Reading Response(s)

I chose to read and annotate Sucker, Araby and The Sniper. 

I thought Sucker was a really interesting short story considering the theme and narration. It was told in first person limited. The story was told from Pete’s perspective as a reflection or flashback of why him and Sucker don’t have the same relationship anymore. I thought the theme was “you never know what you have until its gone.” Pete started to miss the old relationship and very little amount of fun times he had with Sucker after Sucker broke away from him.

Araby was a little more challenging for me to understand but I eventually got it. What stood out the most in Araby was the way the author used vivid language to describe ordinary things; he made those things seem like something new. For example he wrote, “The space of the sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the streets lifted their feeble lanterns.” This sentence only stated that the Sun was setting and the streetlights were beginning to come on.

My favorite out of all the three was The Sniper. I really enjoyed the overall plot of this story and how the author included a lot of specific descriptions on every move the sniper or another character made. The descriptions provided helped me to visualize the actual story as if it was happening right in front of you. What surprised me the most in this short story was the ending, the sniper killed his brother. The death of someone he knew was kind of foreshadowed when the author wrote, “When the sniper reached the laneway of the street level, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper whom he had killed. He decided that he was a good shot, whoever he was. He wondered did he know him.”