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.