You might think about the questions: How do the particular small things Laura witnesses trigger an existential crisis? What is the nature of her existential crisis? Can you explain it? Can you relate to it? What new understanding accompanies the crisis? Do you share that understanding? How do the many paradoxes and oxymorons used by Lispector effectively convey the crisis? What about the end? What happens to the crisis? Why? Can you explain what happens within Laura from the time she gets home to the time she goes to bed? Were you disappointed? Pleased?
You might respond analytically by showing the relationship between how it's written and what it means. You might evaluate the story: does it succeed in what it seems to try to do? Do you like it? Respond to the short story personally: can you relate? How? Compare the story to others you've read. You might think about As I Lay Dying and King Lear (or other literary works or films). Respond by extending the story in someway: a sequel and prequel. Write a letter or poem or script in response.
Show that you have read the story, have thought about it, and have understood something about it (or even have made of use of it in some way).
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I felt hugely connected to Anna when I read this story, because I am one of those people who is a thinker. The most critical changes of my life have been because of deep thoughts about things that others only see on the surface. I thought it was very interesting how Anna's whole perspective on life is changed by a blind man chewing bubble gum. It is a scene that anyone could see on a train in pretty much every large city. It seems so inconsequential, yet Anna's whole way of thinking is changed by this one blind man chewing gum. I also thought that the garden imagery was really cool. All along in the story the author uses the language of Anna growing a garden around herself. With this garden she can block out the unkind, disturbing things of the world. She tries to have this life without feeling by "growing" her own "perfect" garden of life around herself. "She mysteriously formed part of the soft, dark roots of the earth. And anonymously she nourished life" (39). Because she has "created" the life she lives in, she is the only one who can keep it going. When she sees the blind man chewing bubble gum, her perfectly created garden is destroyed. She no longer is safe in her world without feeling; she is brought to the point where she has to feel. She realizes that the garden she has created is both strength and cowardice. "It was both fascinating and repulsive" (44). She has the strength and ability to ignore the horrible, earthly things of the world, but that would be cowardly. Anna comes to realize that she has to make a choice between "fierce compassion" (45) and a continuance of the emotionless life she has led in the days before seeing the blind man chewing gum. The story ends with the author saying that "Before getting into bed, as if she were snuffing a candle, [Anna] blew out that day's tiny flame" (48). Anna decides to try to ignore all the things that she discovered that day, but I wonder if she would ever be able to totally forget those things she discovered when she saw the blind man chewing gum. I think that even if she tried not to, she would always question the perfection of her garden. Because things in life that make us think so deeply about ourselves never really quite leave us.
I also had this little epiphany (if I may call it that) about how Anna is at first like Cash (from As I Lay Dying), and then changes to a Darl-like perspective, but in the end again is Cash. Before she sees the blind man, she has everything in her life in order. She ignores all the ugly things of the world and hides in her perfect garden. Then she sees the blind man, and everything changes. "Like some strange music, the world started up again around her. The damage had been done. But why? Had she forgotten that there were blind people? Compassion choked her. Anna's breathing became heavy. Even those things which had existed before the episode were now on the alert, more hostile, and even perishable. The world had once more become a nightmare...In every strong person there was a lack of compassion for the blind man, and their strength terrified her" (41). She is no longer able to organize the world around her, because she has started to see the world like Darl. She analyzes it and sees that the strong do not have compassion for the blind man. She begins to hate and love the world at the same time. But by the end of the story she decides to deal with things again like Cash. She ignores the blind man, and pretends that he doesn't exist in life. She blocks out the unpleasant things of life and lives emotionless. Like Cash, she sees them, but chooses to live life without them.
Brian Hand
I think that this is a story about how life is full of unexpected, indiscernible symbols, and how they cause us to question how truly strange existence is. It's about the small things that move us, and how we are ultimately consumed by the mechanical humdrum of life.
In the beginning of the story, Anna is caught within her dutiful existence as the mother of "nice children," who were "growing up, bathing themselves and misbehaving," (37). It is echoed throughout the story: "This is what she had wanted and chosen," (39). When she sees the blind man chewing gum, her perception of the life around her changes. The eggs that fall from her lap and break symbolize the metaphorical shell protecting her from the intriguing, nightmarish nature of life. After seeing the blind man, she is able to step outside her linear, mechanical life and look upon it with new perception. Instead of "separating each person from the others," she sees the larger image of people, lacking "any sense of direction," (41, 40).
The narration shifts in response to Anna's experiences. The simple, innocent murmurings of the opening becomes deep, curious descriptive passages filled with loaded words and phrases: "On the ground lay dry fruit stones full of circumvolutions like small rotted cerebrums," (43). In the end, Anna's "crisis...had spent itself," and "she [blows] out that day's tiny flame," (48). She is back, swallowed by her family and the familiar feelings of home. I feel that her spell of severe empathy and compassion simply ended, and was not consciously suppressed. She seems to be someone without that much control over her feelings and is easily affected by the mysterious signs in life.
This story reminded me a lot of "The Swimmer" by John Cheever. Both stories begin so innocuously but shift to surreal language and chilling tone. Also, Anna in "Love" and Neddy in "The Swimmer" seem isolated, despite being surrounded by people. Even when Anna returns home, she seems distant and separated from her son, as the narrator notes "she held him away from her," (45). Similarly, Neddy strolls through his neighborhood, greeting and conversing with people, but at the end his delusion has isolated him. Both stories seem to tiptoe the line between fear, comedy and tragedy. The use of words in "Love," "frightened...much too gentle...tragicomic," signify a story rich with indiscernible emotion and pathos.
Initially I picked this story because it reminded me of my Mom. “Her precautions were now reduced to alertness during the dangerous part of the afternoon,” is something along the lines of what my mom once described the hours between 2 and 4 o’clock being like. Anyway, through out Anna’s crisis inside herself, she’s always reminding herself that it was a choice she made. She “had always found it necessary to feel the firm roots of things” and be on solid ground, and growing up, becoming a wife, becoming a mother and having a house to hold all of this was it’s own foundation. To me, when it says “she had gradually emerged to discover that life could be lived without happiness” she is believing that how we just fall into things like marrying and having a family is fulfilling and natural and provides other positive things, but understands that this isn’t necessary happiness in it’s utmost form. When the author describes how Anna struggled to reach an unbearable happiness prior to creating “something ultimately comprehensible, the life of an adult” is where I fully understood that in her was always an ache for a happiness she longed to reach but couldn’t grasp or make her own and so she chose “the life of an adult” because this was reachable, attainable, achievable, expected. The dangerous hour of the day comes when the house is quiet and Anna is unneeded and free of duties. These duties are her chosen priorities in her life and also distractions to her deep wants and needs that sit in the sacred and hidden places of her heart. Without Anna’s duties these desires are invited to surface and because it’s too much, Anna feels a relief when the kids come home, when her husband returns from work, when she needs to cook, etc. There is relief in the acceptance of less, (while still knowing there’s more out there she was aware of). << I hope that makes sense to who ever’s reading this. When Anna sees the blind man chewing gum and is almost offended I believe this “smiling and not smiling” that the old man seems to be doing refers to Anna’s back and forth acceptance of her life. Her back and forth thoughts of her desires, her happiness, her fears, her sadness because “Anna stared at him as if he had insulted her” and even though this isnt’ done deliberately by the man this is why he catches her eye.
Post 1
To start off, this reading severely disturbed me. Not because it was disgusting or perverted in some way, but because of how close it was to reality. Anna's thoughts seem to be warped and contorted into nightmarish ideas of her life and how it runs, but she is simply doing an amazing job of animating the fears we all hold inside.
The first thing that really jumped out at me was when it said, "Her previous youth now seemed alien to her, like one of life's illnesses." I am curious to know what makes her youth an illness, as many look back upon their younger years as some of the best times of their lives- carefree and without responsibility. Then I realized that this seems to be what Anna fears most. Constantly throughout the reading her need for "strong roots" is brought up, and how she gets scared in the afternoon when no one is around that needs her. She separates her youth from her maturity by the act of "possessing a home", which I thought was very fitting. At home, in the "dangerous part of the afternoon" all of the furniture was polished, but in the morning it was dusty again and in need of her help once more. SO perfect. It is easy to relate to the feeling of needing to be needed, but it is sad that she cannot see the joy in being free.
As with the others, Anna's encounter with the blind man caught my attention and seemed of great importance as well. I really like how Brian connected the breaking egg shells with Anna's awakening to reality. That totally hit the target. This perfectly explains her thoughts after the eggs break, when she is no longer in darkness. She describes people as appearing to "lack any sense of direction", and tells of the "perception" of an absence of law- all having to do with being able to see. These people who couldn't "see" seemed vulnerable to her, which I feel is showing her need to foresee the future, being uncomfortable with not knowing.
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