. Andreson betrayed the wrong person.  Once Nick went to tell Mr. Andreson what was going on after he had missed his usual time at Henry's, he noticed Mr. Andreson just laying there.  Mr. Andreson knew his day had come, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to face it yet or not.   

"A Jury of Her Peers"

In the story, "A Jury of Her Peers", by Susan Glaspell, she demonstrates a lot of historical examples that would have been proper for the time period.  In the story, Susan portrays the women for what they were, which was home-makers.  The men in the story are portrayed as what they were in this time period, which was "The Main Supplier."  The men are the important ones, while the women are supposed to sit back and watch.  It's the sheriff, the attorney, and Mr. Hale who are supposed to figure out what had happened that day with Minnie Foster.  While the men are looking at the, what they think is to be the important aspects of the murder, the women are finding the important things.  The men just look at the "big picture" and don't notice the little things like the women do.  While the men are upstairs, thinking they are finding evidence, the women are actually the ones who find what is needed.  But, while the men are sticking together, so are the women.  Both Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find the most important piece of evidence, and instead of telling the men, they stick together and keep it to themselves, for the sake of another woman, Minnie Foster.  "In a covert way Mrs. Hale looked at Mrs. Peters.  Mrs. Peters was looking at her.  Quickly they looked away from each other.  The outer door opened and Mr. Hale came in."(37)  By the glances that the women give each other when the men finally find their way back down the stairs, it's known that they are going to stick together.  What they have found, the men do not need to know.  If only men thought like women.
Also, the way that Susan writes is influenced by her personal background in the time period.  Susan used to write stories with happy endings.  Things were meant to be positive at the end of her stories.  Everything changed when she had started seeing a married man.  Her story endings had changed.  Now instead of happy endings, they were more like feminist endings.