COMPREHENSION

Danny and Tigo are members of street gangs, based in different clubs. Danny’s gang had been shooting at a store in Tigo’s turf the day before. They were to settle this privately, without anyone else getting hurt by taking a shot at Russian roulette.

Tigo goes first. He just wants it over with. Danny starts chatting. The first click. They both think that Russians are crazy. They talk more and find out they both have families. Neither of them really want to be in the gang. Danny knows Tigo’s girlfriend. They start to hesitate.

Both of them are immigrants. Likely from the south. They decide to add more rounds to make their inevitable, untimely deaths more likely. They discover that they’ve lived fairly far away from each other and don’t know each other. A friendship forms between them and they decide to go to a lake on Sunday. Danny pulls the trigger for the last time.

ANALYSIS

8. Either Tigo wasn’t going to be able to tell about it or he wouldn’t have any more worries.

9. At the beginning the text seems to tackle the case of gangs in the US. Soon the two men, however unlikely, develop a kind of friendship. The text talks more about the stupidity of people and their hate rather than gang wars.

10. There were a lot of words that were colloquial. E.g. the words like the excessively used ’piece’ or the humorous sounding ’diddlebop’.

11. They trusted one another. Even liked each other. Minutes earlier he’d seen him as an enemy, a threat to his personal safety.

INTERPRETATION

They’d joined their gangs because they thought they had no choice at the time. They found the thought of somebody looking after them appealing.

Why, Honey? is a short story that, is written by Raymond Carver and it tells about a mother who has a son, who’s past is pretty colorful and future is quite surprising.

The story tells about a woman who lives in the United States of America with her one son. Her son has always been a good student and good from his heart, but she has been noticing some changes in her son. He has been acting strangely and some odd actions have been occurring in his life. The family’s cat had disappeared in 4. Of July and the next day their neighbor had seen that some boys had been violently acting towards the cat, and the neighbor Mrs. Cooper  recognized one of the boys as son of the text’s mother.

This was only the beginning of her sons disturbing acts. Next odd moment was when he was working as a stockboy and one night when he returned and his mother asked about his daily salary, he answered and didn’t want to discuss about it no more. Afterwards she found stub from his work, where she found out that the real salary was significantly smaller than what he had told her earlier. It isn’t clear if he had stolen money worth the first salary claim.

This kind of behavior kept going on and on and more strange incidences happened. He lied about his school things and all other things, and because of this his mother had no clue of his true personal life and everything he had really been doing without her knowing. But the well known mothers love against her child kept her from even considering that her son is doing something rather shady.

Not long after that, she went to find groceries in her son’s car and then she found bloody shirt that apparently belonged to him, he came and saw his mother find this shirt and explained that his nose had bled on it, she doubted it but trusted still her son.

Finally she had realized that this couldn’t continue after he had shouted at her for nothing. The next day he had changed and he was happy and had made supper for her confused mother. She asked if they could talk and she told her what had been bothering her about their relationship. He went silent but then he told his mother to kneel down in front of him, and then she ran to her room crying, then he left with necessary equipment and never returned.

After that unfortunate event, she saw him at his graduation. Then she found out of all his political success and he made it even to a governor. She realized that so powerful man could find out where anyone lives and execute serious actions, she decided to get a secret phone number and also she changed her name. She still lived in fear that her own son would hurt her, even though almost everyone else would probably only be proud of their son.

”Why, Honey?” is a short story in a letter form in wich a concerned mother opens up about his disturbed son. Her son has been acting odd since he was little boy. He gets often the most scaring outbursts and doesn’t seem to be able to tell the truth. The mother tries to contact with his son, but it seems impossible.

Everything started when he was fifteen years old and a neighbour had seen as he and his friend had killed the familys beloved cat with firecrackers. At first, the mother couldn’t absolutely believe what she was hearing. Things started to get even weirder when the mother discovered that his son was lying about normal things with no reason, for example wages and where he had spent his freetime. The mother would ask him where he was last night and he would say he was at the show, and later she would find out that he had been in school dance. Once he told for his mother that he was in a field trip, and even describes all the things he had seen. Turns out, there was no field trip. Why couldn’t he just tell the truth?

As the boy starts to get older he buys a shotgun and a hunting knife which both he keeps in his car, because his mother doesn’t want weapons in the house. Later the mother finds in the trunk of his car a shirt full of blood. Naturally she is shocked. Her sons explains that he had a nose bleed.

The mother is desperate and desides to talk with his son about his lying and askes why does he do that. The son commands his mother to kneel down.

She starts to become anxious when her son becomes a governor. The power in wrong hands is a dangerous weapon and the mother has to change her name, address and phonenumber.

I believe that the mothers concerns are real and the claims are convicing. The bloody shirt couldn’t be because of a nosebleed. He seems to tell obvious in any chance he gets. This is an apparent mark of a pathological liar. His outbursts tells that he is dangerous.

The narrator presents the information in a sinister way by not actually saying what everybody is thinking (he is crazy). She tells facts and doesn’t use exaggerative adjectives and questions many things which makes the text more dramatic. In the final paragraph the narrator wants to find out how the receiver has he reached her and why. In my opinion it seems that the person who she is writing is maybe a friend or a relative. If she had tried so hard, as she says, to keep everything secret, why would he tell all this for a stranger? He must be somebody, who she really trusts.

The short story ”Harrison Bergeron” fantasizes how the world will look like in the future(2081), when everyone is forced to be equal. Everyone who is smarter, stronger, quicker or better looking than an average person, has to wear handicappers – radios to interfere smart one’s thougts, heavy bags to slow down strong and quick people, and ugly masks for beautiful people. The system is monitored by the US Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers, whose duty is to make sure that everyone follows the equalizing legislation. And of course there is extremly hard punishments for those who doesn’t follow the laws.

The main characters of the short story are George Bergeron, his wife Hazel Bergeron and their son Harrison. In our time George would probably represent an average person, but in this short story he is forced to wear a handicap radio in his ear and a handicap bag around his neck. Hazel represents the average person of this short story – she is so unintelligent, that she can’t think about the same thing more than few seconds. Their son, Harrison, is extremely smart, handsome and strong. He is so perfect, that the government was afraid of him – perhaps the govenment thought that he would be leader the resistance movement or perhaps they thought that it would be easier take him to the jail. Anyway, Harrison escaped from jail and went to the studio and released people from their handicaps in live tv-show in order to show that they would be happier without handicaps. The story doesn’t tell why did Harrison does this – did he notice the errors of the system or did he just want to be  better than everybody else.

The government is described as a ruthless system, which doesn’t care about freedom and human rights. The main issue of the story is the relationship between the government and the citizens – if citizens don’t question the laws, laws become habits. And in the story George and Hazel are used to the handicap-system – George thinks that the handicaps are a part of him and he thinks that society would fall apart if people start cheating on laws, and they would slip back to ”dark ages” of competition. So the story is defensive statement for peoples freedom and capitalism.

The Last Spin is a short story written by Evan Hunter. It tells about two men,Tigo and Danny who are gangsters form two gang. The story begins in the situation where men are solving quarrel between two gangs. There had been shooting during a truce. Gangs order these men solve this quarrel without any street boppin, so they used a Russian Roulette. They started that ”game” and during this thrilling event of life they talked about their lifes and they got to know eachother. During the time Tigo put more cartridges into the sylinder to get decision, first second cartridge and finally the third cartrige, and now it was three to three, life or death. Finally they made friends each other and they even planned future, getting boats on the lake on Sunday etc. They hesitated the last spin but Tigo ventured to do that and pulled the trigger but nothing happends, he survived about it. Danny took the gun cocksurely and belived that he could also survive and see to Sunday. Unfortunately it was his last spin. His head explode and Tigo looked incredulously that and began weeping.

When Danny was pulling the trigger he didn’t dare to close his eyes. That was very ironic because he was so sure for their plans of future and he was very self-confident of survival. Danny and Tigo had so nice plans of future so it’s very tragic that the story has unhappy ending.

I think that it was nice to read the story because there was colloquial language and it was mostly dialogue. There was also slang which made text more expressive and little more challenging to read.

This short story was very compelling. Towards the end the suspense tightend and the end was surprising making it more realistic. I think that the story could be also true event because e.g. in the USA there is thousands of gangs.