Cheever and O'Connor

Cheever's story about the swimmer was pretty good. I thought that it was great that it was told in first person. This made the story more effective. I also loved the way that a little bit of information was "leaked" out at a time. For example, when he went to the old people's pool and they told him they were sorry to hear about his house. It was great that he was totally oblivious to what they were talking about. This story reminds me of "Desperate Housewives" or "The Stepford Wives," where everyone sits around, drinks, talks about the same things, and everyone knows who does what in the town and so on. It was a little hard to figure out what was going on in the beginning, and I assume that he was a little crazy man, swimming from pool to pool, but thinking he was swimming across the country. What I think was that his neighbors all knew he was crazy and an alcoholic but were just keeping it quiet. I also thought it was genius of Cheever to keep everything in the alcoholic's perspective, so that the reader did not know too much of what was going on.

Good Country People by O'Connor was a little hard to get into. I didn't figure out what the point of view was in until the end of the story. I was totally smitten with this story. I really did not see the "little chrustian boy" as the evil one in this story. I guess that was one of O'Connor's use of trickery, using stereotypes and assumptions that the reader might have about characters. I also never really thought about Hulga, in the sense that she COULD be weak, even though she did have a fake leg. So many times, I assume that every smart person is always strong. I liked the omnitient narrative. I think that it worked very well for this story. It got a little boring at times though, listening to little stories about the mother and Mrs. Freeman.

I liked the way that both stories, even though they were about completely different things, had a little twist at the end. So many times, I assume that the person telling the story is in a right frame of mind, but The Swimmer showed me that I should enter a story with an open mind from now on. I really loved the way Good Country People makes us re-think what we think about people and how much we trust certain people. Mostly, we think that Christians are good people and they can be trusted. Even though the majority of the time this is true, it could also be false. We have to view people as individuals, and not by the label they carry.