Short Stories

I enjoyed our class discussion about the Arabic short stories that I picked out for all of us.  I was a little afraid of how everyone would receive them, but it seemed that almost everyone found some kind of pleasure in them, whether it was for their content or not.  I chose the first story, "The Lawsuit", because I thought that for such a small story it spoke volumes about how relationships work in the Middle East, and I was happy to see that others were making these same connections.  I really wanted us to have a piece of literature that was not so direct in the way it presented Middle Eastern culture, that we could spend some time analyzing and making connections over, and I think this story really accomplished that.  I felt that this was the first time we had analyzed anything for its context in literature, and that really made my day.  I really liked the point that was made about the narrator being unreliable, it made me view the events of  the story and the emotions of the characters in a whole different light.

As for the second story, "A Long Term Plan", while I think that it had less merit to the class as far as furthering our purpose of learning about the Middle East, but I enjoyed seeing people's reactions to the character in this story.  Some of you were so angry at this character!  It was fun to discuss this story solely because I liked seeing the reactions people had to the protagonist.  I also think that this story had a lot do do not just with the Middle East but with all of humanity, and the eternal struggle that we all must overcome and that sometimes feels so fruitless.  Something about the last lines of this story is just so powerful, isn't it?  

"Why, then, had this miracle taken place?  It doesn't make sense.  It doesn't make sense, O Lord."