Baptizing the Gun

The beginning of the story Baptizing the Gun immediately jumps into a graphic and violent scene. A woman who had her earring stolen from her by ripping it off of her ear. The author immediately sets the mood for the story and lets the reader know that it will be violent and not the happiest of stories. Soon after the theft of the earring the priest states "see a boy struggling in a bonfire on the road. The earring thief has been caught, ringed with tires, doused in petrol, and set ablaze." I cannot even imagine the pain of being burned alive, but i've also heard that after five seconds your nerves are completely destroyed so you cannot feel anymore. It is scary to think that these things are really happening in certain places in the world, and for something as minor as stealing a woman's earring although it was ripped off of her ear would sentence you to death, and you get burned alive in the street while everyone watches. I don't see why someone would still risk stealing a measly earring when there life would be on the line if caught.

When the priest comes in contact with the man in the pinstripe suit, i was curious to find out who exactly he was. He is helping the priest out but is it all in a plan to steal his car from him or was he merely just being friendly. The priest is cautious and pretty nervous by his approach, which in Nigeria i would be as well. He has a Rolex, a nice suit, and sunglasses on which seems like a thug to me. While they begin to drive along i was still very curious to find out what exactly he is doing. The priest notices a bulge in the man's pocket and guesses it to be a gun. I could see how the priest could think of this bulge as a gun just because of the way that the Lagosian is acting. When the arrive at the "Operation Sweep" the Lagosian begins to act weird and nervous. I still do not fully understand why the Lagosian gets so anxious at this part. You find out at the end of the story that "his gun" is really just a "handkerchief the size of a hand towel" but the Lagosian exclaims as they get nearer to the road block "i'll kill you if you stop this car, damn it!" I wonder if he gets angry and threatening at this part not because he is a criminal, but just because he knows how corrupt the police are and doesn't want to come in contact with him if possible. You learn that the soldiers really are corrupt and end up making the priest pay them money to pass.

When they arrive at the town and are in the traffic jam the priest attempts to make his escape. He gets trapped by the O.P.C. and has to pay them more money. The Lagosian actually was the one who talked to them to see if they could find the priest for him. Something did not seem right at this part and i kept thinking that something really bad was going to happen to the priest and that the Lagosian was going to kill him or something of that nature. After having the car pushed to the mechanic and the Lagosian and the mechanic get in a little argument once again I thought that here was were the Lagosian was finally going to show his true color and do something criminal like we all think he is planning on doing. Shortly after, the priest finds out that the "heat" the lagosian was packing was really just the handkerchief and that he really is just a kind hearted man. He is wearing the suit and the rolex because he is a businessman and "[has] a company that imports iron rod." I really liked the end to this story. It shows that even in a dismal and genocidal environment there still are people that are good and that just because they live in that place does not mean that they agree with what is going on in it. It was amazing how quickly my view of the Lagosian changed once i found out that that gun was actually just a large handkerchief and immediately felt the goodness within him, as did the priest. Also if i lived there, i probably wouldn't buy anything that was really nice. Like the "Pirellis" the tires that the priest has, the whole time he is sort of worrying about them being stolen. I'd rather have a bunch of crappy stuff so i wouldn't have to worry as much about them being stolen.

Better Half, Maia

Both of these stories are pretty similar, foreigners dealing with relationship problems. Better Half was a depressing read. Anya is from Dolsk but had moved to the United States away from her mother and father. She fell in love with a boy named Ryan but this love quickly fell through. All there relationship is now is fighting and Anya knew that she would have to end this. Ryan is full of insults and abuse such as: "Now get the hell out of my car""your fat ass isn't getting a free ride no more." (114) The final straw for Anya however was when he hit her later that evening. She met with Erin and now has a restraining order against him. However, even though Ryan was abusive and she knew she was better off without him she still missed him. Maybe she missed the Ryan she knew when they first met, when there was nothing to yell at each other about. After seeing each other at a bar they quickly start getting together again. Everything is alright but Anya knew things just were not going to work out between them. Things quickly get sour, and Anya could see it coming, after that first argument on their second try she gave it up and knew she would have to stop herself from thinking about him, "She'd have to overcome the urge to look fro him as she had that time" (129). Maia in Yonkers is also a sad story to read. It deals with relationships again except this one is between a son and his mother. This son is young and spoiled getting most of what he wants and complaining when he does not get it. When in New York City, he hoped that the elevator in the Empire State Building would take them all the way to the tip of the spire, "When it let them out at the observation deck, on the eighty-sixth floor, he turned disappointed and moody and wandered away from her." (41) I'm the youngest in my family, i have three older sisters but my mom never put up with things like that if i acted like Gogi. While reading the story i found myself thinking of how my mom would react if i did some of the things Gogi did. The evil stare she would have when you know your about to get an ass whooping. Gogi eventually begins to show a little more respect and you see that the relationship between him and his mother is getting better, relationships have two sides and you see Gogi begin to do his part.

Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice

The beginning of the story introduces you to the son and the father. They are both of Vietnamese decent however you learn that the father is visiting from Sidney, Australia and the current setting is in Iowa, where the son now goes to school. The son sounds like the average college or graduate student. A very messy apartment. Clothes and papers everywhere, a mountain of dishes in the sink, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, liquor handles stashed away. Right off the bat i knew that i could relate in some ways to this character. The son begins to use the term Ba when talking to his father such as: "You'll sleep in my room, Ba" I figured that this was the Vietnamese way of saying father or dad, but i looked it up online just in case and it is. While at it I also looked up the definition for the words rueful, as in his dad gave him a rueful smile and exorbitant. Rueful basically means sympathetic, and exorbitant is exceeding all bounds, so he gives the bartender generous tips. I was kinda confused when the son was recollecting on his time with his girlfriend the day before, he talks about how beautiful she was but then states "staring at her face made me tired." i'm not sure if this meant that looking at her beauty made him tired, or if it was foreshadowing some trouble between the two of them, if he is growing tired of her. While him and his friends are drinking i got a good laugh when his friend was telling him how easy it is for him to write, just writing about Vietnamese subjects then says "But instead, you choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans--and New York painters with hemorrhoids" I could see him actually writing about the Colombian assassins and Hiroshima orphans, but lesbian vampires and painters with hemorrhoids? is that for real or just part of his drunk humor? well i guess the vampire one might be able to work. As you continue reading on, Nam explains the way his father was toward him when he was young. Very strict and disciplinary he tells that when he found out that a certain food made him vomit his father "forced me to eat it in front of guests" and saying that hunger finds no fault with food. Thats a little too intense for me, i think if i were raised like that i would leave the house a soon as possible. When the story continues it gets to a point where the father is telling war stories to friends while drinking. You learn that he has seen a lot of terrible things in his lifetime, such as witnessing one of his grandfathers get his throat slit while his grandmother got shot and a daughter raped. this sort of justifies why he was so hard on his son growing up. I had a feeling while this story was going on that it would be material that Nam would soon write about. The story is keeping me interested, but as i read along, i keep finding myself going back and forth wondering during certain section whether he is talking about something in the past or in the present tense, it seems a lot of it is in the past but i guess i just miss a lot of the transition periods. Nam and his father have a sit down talk and his father tells of his life and the things that he had seen. The next morning after Nam had finished his paper which was due that day, he awoke to find that his dad had gone for a walk and went to read his new paper. After finding his dad down by the river with the man by the barrel he sees that he is empty handed. So his dad threw the paper into the barrel? After seeing this Nam states that he wishes he had known then what he knew later then he would have said the things he did. So this must mean that Nam was angry and said some bad things toward his dad such as i wish you never would have come, and what he did was unforgivable. I think everyone who realizes that their paper had been thrown in the fire would have been very angry though. But following this i think Nam realizes what this paper did to his father. His father had spent his whole life trying to forget these terrible memories and having told those stories throughout the night and reading the paper on himself had reopened those wounds that he had spent so long trying to sew up. As Nam looks at the river getting colder behind his dad he realizes something. The last sentence of the story is "And it occurred to me then how it took hours, sometimes days for the surface of a river to freeze over--to hold in its skin the perfect and crystalline world--and how that world could be shattered by a small stone dropped like a single syllable. I think this is a metaphor for something along the lines of, his father had spent so long to sew up those wounds that had haunted him forever and finally brought him piece of mind and something so simple such as small stone (paper or words) could shatter all of that. So in general the story was good, but i still am sort of confused at the end it, what is exactly happened and what all of the things Nam was saying at the end really meant.