I read Kurt Vonnegut’s short story named Harrison Bergeron. It was confusing story about society’s future. The story sets in 2081. It tells about mankind, where everybody is finally equal and everything is in order. No one is smarter, stronger, better-looking or faster than anyone else. Equality is the thing number one. If you are more beautiful than anybody else, you have to use mask in front of your face. If you are little bit smarter than anybody else, you have to use headphones which you hear some irritating sounds that you can’t to focus anything. You even have to use heavy weights to slow down, if you are too strong or too fast. The government calls these instruments ”handicaps”.

In the story there is a couple named George and Hazel who have a boy Harrison. The boy is too much everything. He is very good looking, smart and strong and quick too. Harrison’s mother Hazel Bergeron cannot think deeply about anything, but boy’s father George is little bit smarter so he has to use headphones. There is at least one person, who has more authority than other people. Her name is Diana Moon Glamber. She is ”Hadicapper General”.

Harrison is the fourteen-year-old. The Handicapper General forces him to wear the most extreme handicaps. Harrison has to carry three hundred pounds of additional weight to impede his strength and he must wear a red rubber nose and black caps for his teeth to make him less handsome. That’s not enough. That’s why he has jailed by the Handicapper General’s office. Harrison escapes from jail and go straight to the TV studio. There is going on ballerinas dance show. When he arrives to studio he undress all his handicaps and start to talk about society’s madness. He call himself an emperor and choose a ballerina to empress for him. They dance in television like lovebirds and be happy. Then Harrison killed by Diana Moon Glampers when she shoots a ten gauge shotgun into him.

Hazel and George are watching ballerinas dance on TV. George, who has left the room to get a beer, returns and asks Hazel why she has been crying. She says that something sad happened on TV. She has just seen that her son killed on TV, but she cannot remember it after few seconds after happening. George urges her not to remember sad things. A noise sounds in George’s head, and Hazel says it sounded like a doozy. He says she can say that again, and she repeats that it sounded like a doozy.

Vonneguts sentences are short and easily understood. His story includes social and political critique. The story includes an anti-communism message. Vonnegut tells his story with humor. Even the most horrifying scenes are underlined by jokes or absurdity.

This story written by Evan Hunter tells about two guys from opposite clubs, sent to a different kind of a duel. Their intension is to play a game called russian roulette to settle a controversy between the clubs. The game is played by putting one cartridge into a revolver, spinning the cylinder and pulling the trigger beside your temple. So basically the game is about the players luck whether he shoots himself or the bullet isn’t in the top chamber of the cylinder. These two players, Danny and Tigo aren’t familiar with eachother from the past. But they start to talk about their lives and how their club membership has affected to them.

At the beginning of their battle they have a short and nervous conversation. A little chit-chat to lighten their mood. Danny seems to be more nervous and wants to get over with the thing while Tigo keeps talking, which indicates that he is a bit scared of the situation. It is pretty ironic when Danny is going to take the first shot but he is afraid to close his eyes on the moment when he should be more scared of the consequinces that might occur from pulling the trigger. As the game goes on they start to add more bullets to the revolver to increase the odds of to end the insane roulette. The more Danny and Tigo tells about themselves the harder it is for them to continue the roulette.The players also have this one problem in common that helps the story to move on although the true problem behind their words can be seen in the end of the story. Their problem in the beginning was that they didn’t volunteer to straighten out the disagreements between the clubs. And in the end the problem seems to be that they don’t want to be members of a club that isn’t so well received in the community.

In the end Danny and Tigo agrees that they are friends from now on. And Danny asks if they could meet on a known lake with their companions. It would have been awkward if Danny would have asked this before they agreed to be friends after this incident. The very end of the story is very tragic because when Danny is supposed to pull the trigger for the last time before they quit this nonsense they’ve been doing. Unfortunately lady luck isn’t protecting him anymore and Tigo is left in the cold basement crying alone.

The colloquial language in the story is revealed in few lines such as: ”Your old lady born here or the old country?” which is commonly used in unofficial conversations. In counclusion I found this story very interesting, it had such characters to indentify with which made it very nice to read. It is such a shame that the story is so short because I could have been able and interested to read longer story similiar to this.

The story plot tells to guys called Tigo and Danny, and they are in the basement the whole story. The reason why they are in there is that they are both part of different gang. There have been conflict between the gangs, and they put Tigo and Danny solve the problem by playing Russian roulette.
First they try to be tough guys and not showing that they are scared. But the more times they have pull the trigger, the emotional the conversation is turning. They started to talk about their personal life. They are making plants that they will see after this, even if they know that one of them will not survive. After few ineffectual shots they decide to put one bullet more into gun. Still it doesn’t work, so they put still one more. It will flow to Dannys destiny.
Text is almost entirely dialog between mans. They are noticing that they have common features, and what further the story goes, the more they get know each other and starting to be friend. The fact that Danny asked Tigo to go lake whit him shown that they really were started to like each others, and even that they were different gangs, didn’t mind. They know that it will separate them both from the gangs.
I thinks that characters joined gangs because they have been money problem, so they are have to do something to earn money and protection. Maybe they are not enjoyed to be in a gang, but it have began their “family”. Now when they realize that they don’t need to be in a gang anymore, they are planning what would it like to have a friend from an other gang. Maybe their life is better than before, and they could survive without the gang.

This story is told by a mother who is afraid of her own son. The story is actually mother’s answer to the letter she has got but the reader doesn’t find out whom the mother is writing to. In the letter the mother tells about her son which she hasn’t seen in a really long time. She tells about reasons that made her scare him.

I think that mother’s evidences are convincing. For example the cat: when the son was 15, there was a cat in their family. But one day this cat disappeared and the next evening the neighbour came to tell for the mother that two boys had done some really bad things for the cat and that probably one of these boys was the son. This is quite greepy. How is so young boy able to cause his own cat’s death on purpose? It’s really understandable why the mother is scared, especially when she also founds a bloody T- shirt from her son’s car.

Mother’s way of telling the story makes the reader a bit sad. It is somehow so touching. She calls her son ”honey” almost every time she speaks to him so she must love him really much. It’s so sad that the mother does everything possible and still the son treats her like rubbish. It’s like the son didn’t have any heart at all.

Even though mother writes that she wished nobody could find her, I think she is still happy that someone wrote for her. This also makes the ending a bit more happier because I think  she got the feeling that someone cares about her. In my opinion the mother is relieved when she finally can told someone about these things. She tells about her feelings really openly so the person who she is writing to must be someone reliable. I also think that the mother writes because she wants to tell the story from her point of view. She wants to tell reasons for her behaviour, for example changing her name. She wants to get her voice heard.

The last spin is a short story featured in open road, written by Evan Hunter. Putting it briefly it’s a story about two guys, Tigo and Danny, who have been chosen to settle a fight between their gangs ( which they refer to as ’clubs’ ).  Instead of an actual fight they have been ordered to settle things up by paying a game called russian roulette, a game of chance in which the winner is the one who is lucky enough to stay alive.

There was supposed to be a truce between the gangs, but Danny’s side made the mistake to ignore that, leading to the situation described in the story. The boys are sitting in front of a table in a cold basement room, ready to begin their game. They start out as enemies, not because they had something personal against each other but because that’s how it was supposed to be. Being in different gangs made them automatically enemies. Neither of them wants to show their actual feelings to the other but as they take turns in shooting ( at first with only one cartridge in one of the six cylinders, later two and three ) they start to chat with each other, and each time they pull the trigger they get to know each other a bit better. They talk about their life, family, girlfriends and dreams and soon they notice they actually have a lot in common. Both of the guys start to get reluctant to go on, but quitting now is not an option. Suddenly Tigo asks excitedly if Danny has ever been rowboating on the nearby lake, telling him he should definitely try it sometime. Tigo pulls the trigger once more, staying alive, and as he passes the gun to Danny they agree they were actually lucky they got the chance to meet each other. Grinning they decide to end the game after one more shot and Danny invites his new friend to the lake next sunday. The guys smile at each other, Danny pulls the trigger, and in the few next seconds the explosion rips away half of his face. Tigo rests his head on the table sobbing, and the story comes to an end.

Overall the text was pretty easy to read since It mostly consists of the boy’s dialogue. The colloquial language they used fits well with the atmosphere of the story but was a bit difficult to understand at some parts. (For example the world diddlebop was kind of weird) During the story they realize they have no reason to stay with their gangs. At first both act cool and tough, but later they start to relax. Danny and Tigo realize they only joined the gangs because they were the gangs of their streets, not because they liked their so called ’friends’ there. The gangs were controlling their lives and using them to get power, but together they make the decision to stop taking orders from them. When Danny invites Tigo to come to the lake with him the both of them let go of their roles as gang members completely, and grin together happily and openly as they know they had both finally gotten a friend who they could trust. The ending is what makes the story kind of tragic, it’s a really good ending in my opinion.

”Why, Honey?” is a short story written by Raymond Carver. The story itself is in a form of a letter sent by a concerned but scared mother to an unknown man. The letter is a bit mysterious because it doesn’t reveal any names except for a Mr. Cooper, Fred and Betty Wilks. Mr. Cooper is their neighbour, Fred is the son’s schoolmate and Betty Wilks is a friend of the mother. At first, the mother sounds very concerned about her son but in the end she says she’s afraid.

The mother is implying too much in my opinion. In the case with their cat, Trudy, dying, she sounds suspisious after her son told not to worry and that their cat was very old.
What comes to the wages, she didn’t really think it through. Why would her son lie about getting more money than he actually got? Maybe he earned it due to working overtime or completing some extra task which made him get more money.
I understand the part when the son bought a shotgun and a knife. However, he said he had been hunting. What if he wanted to take up a new hobby with his mates? After all, he did join the marines later.
I’m not really sure whether the mother got the note about field trip a bit late or her son actually was mad. This part really confused me. This seems to be quite convincing evidence.
Why would the mother be suspecting something due to a bloody shirt? She could take her son to the doctor’s in case he had been shot or if he had been in a fight. Other than that, the evidence is not really convincing.
In the kneeling part the son asked her mom to kneel down so he could show something. The mother ran to her room and locked herself up. Why’d she do that if she wanted to hear the truth? Maybe her son was going to tell something important but she was too careless to hear what her son had in mind. On the other hand, why would her son want her to kneel? He could’ve just asked her to sit down if he had something to say.
The surveillance part sounds like the mother is getting mad instead of her son. I think she was a bit paranoid if she thought that someone was spying on her. Maybe she thought that because she herself had been spying on her son.
Altogether, I don’t think her evidence is convincing. The pieces don’t seem to fit together, atleast for me. Some of the evidence is convincing but some not.

The mother makes her claims seem portentous so she could defend her opinions. She does this by suspecting the worst in every case. Like in the kneeling part she just runs to her room without saying anything. Why would she do that?

The last paragraph gives me the idea of her needing psychological care or someone to talk to. At first she says she wanted someone to know and that she’s ashmed. So at first she seems grateful that she was written to. However, right after that, she starts asking how the writer got her address and that she’s been praying that no one would know her address. So she’s grateful and then again afraid which after she seems quite neutral and asks how the writer got her address. This doesn’t make the narrator more reliable. In fact it makes the narrator unreliable to tell such things to a stranger who maybe could end her son’s career with the information. But nothing was said about the receiver of the letter so it could be a good letter as well.

I think the mother is writing to her ex-husband or to her son. Starting with the words ”Dear sir” suggests that she’s writing to someone who’s rather old so it also supports the fact that she’s writing to her ex-husband. But how could her ex-husband get her new name and contact information? It might be via the son but it also suggests that she’s writing to her son instead of her ex-husband. Once again, the mother says it’s hard because there’s no father in the house. That would suggest that the father is written to. He might’ve asked how their son had worked his way up all the way to a governor or just how was their son’s past.