Lydia Davis & Carson McCullers

The stories by Lydia Davis and Carson McCullers were all very interesting yet odd.  There were three stories by Lydia Davis, “The Fish Tank”, “The Center of the Story”, and “The Other”. “The Fish Tank” and “The Other” were short and captivating. “The Center of the Story” was longer but more confusing to follow. Carson McCullers’ story “Correspondence” was a little more straight forward as far as author’s language goes, but the story behind it was odd and somewhat disturbing.

 

First, “The Fish Tank” was probably my favorite of the three out of Lydia Davis’. It was very short and the authors writing painted a clear picture of what was happening in your head. He or she was staring into the fish bowl, analyzing the fish as they swam. The narrator imagines eating the fish and how “fresh” they would taste, but as she is thinking this, she recognizes her shadow in the tank referring to herself as their “predator.” I believe the word “predator” showed the reader that she felt bad and not want to eat the fish anymore realizing she would be the one to end their innocent lives in the fish tank.

Next, “The Center of the Story” was extremely confusing to me. I read it multiple times to try and comprehend it better. The story is about a woman who is trying to write a story but cannot seem to determine what should be the “center.” She has many different thoughts going into this story ranging from a hurricane, to a sick man, to her study of the bible, etc. I believe her problem was that none of her thoughts that she wanted to put into her story really related to one another so that is why she could not determine the “center.” Throughout the story she flips back and forth on what she believes to be the most important point to be the center. The last paragraph of the story helped me to understand the concept a little better and wrapped up her thoughts. She was searching for the “center” or the purpose of her story, yet nothing she was talking about really had a center itself. The hurricane never struck, the man was sick but never died, and she had a religious interest but no faith.

The story “The Other” reminded me of two sisters. One sister does something to purposely annoy the other, and the other puts it back the way she wants it. The sister continues to do it knowing it is going to annoy the other. The sister talks about it to her friends and finds it very funny and entertaining and the other sister hears, of course not thinking it is funny. That is what I got out of that story.

 Lastly, “The Correspondence” was a longer story about a girl named Henrietta or Henky for short. Henky is an unpopular girl in school searching for a pen pal to befriend from South Africa. The story starts off normally, Henky writing a letter introducing herself and how excited she is to exchange letters with her pen pal Manoel. As the story goes on, we see that Manoel never answers and Henky gets very upset. She continues to write letters describing her disappointment. This made me feel bad for both characters, for Henky because she was so excited about the thought of a pen pal but also for Manoel because Henky was writing to him as if it was his responsibility to answer. Manoel probably had a language barrier or was frightened from all of the aggression in the letters.