Wednesday, March 11, 2009

THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS and "Child's Play"

The short story I chose for this week was “Child’s Play” by Alice Munro. This story went back to a time at summer camp when two girls Charlene and Marlene do something to another girl who is special. At camp everyone views them as twins and they start to compare themselves and their live to each other and how similar and different they are from each other. After camp, they don’t stay in touch until one day when Charlene is on her deathbed and Marlene went to visit and Charlene asked her to go see a priest.

There are only three main characters in this short story and the emotion and characters were developed so perfect because when I was reading I could picture the reading. The two girls were acting like typical girls and picked on poor Verna because she was a little different. Girls are the worst when it comes to having friends and not. If you are not one of them then you got picked on and during the time frame of this story people with special needs were not around others.

In comparing the “The Virgin of Small Plains” and the short story, they both had a girl that was a little different and murdered. I thought short story could have been made into a novel. The short story could have gone on more about the girl’s choice after they left the campground and got to the deathbed. I enjoyed both the short story and novel this week because I felt that the novel was local and I was able to connect to it.

Both of my authors were female this week. Their main characters were female, but in the “The Virgin of Small Plains” the murderer is man and in the short story the murderers are children and girls.

Of all the short story I did like this story. I did not guess what the girls had done at the camp. I knew someone had died from the beginning of the story, but thought it was going to be either Marlene or Charlene not Verna. I am still unsure why Charlene wanted Marlene to take the letter to the priest. Also, the author did a great job in showing that the girls had a fear of the Verna and not sure if that is why they killed her or what was really going through their minds.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Amy,

    I read CHILD'S PLAY earlier in the course and really enjoyed it as well. It was completely shocking to me at the end when I realized what the girls had done at the camp, and was really drawn in by the emotion of Munro's writing. I wanted to figure out why they hated Verna so much, although having been a pre-teen girl at one time, it sort of made sense.

    I think both Charlene and Marlene suffered in different ways in remorse for what they'd done. In the end, the letter to the priest was likely a way to be absolved of her sins before she died, or to confess what she'd done.

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  2. I read "Child's Play" earlier and also liked it. I didn't suspect the ending either. I kept expecting someone to say they had the wrong girl and find out they had raised someone else's daughter and that their daughter was the one that died. I don't know what the letter was about either and thought this could have been made into a novel or movie. I think that I was a little offended by the way the girls treated Verna because I have a "special" brother and saw how hurt he would be when people were mean to him because he wasn't as quick as them. I think Munro did a good job of showing how some kids treat those that are different from them.

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