What has struck me in these past 5 weeks of Gender Studies
In Casey Plett's story How to Stay Friends, there was a certain line that caught my attention. On page 99, the line "Grow assured of nothing but how sorry you are. Exist in gyrating states: Apology and peace, apology and anger," really struck me. Something stuck in my brain about that line, not in just the context of the story, where the line fits perfectly in her fictional narrative, but in real life. We as humans, regardless of who we are, typically exist in sorts of gyrating states. Good to bad, bad to better, other emotions interchanging themselves on and off, but these two in the story felt different. Connecting more to the story, we can see these gyrating states being expressed, whether it be Minerva's character experiencing peace in the past, looking back on the good times that were with the ex girlfriend, and we see the state of anger. The fights they got in. The emotion she has to hold back with the ex girlfriend being insensitive. The gyrating states exist throughout the story, but are only brought to light in this one moment. While we could infer that she felt these emotions during the story, this solidifies it and brings certain moments to the forefront of what it means to feel these things. They exist in the real world as well, for example if a relationship ends for you, you may feel angry about it ending, yet there are moments where you come to peace with it being over. Then back to the anger, the sadness, the plethora of emotions that go along with that feeling.
Another way to look at it is the apology is an action, not so much a state of being. Apologize and come to terms with it, find peace, or apologize and feel anger. That feeling of an angry apology is different, it feels wrong, but also for the right reasons. I think that this is probably the more logical way to look at it, and probably the way it was meant to be interpreted in the story, however reading into it more than I needed to felt like something that had to be done.
This is really interesting. I remember having a discussion on this reading and the amount of indirect emotion conveyed in the story; however, upon comparing that to this blog post, I realized that we have only scratched the surface of the amount of emotion conveyed. Overall, this is a really good analysis and great job on the post!
ReplyDeleteYour blog nicely summarizes and builds upon the small group discussion I had about Casey Plett's story. I enjoyed finding the hints at underlying emotions throughout the story as I found them to be quite interesting , but I also don't remember finding too many. Your blog makes me want to go back and try and find all the subtle details and clues I missed during my initial reading. Great post!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post. I think you make an interesting point about how there are underlying emotions behind all of our actions and how this story pushes us to read deeper into what the narrator is telling us. There is so much more that we learn about the narrator by through the omission of their true feelings while in the situations that we see portrayed, as it forces us to analyze them more than we normally would. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI really like how you brought up the overlapping of emotions represented in Casey Plett's writing. Within the same moment we can feel happiness from the past, but then also remember the sadness that also led us there. this was a really great post!
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