First off, I want to say that I really enjoyed this story, it had a lot of emotion to it and almost seemed surreal and dreamlike in the way it was narrated. It seemed like the characters had no control over what was happening, it was just happening, and they were along for the ride. It is also interesting how the way the story is told moves back and forth between setting up the reader to sympathize with Matt and Richard.
Killings has a lot of gaps that it leaves for the reader to fill in, it consistantely only gives you part of the information. For instance the story starts off with a funeral for Frank, and a character named Steve stating that he should kill someone. The title and this first part of the story leads you to believe that this "someone" had something to do with Franks death, but it doesn't actually tell you that till far deeper into the story, it's just something that you assume, and the story continues to lead you along by having you make these assumptions. One of the biggest gaps in the story is when it jumps from Matt dreaming about having the opportunity to kill Richard, to Matt waiting for Richard outside the bar and putting him at gunpoint. As the story moves past there, the reader begins to realize that this abduction was no accident, and is actually a well thought out, premeditated plan, that had actually taken a lot of time and preparation.
I believe the ideal reader for this story is anyone that has had to feel the pull between guilt and the right to enact retribution for some wrong doing, which I am sure is something that everyone has been through at some point.
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ReplyDeleteWes,
ReplyDeleteYou write, "it had a lot of emotion to it and almost seemed surreal and dreamlike in the way it was narrated." This tone/mood and the large gaps would actually work very well for psychoanalytic analysis, especially given the dream sequences and the big gaps of time between the narration of one event and another. Remember, that in terms of the ideal reader, you would need to show how the text produces the ideal reader to make that assertion.
Yeah, I was actually thinking about doing a psychoanalytic analysis on it, the story really makes you dig into your emotions. Are there any other stories in the Making Literature Matter book that are told in a similar way? I like the style. Thanks for the feedback! I should've gone more in depth about the ideal reader, I had more to say, it was a struggle trying to put it into words though.
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