Dreams With Sharp Teeth: Week of 10/30/13

** Do any of the characters feeling change as you’ve read? Explain why or why

not.

Pages read: 463-501 (Short stories: "Paingod" and "Ernest and The Machine God")

At the beginning of the story called "Paingod", the God in  charge of giving people pain, Trente, is feeling no concern over his job. He doesn't really care, as he sees it as his duty. Although, inside, he sometimes wonders about what happened to the Paingods before him. He wonders what happened to them and why they were not able to hold their place as a God of pain. You're fast forwarded a few hundred years and Trente has contracted a sickness, of sorts. After the many, many years providing people with indescribable pain, Trente was beginning to care. I think he finally began to care after hundreds of years because  it had been son long. He was finally realizing that he was causing people pain and anguish, so he was beginning to care about the people who didn't care about before.

The concern he was feeling was now turning into guilt and curiosity later in the story. He remembers the last man he caused pain to, and he goes for a walk in the man's shoes. For a night, he experiences the pain of Pieter Koslek, an overweight and overworked man with no life ahead of him. He was an alcoholic, and a very obvious one. He looked like it and he smelled like it so much that it was hard to tell if he was an actual person or not. The night that Trente decides to live the life of Koslek, he dies in the bar he was drinking in. Trente moves onto Colin Marshack, a man with hands that just won't stop shaking. While in his body, Trente realizes that he was the cause for this man's horribly painful hands and the cause of this man dying inside. instead of making Trente want to stop his duty, this makes him want to cause even more pain. He says, "I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain there can be no pleasure."

I don't really understand why you can say that pain is the most important thing in the world. But this is what made Trente change his feelings about his job. He wants to do it more than ever and he was inspired to cause much more pain. He also realizes why the other Paingods no longer held their positions: they had been overcome by concern. Trente knows this now, so this is what made him want to send even more pain out in the world. His new goal to send out pain makes him feel like a humble and kind person, but also the person with the highest rank in the world. He felt this way because he was Paingod, and this meant he was sort of automatically believed in by everyone since everyone experiences some sort of pain. He saw himself as a kind person because he believed there could be no pleasure if there was no pain, so he saw himself giving people pleasure rather than pain. I chose to write about this story because I think that the main character in this story changed their feelings more than any of the characters in the other story. I mean, in this story Trente goes from feeling no emotion, to feeling concerned and guilty, and then all the way to wanting to give people more pain. In the other story, the main character went from scared, to angry, to happy, and then dead. Not a very dramatic change, so this story was better to write about, and I think a better story in general.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth: Week of 10/24/13

**Describe what makes an interesting story or poem.
Pages read: 407-463 (Short stories:  "The Face of Helene Bournouw"   "Bleeding Stones"  "At The Mouse Circus"   "The Place With No Name")

When I read story or book that I find interesting, they seem to always have the same things in common. For the 40 book challenge, I've been reading Dreams With Sharp Teeth by Harlan Ellison, of course. And for all the short stories I've been reading in this book, I think I've found the majority of them interesting and /or fascinating. One of the stories I read this week is now a favorite of mine because Ellison included a lot of the things I love to find in a story. "Half-drowned, he had plunged his body into the lean, fire-blackened slit and descended into the darkness of nonthinking." As you may be able to tell, I like it when an author is very descriptive and creative with his or her words. Ellison is very creative and descriptive and this sentence is a good example of how descriptive and creative he is. This sentence was about the main character walking through a narrow passage way into a what he thought was a mountain, but was actually a volcano. So if you go back and read that sentence while keeping in mind what it was about, you see that he was so creative with his words. The passage way was not just a dark and narrow passage burnt from the lava, it was so much more when Ellison described it.

Another thing Ellison shows in his writing that I love is an interesting plot, and who doesn't love interesting plots? Again, I'd like to use the same story I took the last descriptive sentence from as an example. The story, "The Place With No Name", had a very interesting plot. He starts off introducing our main character, Norman. And very bluntly, he states that Norman is a pimp (I have no idea if mentioning this is school appropriate) and a drug addict. Through a series of events, Norman ends up losing his business and spends the rest of his money in a few weeks. For a last resort, he attempts to rob a woman but he fails since she happens to know self defense. Here's where it gets more interesting. He ends up beating her to death, but he's seen by the cops. So what does he do? He runs, of course. He runs by a shop with a tempting sign in the window. It says, "ESCAPE INSIDE", so he takes his chances and goes in. He's confronted by a small old man in the shop. He tries to walk back but the door is gone. The old man asks Norman if he would like an escape or if he would like to be caught by the police. Obvious answer, he escapes. At his choice, the old man thanks Norman, and Norman begins to fade away, waking up in a South American jungle. I found this very interesting because of how the old man is described and because of what happens after this. Ellison includes two immortal figures, Prometheus and God in this story that started with a drug addict named Norman. This thought brings me into a third thing I love when reading a story.

The short stories I read this week all have an interesting or twisted ending, especially "The Place With No Name", and this is awesome for me since I love it when endings are interesting or have some sort of twist. A lot of the endings in Ellison's stories usually leave me thinking, "Huh. Woah. Never would've that of that.". Although, the endings of the stories this week left me thinking, "Oh! I get it now." or they were so interesting I didn't have anything to say. The ending of "The Place With No Name" was one of the stories that left me speechless while thinking, "Oh wow that's...Wow." if that even makes sense. Ellison manages to incorporate creative ideas into his stories, eventually making the ending of his stories really interesting or even powerful. I feel like I don't get to read a lot of stories that leave me thinking about the book later on-- they don't leave an impact on me or I don't find them creative or very interesting. So reading Ellison's stories is really cool because so many of his endings and plots are so interesting. So far, I can say that I'm really enjoying this book.

                                  This is pretty close to what I imagined the jungle to look like.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth: Week of 10/17/13

**Describe the setting – when and where what you are reading takes place.

Pages read: 370 - 407     (Short stories: "Shattered Like A Glass Goblin" and "Delusion For A Dragon Slayer")

I chose to draw out the setting for "Shattered Like A Glass Goblin" because "Delusion For A Dragon Slayer" didn't really have a setting. Anyway, the beginning of the story begins with the description of the house it takes place in. This story is about Rudy, a war veteran discharged for medical reasons. He comes to this house to find the fiancé he had before he went off to war. While in war, he received a letter from Kris, his fiancé, that she was moving in with a friend at this house called The Hill. Some of The Hill's looks can be visualized from what Ellison tells you, while some can be seen by the reader's conclusion. 

The Hill was pretty much a house that was used by Kris and her drug-using friends-- housemates more than friends. The house has an ornatly carved front door, so I tried to ad a sort of pattern to the door. It is also described as an ugly gothic house, leading me to add cracks to the building. When Rudy first walks up the path, he sees a baby carriage laying on its side in the middle of the path to the door. In the yard, he sees an old rusty lawnmower in the middle of the messy field. It has uneven grass like someone just gave up on mowing the thing. To The Hill itself, Rudy sees the windows have been covered up with cardboard, so I shaded out the windows and added some cracks to add to its ugliness. Also, while drawing this, I had to keep in mind that the people living there were all drug addicts, described as never going outside. This meant that now only would they have uneven grass, but they would weeds growing since they didn't care for The Hill or its lawn. I drew a few weeds and some ivy growing on the corner of the building from this one idea.

 

Even though I drew the outside of The Hill, drawing the inside would have even more detail. The different floors and some rooms are described in a lot of detail, making it super easy to visualize the inside of The Hill. The house is described as being really dark all the time, making Rudy sensitive to the light when he ventured outside The Hill for errands. They live in poverty like conditions, but they do have money. They just spend this money on rent, food, water, and drugs of course. One of the reasons I really liked this story was because it provided you with so much detail, so you had many chances to picture this ugly house known as The Hill.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth: Week of 10/10/13

Analyze how your feelings change as you read this story and why.

Pages Read: 326-370 (Short stories: "Pretty Maggie Money-Eyes" & "Corpse")

"Pretty Maggie Money-Eyes" was a much longer story than "Corpse" (which was only 11 pages long), so I'll mostly talk about the money-eyes story.

This short story first introduces a man named Kostner, currently using the last of his money in Las Vegas. His divorce has left him depressed and quickly running out of money in the casinos in the city of taking chances on machines and cards. On a game of blackjack, he loses the last of his money and begins to wonder on what to do as he prepares to leave the casino. "Kostner now had his choice: he could bum his way into Los Angeles and try to find something that resembled a new life...or he could go blow his brains out through the back of his bead." So it's obvious that things weren't looking to good for him, and you kind of have to feel bad for the guy. He's divorced, money gone, and preparing to make a life changing decision.

But as he outs his hand in his pocket on the way out, he feels a single coin. A silver dollar coin. He decides that if he's going to end this, he might as well end with a bang and some chance taking. Kostner manages to find a machine that still accepts these coins--a machine called The Chief. The reward was two-thousand dollars, a pretty good deal. He inserts the coin and pulls the lever... During this period where Ellison describes the slot machine turning and turning, I felt anxious about what he was going to get. He might win the 2K, because that seems rather predictable in a book. Then again, he might not win the 2K. Ellison has written stories with pretty bad things happening to the main character, so why wouldn't he have Kostner lose that dollar coin?

Ellison also introduces Maggie, a prostitute. While reading her backstory and description, I was thinking she must actually be a nice lady. I was wrong. She turned out to be rather mean and so I disliked her. Her character was interesting and her connection with the slot machine was also pretty interesting. After getting paid one day, she takes her reward of 800 dollars and hits the same machine Kostner is using, but six weeks prior. She had a stroke while playing it and died then and there. I then felt pretty bad for her because she didn't lead a very bright life and she ended up dying while using a slot machine. Not a very nice ending for her. Although, she desired all the money the slot machine could offer. In a negative way, he wish was granted. When she died, her soul was trapped inside the slot machine as a sort of limbo. And now Kostner was playing the machine.

When the machine finishes spinning, the three bars read, "JACKPOT". Kostner could see they said the bars said "JACKPOT", but his eyes replaced the words with a blue eye in the center of each bar. Just a blue in the center, no words naming his victory. This was kind of strange and creepy because Maggie was described as having beautiful blue eyes. Maggie eventually begins to speak through Kostner through the machine, so the blue eyes are confirmed to be hers. Maggie turns out to be letting Kostner win. She was the machine, and she wanted out. She let him have a bunch of jackpots, too many for normal luck. He's checked by the casino staff to see if he's cheating, but he's clean. They check the machine itself multiple times, but that's working fine.

The staff is suspicious of him still, but they don't have to worry for long. After pulling the machine a third time, Kostner returns to hopefully win the jackpot yet again. He inserts his coin and pulls the lever. Maggie talks to Kostner about how much she loves him, how much she wants to be with him. And Kostner also agrees he'd like to be with her. So this time when he pulls the lever, he unknowingly takes her place. He dies, but not in a specified way. Ellison describes what he feels, and it's hard to say if he also had a stroke, but the main point is that he was now in the machine. This left me thinking about how good of a story this was, and just how descriptive and creative it was. It had a very interesting last line in my opinion. One of those lines that leaves you thinking, "Woah." It was: "Three brown eyes."  Although it was such a simple last line, combined with the rest of the story, it was pretty good.

Eyes of Envy (Rewrite of "The Lady Or The Tiger")

I knew this would end badly for me. One door hid a magnificent but starving tiger ready to pounce in the blink of an eye. The other door, made of the same wood and metal of the first one, held a much slower and loving death. A fair lady, who would be married off to me despite of my love for the princess. The barbaric princess...Who had come to see me die. What kind of love is that? I wonder who is behind the maiden door. Someone loving, and caring, who would rather die than see her love die a death from a beast as horrible as a tiger. Someone...unlike the princess. 

I shook these thought from my head. I could not abandon my princess’s love, she must have been forced to come to the arena. They must have told her, “Why, you must go! You must learn to watch these judgments, as you will one day take your place in this throne.”  

I felt like the eyes of the princess would help me decide on my love for her. My true love? Or puppy love? And this...This would help me know what door I might choose. So I shot my dearest a look of questioning. Two questions, one for her and one for myself. I asked her, “Which door?”. 

Also asking myself, “Do I love her, and does she love me?” 

She looked at me right in the eye and waved to the right. When I saw her face and hand I felt a melancholy and guilty feeling wash over me because I knew. I knew which door consumed what in darkness. The king had talked to me prior to the trial to give me a test on my love for his jewel of a daughter. A dirty jewel...

“Child, the door to your left is a lady, and a pretty one at that. The door to your right is the beast. If you choose the left, I’ll know you never actually loved my daughter. You will know you never actually loved her. And all this would have been for nothing. Now choose the door to your right and you will die, but with faith in your love.” he had said while gliding his hand over his raggedy beard. 

He stopped and smiled, yellow teeth illuminated by the nearby torch in the dungeon cell they held my in. “Either choice is rather bad for you in some way. Why don’t you let her choose?” 

Suddenly I was back in the arena and my heart dropped like a stone. She wanted me to die, now would I give her what she wanted?  I started slow at first, one foot at a time. The rocks and sand crunching beneath my shoes, the only sound to be heard in that moment. Then I walked, and jogged, and ran. Soon, my hand was on that oh-so cold metal of the right door. With my free hand, I sadly brushed the tips of my fingers against the handle of the left door. 

Both of my hands were now on the right handle, and they gripped that handle harder than anything I’d ever gripped before. All I had to do was open the left door, and I could live. But no, I held on to that handle for dear life even though that handle was taking it away. I breathed, and I pulled it open slowly. For a split second I saw eyes of green envy, and I knew this was my end. The tiger crouched, jumped, and I fell to the rocks underneath.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth: Week of 9/30/13

Pages Read: 303-325  ( Short story: "Basilisk")

The story introduces Vernon Lestig, a Lance Corporal in Vietnam during World War 1. He steps on some pungi stakes, sharp bamboo stakes usually coated with excrement so the person stepping on them becomes infected. Vern steps on one and is captured by the Viet Cong  an organization that fought against the US. He ends up losing his right foot and end up with partial blindness. His captures torture him, and it makes you wonder just how much people can be affected by traumatic events. He spills the beans about the militaries' plans, but he is still tortured. Eventually he ends up back with the US, but was taken to court for treason. He was honorably discharged and paid for his foot and blindness.

Court could be considered a reproduction of telling the Vietnamese the plans, but the real trouble hits him when he heads black to his home town in Kansas. His girlfriend married, his parents moved away, and his sister married to rid herself of the Lestig name and she doesn't understand why he did what he did. The other neighbors simply hate him for what he did. A gang of guys come and attack Vern, but he manages to get away because something protects him. The hate from the town seems to corrupt Vern, but he just wanted to go back with his family who doesn't want to be involved with him any longer. He meets with his sister in an old, abandoned church at night, hoping to find out where everyone he loves has gone. She explains she loves him, but she doesn't want the trouble from the townsfolk. This shows how the views of other people easily effect the things a person normally would care for. She would have continued on caring for him had the townsfolk not expressed their hate for Vern. She leaves him there alone, but not for long.

He hears creaking of the floorboards, so he reaches for the glasses that help him see. While reaching for the glasses, he knocks down the cane he uses to walk. He again is attacked by men, but he is overcome by a sort of power similar to the powers of basilisks in mythology. It is said that basilisks can kill by simply looking at a person, and their breath is very toxic. Vern looks one of the men in the eye. The man's face begins to rott away in disgusting handfuls. He thinks of all the torture he went through and kills are the men with his toxic breath and burning look. Vern was now very angry and was going to take it out o the rest of the people hoping to get rid of him. The neighbors look for him in the dark of Kansas, on a mission to kill the monstrous traiter.

They find him at dawn, in their mall on their monument for soldiers and sailors. They try to get at him, waving rifles and flaming weapons at him, but he's not worried. He kills the first few men that challenge him and kills the women who try to run away. Vern tells the people to crawl towards him, in reference to all the crawling he had to endure with only one foot in the days of his torture. In the middle of the crawling blob, a woman sits up and shoots Vern in the collar bone, causing him to drop his crutch. He wasn't able to get up again, so the townsfolk take this time to kill Vern.

This story made me wonder how people really would've reacted to a traiter in war. I understand that this was an important war, so would people totally freak and decide to kill the traiter? I think if someone actually betrayed the US military during WW1, people would definitely be angry, but I would think they would keep the law in mind and not decide to go and hunt this guy down. Even though it was WW1, I would hope that people would have the decency to respect this guy's right to live. They could've totally shunned him and let him be on his way, but they went straight for the killing option. Even the family members seemed to be rather vain, trying to count him out of the family so they wouldn't be judged for showing they care for him. This story had a sort of example of the things we do because of the influence of others.