Week 5
Discussion Assignment (Due by beginning of class next week)
*You will be required to post at least two thoughtful, well-constructed comments or responses in order to earn the full point value each week. Discussion posts must be copy-edited and proofread. Typos happen to everyone but a careful re-reading will allow you to rid your writing of most of them.
After reading this week’s texts, explain in a single post:
- In both narratives this week, New Albany and “Emergency”, we encounter narrators who seem unreliable at times. At which point in each story do you begin to question the narrator?
- In what ways does your reading of each story change upon discovering that your narrator might be unreliable?
- How do you think the situations of each protagonist relate to some or all of Shield’s curated quote on page 137, “One view is ‘There’s something in charge… and I wanna get straight with it.’ Another view is ‘There’s something in charge and it means me no good and I wanna get the fuck out of here.’ And the third is ‘There’s nothing and everything going on.’ The third, because it contains the other two, is the most appealing to me”?
Please post your comments and responses to the week 5 discussion page for your class.
This page is for Tuesday discussion posts.
How do you think the situations of each protagonist relate to some or all of Shield’s curated quote on page 137, “One view is ‘There’s something in charge… and I wanna get straight with it.’ Another view is ‘There’s something in charge and it means me no good and I wanna get the fuck out of here.’ And the third is ‘There’s nothing and everything going on.’ The third, because it contains the other two, is the most appealing to me”?
While New Albany was a very interesting blog to read, I definitely felt like it was a bit outrageous of an idea. The personal stories, pictures, and music she shares definitely make it all seem real. However, the pictures are a bit too clear and I can’t imagine the people of the cult she was at allowed her to take them (even though she said she took them “when they weren’t looking”). I also thought it was a bit strange that even though the people she was surrounded by don’t use technology, it must be readily available if she was using it, so why haven’t they found out what she’s doing? I would think they would keep very close tabs on that, especially newcomers. In “The Emergency,” I felt it was quite interesting at first. Even when the man came in with a knife in his eye, I didn’t really question the credibility of the narrator. I really started to question it as I read on and ideas became all over the place. Especially when both of the characters said they were on drugs and started to talk about LSD. The fact both readings seemed to get more unreliable as I read made me less intrigued and kind of sad that I was being lied to by the author.
I think when Shield’s says, “There is nothing and everything going on,” that it’s a perfect example of what we have just discovered in these two very different, yet very similar readings. While it may or may not be real and as outrageous as the ideas seem, we keep reading. Everything is really happening in our head as we read along, even though we are somewhat aware the narrator is being unreliable.
I completely agree with your last paragraph because this is the point i was trying to make about the same quote. I agree in the fact that in the readings, we feel like everything the narrators are saying is really going in however, our brains know that the narrator is unreliable. Also, I agree that even though these two stories may or may not be real, we keep reading. When I was reading these two stories, I knew right off the bat that the narrators weren’t very reliable but I was so engrossed in the story and curious as to what happens next, that I just kept reading.
I agree with the last paragraph also. I posted basically the same thing, but you explained it in a way that makes more sense. Although we know it is unreliable, we can’t help but keep reading and going along with the story.
In New Albany, the point where I stop believing her is when she said her parents are only allowing one suitcase per person while they are living there. This is so unbelievable because I don’t think anyone is capable of living out of one suitcase for the rest of their lives. Clothing wise, people grow out of clothing, and with where they’re living, their clothes might wear and tear easily, and material wise, people who have lived with technology their entire lives, don’t just give it up that easily. Also, the narrator of this story is a girl, and being a girl myself, it is hard for me to give up 80% of my wardrobe. So that was also unbelievable to me that she wasn’t complaining about bringing only one suitcase and giving up her things and clothes. It is just all really unbelievable once you finish the story because here is this girl who is so excited to move, but then again she is giving up 95% of her things and moving into a town of “Amish people if Amish were slutty” as she called it, so I don’t get what there is to be excited about. Also, I was really thrown off by the fact that they just got into some truck drivers vehicle and just left their own car in the ditch. I don’t believe this what-so-ever because I don’t think that anyone would leave their car in a ditch and just not care about it; also, I don’t believe anyone would hop in some random truck drivers vehicle, especially if he was a pervert. I mean, why not call 911 or something first? I think that the part of the quote by Sheilds on page 137 that pertains most to New Albany is the part that says, ‘There’s something in charge and it means me no good and I wanna get the fuck out of here.’ I believe this relates most to the story because from what I can tell from the narrator, she doesn’t seem like one who likes to listen to authority very much. Also, I can tell that she absolutely hates where she ended up living so I bet she really wants to get out of there.
In the story Emergency, I immediately found the author unreliable when she started talking about Georgie, her very close friend. He seemed to be mopping the floor of the Operating Room because he thought there was blood everywhere but there really wasn’t any blood. This man, I really don’t say this to offend anyone I promise, doesn’t seem like he is in the right state of mind so I don’t think the hospital would let him run around. I feel like the hospital would keep him confined in a room because he doesn’t seem to be thinking straight or even clearly at all. Also, the narrator talks about him stealing pills from the hospital and then she steals some pills from him. This definitely ruins the narrators credibility because if she works at the hospital, I don’t get why she wouldn’t stop him knowing he is doing this. She could get fired for withholding information like this so why risk it by not only letting him steal the pills but also taking some for you own use? I think that part of the quote by Sheilds on page 137 that pertains the most to Emergency is the part that says, ‘There’s nothing and everything going on.’ I believe that quote goes well with Georgie because although he seems like he is just talking about nothing, there is actually a lot going on in his mind. He may seem like he isn’t in the right state of mind and there is nothing going on in his head, he actually has a lot of brain activity in the fact that he always voices what goes on in his head and imagines things that aren’t really there.
I agree with the second paragraph of this post, I immediately thought the same thing about Georgie.This hospital is definitely not a place that I would like to be cared for in. It just doesn’t make sense with all of the people there and how they treat situations. I also chose the same quote from Shield’s to compare this to, for different reasons, but I agree with this reason for choosing it as well. Georgie is quite the character.
The point I lost trust in New Albany was when she first started posting pictures. To me, the pictures were too high quality to be believable. They looked like they came out of a magazine, not on some girl’s blog. That’s what made me question the validity of her blog. In Emergency, I pretty much lost faith from the point he said a guy came in with a knife in his eye. If the author would have said the man took an ambulance I may have believed it. But once the story said the man walked three blocks with a knife in his eye, I stopped believing it was true. Once I question the truthfulness in each story, the story loses some of its effect on me. I liked New Albany more than Emergency, even though I don’t think these events actually happened, the story was still extremely gripping and interesting to read.
I believe Shield’s third quote, “there’s nothing and everything going on” pertains very well to both these stories. Even though what we are reading may not be true, I still wanted it to be true. Even though nothing is going on because the story is not true, everything is going on because we are immersed in the world of the story. Something doesn’t always have to be true for us to love it. I loved New Albany even though I know it’s highly unlikely that it’s a true story.
I really agree with your last paragraph here. I chose the same quote and I thought that both stories were really interesting but I could really tell that both authors were unreliable. I felt that New Albany wasn’t a complete lie; I felt like a lot of her posts were true but she could’ve just added a little lie in there to make it more interesting.But in Emergency, I wanted to believe everything was true but right at the beginning, I just knew it couldn’t have been.
In “New Albany”, I began to question the narrator’s reliability June 18th. She decides to leave Twilight books for Reggie and 80% of her wardrobe for Justine even after they wouldn’t return her phone calls (and what girl would leave another girl 80% of anything—especially her clothes to someone else?!). On July 4th, she was awakened by her dad totaling the car. What are the odds of everyone surviving a car accident, to that severity, without needing any medical attention? July 5th brings more unreliable information when she recaps what happen on July 4th. She describes her and her parents waiting for help but they never called 911. She also described flies swarming above them due to the dead deer. I think it would take longer than a few minutes before flies started feasting on the dead deer. Once I found the narrator was unreliable, I continued reading the Tumblr in a very critical manner and I was searching for illegitimate information opposed to reading for enjoyment. The protagonist’s situation relates to Shield’s quote “There’s something in charge and it means me no good and I wanna get the fuck out of here” (137). The narrator makes it evident she does not want to be where she is or where she is being taken. She is also being forced to more and has no control over the situation.
Just as “New Albany”, I questioned the narrator’s reliability early on in “Emergency”. The Georgie character seemed a bit unrealistic to me because he was tirelessly mopping a bloody floor that didn’t have any blood on it. I simply considered him a mad man, dismissed the question, and continued to read. However, I could not dismiss the man who had been stabbed in the left eye by his wife. Apparently the man walked himself to the hospital from three blocks away and was having difficulties creating a fist with his left hand because the knife had punctured a part of his brain causing the difficulty. This is completely unreliable information because the man did not contact the police and file a domestic abuse report or anything. Also, the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. So there is no way he would be having difficulties making a fist because the knife was not piercing the right side of the brain. Unlike “New Albany”, instead of being critical of the rest of the story, I read the story in a comedic sense. By doing this, I was able to laugh at the discrepancies opposed to critiquing them. As far as Shields, “Emergency” follows the quote, “There’s nothing and everything going on” (137). There was not real objective to the story, yet there was a lot of detail and multiple stories in one.
I agree completely with your second paragraph. How could the man walk all the way to the hospital with a knife in his eye?! He could have easily called the police. If his wife really did stab him in the eye, odds are he’d want her locked up somewhere. “Emergency,” was hard to read without critiquing almost everything that was going on. Regardless, I think it was an interesting read, but seemed very made up.
For me, I didn’t trust Becca really from the beginning because she seemed to exaggerate about everything. Plus she’s a teenage girl. Denis became unreliable for me also towards the beginning when he took the pills from Georgie. (I also was most likely influenced by the fact that I knew the questions for this post were regarding unreliable narrators.)
I also appreciated on Aug. 21, 2011 when prepareyourheart wrote “nice fiction.”
Becca I thought did an excellent job writing her narrative, and quite frankly it upset me that, unlike all of the other material we’ve been asked to read for this class, it has no ending. I will say though, had I not been influenced by the discussion questions, I probably would have though Becca’s story to be entirely true. I may be seen as naive for believing that, but it’s the truth.
As far as Shields’ quote goes, kelseyryansop and JanelleL really nailed it on the head. Just because it isn’t non-fiction doesn’t mean it isn’t real to the reader. Stories are meant to be entertainment for the readers, an escape to allow them to jump into other people’s lives. And when it comes down to it, the experience, however fake or unrealistic it may be, is still real to those who read through it. It is everything and nothing all at once.
Donald, in the Emergency story lost me as a reliable narrator the second that pharmaceuticals were introduced as an influence. Honestly though, this didn’t disconnect me from the story. Really, the only way that dishonesty breaks me away from the grip of the story is when I know the person telling it, and I know the truth behind the story. Even then I don’t usually hold it against them, actually I feel like I’m seeing deeper into their motives. If someone tells an augmented story they usually have some intent for changing the details right? They want to impress someone (girl, boss, bro, grandma), or they want to be seen in a better light, (or worse light). It seems to me that Denis is making his narrator unreliable to help captivate his audience…
That same line can be applied to Becca Stardust. Though her unreliability isn’t as clear, because she doesn’t come out and say that she’s using, she is still trying, it seems, to keep a readership. That means that there will most likely, unless she really lives an extraordinary life, fabricate details from time to time. And as a few of my classmates have pointed out, she is a teenage girl. I’m not saying that every teenage girl is a compulsive fabricator, but then again…
I recalled discussing the story of “Becca Stardust” earlier in this class so from the beginning I was critiquing the legitimacy of the narrator. As I saw many things that made me suspect this Tumblr was fiction, I I tried to ignore these suspicions throughout the story. The one thing that I saw that really stuck out to me was Becca’s post on January 29, 2011 on Page 10 of her Tumblr account. This is when she says, “But we’ll figure something out.” To me, this implied that the narrator knew she was writing for an audience and almost tempting a reaction from current readers so she could know if people were captivated. From that post forward, it seemed as though Becca and New Albany were products of the narrator’s imagination simply leading the story in whatever direction would be most entertaining. This story was one of few that pulled me in, so I was interested throughout it’s entirety. Fact or fiction, it was a well written story with relatable details.
In the story “Emergency” by Denis Johnson, the narrator became untrustworthy as soon as I realized he was on medication, simply because the word of any intoxicated persons is not always accurate. Throughout the story, you see more and more of his comparisons between reality and his current state of mind, such as in column three on page 2. The narrator states that the pill make him “feel like a giant helium filled balloon.” I believe this statement speaks for itself. After I discredited the narrator in my mind, it was difficult to continue to pay attention to this story. It seemed as just a foggy interpretation of a heavily medicated hospital employee. Much more difficult to believe than “New Albany”.
I actually really liked reading New Albany. I thought it was extremely detailed and made me want to read more. There were many posts that I thought were pretty personal, though, and that’s where I questioned her credibility. Although it was pretty interesting to read, I felt that she could’ve expanded the truth to make the reader more engaged in her posts. It seemed pretty personal when she started talking about the older man she met online and how he came to her school to find her–that startled me and it didn’t even seem like she really cared because she was moving at that point. If that was me, I’d be freaked out. Also, the part I was really confused was when they left their old car and they decided to just go with some truck drivers that were supposedly perverted. Who would do that? I thought that was really sketchy and that’s where I didn’t really believe that that could have happened. The quote that I think pertains to New Albany best is ” There’s nothing and everything going on.” I feel like her posts are extremely detailed and personal which means she wants more people to read it because I think she is really overwhelmed with everything that is going on in her life at that point.
In Emergency, I kind of felt that the whole story was a lie. I really couldn’t get into it like I got into New Albany. The thing that set me off was knowing that the narrator was taking pills and that’s where I could see the story kind of falling apart and where I got uninterested. The man with a knife in his eye, blood everywhere, and talking about drugs–I couldn’t tell if that could even be real or not. Although I stopped thinking the story was true, as I kept reading it later on, it did seem pretty interesting. But I just knew the story was a lie once I realized the author was unreliable.
Both stories have points in which the narrator is questionable. In New Albany, the whole idea of her family being in a cult seems somewhat ridiculous. Usually cults contain very strict rules, and the fact that she’s blogging about the cult all the time makes me wonder if it’s real. It seems like the people in her cult could easily find out about the information she is posting. Since she is so easily able to find other ways to get on the Internet, why can’t everyone else? It seems suspicious to me. It seems as though she would have been caught by now and possibly gotten in trouble. Her stories seem somewhat farfetched as well which make me question if the cult she is talking about is legit. When she posts pictures to her blog, it seems as though they are professionally taken. It would be very easy for her to get these photos off line, or in some sort of book. This reason along with what was stated above makes me question what the narrator is saying. In the “Emergency,” the story as a whole was just weird. The details at the beginning made me believe that the story could be true, however getting a knife stuck in your eye seems pretty outrageous. When I first read this I didn’t really believe it was true which really changed the way I read the entire story. I don’t think if someone has a knife stuck in their eye, they can walk 3 blocks to a hospital by themselves. I still enjoy reading narratives even if I know they are false. It adds to the excitement for me. It makes me wonder more about if the events are actually happening, or if they are simply made up. Regardless, I think that it requires a great deal of imagination to come up with such stories as New Albany and “Emergency.” I personally enjoy reading fictional stories. Unless I am told it is true by a credible source that what I am reading is 100% accurate, I don’t really mind not knowing if it is true or not.
The part of shields quote, ‘There’s nothing and everything going on’ can be related to both stories. Each story has so much going on from start to end. There is a great use of detail and specific information in each narrative. Since it is quite possible that both of these stories were made up, while so much is going on, there really is nothing going on. What I mean by this is, there is so much going on in each story. There is a plot, characters, and a story line that can easily be followed. However, these events are most likely not really happening. So, while the story has ‘everything going on,’ in real life, ‘there’s nothing’ really going on.
In the reading “Emergency”, I almost start to question the narrator’s reliability immediately. Especially when the man with the knife in his eye is brought into the story, I definitely do not consider the narrator reliable anymore. This effected my reading because I felt as if I were reading a comedy gone wrong. Although it was amusing, it was just completely out there. There is definitely no way a man with a knife in his eye could be having a normal conversation with a nurse and everyone around in that situation act so calm. It just isn’t logical.
As for “New Albany”, even before I started reading the blog, I noticed on the side that it said, “I got out, they didn’t”, referring to her parents. Off the bat I a filled with questions and skepticism. Where is she then? How is she living on her own or with whom? Why didn’t her parents get out? Also, the first two pictures seem kind of unrealistic because they look like they have been taken straight out of Google Images, unless she happens to be a great photographer with a nice camera she manged to take along with her, which does not seem likely when she described how they had to pack. This changed my reading of the story because it is so interesting, I want it to be real even though if it was I would feel very sorry for the girl.
With Shields curated quote, “There is something in charge and it means me no good and I wanna get the fuck out of here”, this made me think of Becca in New Albany because this so called “Owen” character was in charge. At first, she was ecstatic to be leaving her old school, but once she arrived in the apparent hippie cult, she was determined to leave. In his other quote, “There’s nothing and everything going on,” I thought of Emergency. The characters in this have completely random, weird, and wild events happening throughout, but to them it is almost normal. To me, it is everything going on. To the characters it is a lot too, yet it does not hardly phase them which makes me believe there is nothing really going on that is really significant.
I completely agree with you about “Emergency”, a guy who got stabbed in the eye would not be that composed. It makes me wonder if it was a side effect of the drugs that they were on, and if that even happened. That’s what makes “Emergency” so unreliable to me.
In New Albany, the moment the blogger says that they only can bring one suitcase and her aunt is going to “watch over” the rest of their stuff is when I stopped believing her. If they were moving for good, why would someone need to watch over their stuff?They would need to completely move all of their stuff out, and there is no way that three people could live out of three suitcases all together. In “Emergency,” the entire story seemed to be too illogical to be credible and reliable. I a was very thrown off by most of the humor, and it made me doubt everything the narrator was saying. It seemed to jump all over the place and although it was funny, it was not reliable.
Once I start doubting the writer, my reading of the story completely changes. I doubt everything the author is saying, and completely lose interest in the story. I don’t want to read about things that aren’t true, unless they are marked as fiction and are an interesting narrative. But because a blog is meant to be true, it makes me not interested.
The quote “There is nothing and everything going on” is very accurate for these two writings. Once the author is determined as unreliable, they are basically talking about nothing, but there is still something going on. The story continues, and we still imagine the characters and settings, yet they didn’t really happen.
In New Albony, I started questioning the narrator from when she started describing where she lived. Obviously these people don’t use electronics, so how is she able to get Internet connection to write all this stuff down? And why are these people so okay with her having a laptop, documenting everything that happens to her in this secret society, and a camera to even begin with. “Emergency” just seemed absurd to me from the beginning. There was no way that any of that was true, and I started questioning the narrator when she said she was on drugs.
After I started doubting the reader, the stories didn’t have the same effect on me. It felt like I was listening to a story, and I knew that the person telling the story was lying to me.
I think when Shield quotes, “There is nothing and everything going on”, because there is something going on to those who believe these stories, and think that they’re true. But to those who don’t believe them and understand that they’re fiction, they seem almost like nothing to them.
It was hard for me to read these two stories knowing that the narrator was unreliable. In New Albany, I started to question Becca twice, once when she stated that her mother ran off leaving only a letter behind and once again when she seemed to leave her readers at somewhat of a dead end wondering what happened to her. It seems ridiculous to me that a mother would leave her child in a world like this if it was really as bad as it was described. I can’t put myself in Becca’s mother’s shoes but I know I wouldn’t leave my child behind and I find it hard to believe that any other mother would either. Also in Emergency the story seems too much like an action packed movie. When it was revealed that the narrator was on medication, he immediately became an unreliable source. It made me believe that the whole story was an illusion in his head and it made the story of the man having a knife in his eye seem even more unreal.
I really enjoyed New Albany and connected to Becca’s story but knowing before discovering that the narrator may be unreliable made me hate her for bringing all these innocent people into her story. I connected to Sophie and to find out there isn’t a Sophie would make me feel like I’ve been reading 17 pages of nothing but lies. Emergency on the other hand I had no real connection to and would not really be too disappointed if I found out the narrator was unreliable because the story seemed unreliable from the beginning.
Even though I knew these two stories had unreliable narrators I couldn’t stop reading. Referring to Shield’s quote “The third, because it contains the other two, is the most appealing to me?” If I were to stop reading I was afraid I was going to miss an important detail especially in New Albany, it was appealing because she was telling her story. I had a chance to connect and get a look into her life for just a second. As a reader it is important for me to be able to read a story and genuinely make connections and I was able to do that with New Albany whether it turned out that it false or not.
I agree entirely. I did think it was really weird when she mentioned her mom just leaving with the note and everything, but at that point I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt (but this was all very hard trying to read like we didn’t know the narrator was already unreliable). The pictures really helped make it feel real though. I also agree with you on Emergency. The minute they mentioned drugs I took the story as how he perceived it through his head. I think that was a dead give away to question the narrator.
“Emergency” took me off guard right away. I did not feel the author was reliable right off that bat in this story. The character of Georgie seemed unrealistic, especially in a hospital setting. When the man with the knife in his eye came in, right away I felt the author was unreliable because I volunteered at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for five years, and I can tell you right now, a guy comes in with a knife in his eye, the reaction would not be like that. That would be considered an emergency and it wouldn’t take that long to get him checked in or a doctor to check him, especially since he stated he could not use his left hand. That threw up a red flag for me. New Albany on the other had, was believable, or seemed reliable most of the time. It sounded like a normal teenage complaining. It was the forth of July post that kind of made me question the authenticity of the entire story because of how nonchalant the narrator was about the SUV accident.
I guess I don’t put as much of myself into reading the story when discovering the narrator is unreliable. I feel like if I’m taking time to read someone, I the reader should feel like I am not being misguided, so to speak, as I read. But within these to stories, I feel that way, and I’m less inclined to keep reading or to invest as much of my time as I would have.
Because these stories are fictional, the quote, “there is nothing and everything going on,” applies quite well. The stories might not be true, so then, there is nothing going on in reality. But in the world fiction, there is definitely something going on, for the characters, for writer and for the narrator.
I agree with your last part about the Shields’ quote applying to the fiction. Some people believe that we create our own realities, so what’s the difference between fiction and reality/happening and not, existing and not. who am i? why am i here?
In New Albany, Becca becomes an unreliable narrator for multiple reasons. The way that she breezes over certain topics such as her mom leaving and her fights with her dad, in my mind, made them seem not as authentic. I also was wary of her when I read her profile blurb which identified her as a 16 year old girl. Teenagers have a tendency to exaggerate stories, especially when left to their own devices on the live journal that is the internet.
As for Emergency, the narrator clearly becomes unreliable when it is revealed that he is on medication. Pills may be thrills, but drugs are for thugs.
I think in New Albany, it starts to get weird at parts when she talks about how she likes the place even though she wants to leave. She kept wanting to stay with Duncan, but she hardly knew him and most of the other qualities about the commune seemed to outweigh teenage love with a stranger you hardly know… The narrator was really unreliable when she stopped posting as often towards the end when she got out. It wasn’t very detailed; maybe it was supposed to be that way, but it would have been more interesting if she could have fleshed it out a bit more. Her unreliability changes the “awe” factor that was felt at the beginning of the blog. It just didn’t seem as real anymore towards the end.
In “Emergency”, early on it is revealed that Georgie and the narrator are both on drugs. That signals that their perception of reality (especially the narrator) could be drastically altered from what’s really going on. Also, even before that is mentioned, the narrator seems very nonchalant about the fact some guy just came in with a hunting knife in his eye! If I were writing about that, I would have had some more emphasis on how crazy that would be to witness. Maybe if you’re working in a hospital though, it becomes a normal thing. All of the pills that he takes throughout the story opens up everything else to be questioned—was it really a “fuzzy blizzard” when they were showing movies at the drive-in?
I think Becca relates to the part of Shields’s quote about “…I wanna get the fuck out of here”, but also part of the first quote too about wanting to be straight with it. She seemed like she wanted to fit in in New Albany, especially because of her thing with Duncan…and since Shields says the last part combines the previous two (There’s nothing and everything going on), I think the best fit for her situation would be the third one. This is especially true if you think about her unreliability. In some ways, you question whether there was anything going on, and in others, it seems like EVERYTHING was going on. So I guess for Becca, nothing and everything was going on. For “Emergency”, it seems similar. He was on drugs, so everything was going on—but at the same time, nothing was either. He couldn’t see, there was distortion, they get lost…but if you take the story as a whole, it almost seemed like nothing went on (even though it felt like it when you were reading it).