Journal 6 From Megan Wittkopf

PART ONE:
Popular Mechanics is a short short story about a husband leaving his wife and wanting to take the baby with him. The short short story's setting is in a house. It is also written in 3rd person limited, unreported dialogue, and has one conflict. The conflict is also extreme because some of the actions performed with the baby are unrealistic (baby was in the middle of a tug-of-war)

Bottle caps is a short short story about a guy who likes to collect all sorts of bottle caps.  His younger brother has been taking his bottle caps and has been using them as headstones for his dead insects. The short short story is written in first narrative reported dialogue, only has two characters, and one conflict (brother taking the caps).

Similarities:
short short stories
both have conflicts

Differences:
Both are written in different dialogues
Popular Mechanics has a more relatable conflict
Both are written in different voices

PART TWO:

My favorite short short story was Reunion by John Cheever.

1. Reunion is my favorite story because it reminds me of my father, somewhat. My father is not as extreme but he would get into ridiculous conflicts with cashiers, people on the phone, etc. When I was younger I was embarrassed but now I understand why he was mad! It also could be I have his temper!
2. What I got out of the story was an adult man traveling by train and had a stop in New York. His father was not around as a child so he was looking forward to seeing him. When his father met him he seemed cool till they end up going to four different restaurants because of his father's rude behavior. By the end of the story the son left and never visited his father again. What this story related to me because I am a server and I have had people treat me in the same manner. I just don't have enough courage to tell them to leave. What is sad is there are a lot of rude people like this.
3. A writer can learn how to change scenes like a circle and ending in the beginning. For example the story starts at the Grand Central Station and moves to 4 different restaurants and ends back at Grand Central Station. The writer also introduces us to 5 different characters other than the main 2 characters. What a writer could learn from this is that you can introduce many characters with a small but huge role. Without the servers (small role) we wouldn't be able to see the rudeness from the father (huge role).
4. The most important word is boisterous because it explains the father's attitude. Boisterous means noisy, rowdy, which when his father was being rude he was being loud and rowdy to be heard from everyone, as if he wanted the attention.
5. "Now, just wait a second, sonny," he said. "Just wait a second. I want to get a rise out of this chap." This is an important sentence in the story because the sentence proves that the father was acting rudely to see how far he could push the servers/employees. It seems like a game to him to act rude and to see if someone will act rude back and how rude they will go (like a shouting match).