Blog #4 - Works of Art

If these stories are "art," what makes them a creative activity both for the reader and the writer? Choose a story and discuss its creative aspects and what is available for interpretation.

In the short stories we have been reading during class there is a lot of room for interpretation. Kind-of like the writers goals are for the readers to finish the story with a lot of questions and different things to think about. And I think that this is what makes them true works of art, for a writer to write a story that borders on that fine line of giving us enough information without giving us too much. Sometimes we have to look at what they don't say just as much as what they do say. By the author leaving much of the story unspoken it allows a certain "creative activity" because it is left to the reader to figure out what exactly is going un-said, and they have to figure out what is being implied. But on the flip-side, it seems like the authors don't always exactly have their mind set on one particular story line, and so they are still unsure themselves as to what exactly goes on within their own story.

The story that left me with the most questions and room for interpretation was the Rape Fantasies story. I mean, for me personally I had a lot of things that I was wondering about when I finished reading it, and I think the rest of the class did too because we discussed it for about an hour! I was left wondering; who is this girl talking to? why is she at a bar by herself? what is she looking for? is she actually trying to get to know this guy so that he won't rape her? does she really just want someone to talk to? is she really that naiive? why is she doing this because she is making herself more vulnerable? what would I have done in that situation? what was the guy thinking and why wasn't he saying anything? do these people really have rape fantasies?? Haha, there were just a ton of crazy questions like that that were flowing through my head. And it was obvious that the writer did this on purpous. They left enough out to make us curious, but the fact they left out all these little things is what really made us want more. What I thought was the most creative part was that at the end of this girl rambling on about rape to some stranger, was how she said that what she doesn't understand is how somebody could sit there and have a conversation with somebody else, and then rape them. This was strange to me because she says this right after she just forced this long conversation with a stranger... almost as if she was creating the same situation which she described as something she couldn't understand. And since the story ends there it left me wondering if she did get raped afterwards by that guy, or what her thoughts were after having that conversation. I think that throughout the whole story she was constantly searching for answers, and by the author not giving any of those answers, the readers are also left searching for the answers to those same questions.