Sunday, July 12, 2009

Page 6, Paragraphs 1 - 3 (and note)

Two posts in one day. My goodness.

Page 6, paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):

I get up quickly so I can catch the pigs. My fall has slowed me down, and they may have changed already because I can't smell them at all. Thinking about this, I get a scared feeling in my belly, which makes me run more quickly. I look at the pigs as I come closer to them, but oh. Oh, one of the pigs, she's changing - her hind legs are gone. Her black face is all turned outwards - it's now a dark hole. I run quicker so that I can catch them while they're still part-pig, but oh, they've stopped moving, and they smell rotten. They closer I run towards them, the less pig they are.

Paragraph 2:

Now I'm right by them, and they've turned completely into white wood logs, lolling on one another. Their eyes have become holes in the wood. Their feet have become branch stubs. Ah.*

Paragraph 3:

I sit on the log that's beneath the other one, that is flattening the grass at the bottom of the hill, and cry hot tears.

*Note: Again, I hope I'm not pointing out something that's easily discernible, but what seems to have happened is that the pigs, seeing our narrator coming, took shelter in some hollow, rottened-out logs that were nearby. The narrator is too slow to understand this and thinks the pigs have turned into logs.

2 comments:

  1. Actually, I think it's more like he hallucinated the pigs. They were always just two logs on top of each other rocking in the wind.

    It's like in those old cartoons where two guys are starving in a life raft and the first guy sees the second guy's head turn into a a hamburger.

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  2. Yeah, now that I look at it again, I think you're right. Unreliable narrators can really make things challenging. It's like when you read Poe's "Cask Of Amontillado" - you know that, in all probability, at least some of the story is inaccurate, but which part(s)? Or did Montresor imagine the whole thing? (Although at least here you know the narrator's not smart enough to make up anything too elaborate.)

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