Overall I enjoyed reading this week’s short story “The Magic Barrel.” I think choosing to write this story from only Leo’s point of view has some disadvantages. The main problem was believing his story. Only having access to his thoughts was annoying because there was no way to know if his thoughts were accurate. I think this story would have worked better if it had incorporated a few other points of view as well. However, choosing to write it with only Leo’s point of view does allow us to interpret the story in a few different ways. I feel I am biased towards having more points of view is because right now there is no way of knowing if Salzman was happy or sad with this match making and also if it had been his plan all along. It left too many unanswered questions for me, and I prefer a short story that gives a clearer understanding of what actually happened. I thought the last sentence of this story was very interesting. I like how “chanting prayers to the dead” can be interrelated as a positive or negative action. I also found interesting his lack of detail in some parts, like the way Leo hardly described the women he met. It showed me an insight to his mind/state of thinking without just writing in words that he was confused about the type of women he wanted to marry. Also, using the words “not unpretty” to describe Lily was amusing. So there are definitely some very interesting things about the way Malamud wrote “Magic Barrel,” but I would have preferred a clearer ending.
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