In “Pagan Night”, I had notice that the story had the ability to make me feel strongly toward many different aspects of the story. "Pagan Night" is also full textual clues and gaps that, with my own experiences and morals in minds, I can fill in to enrich my reading. With Dalton's drug problem I was able to realize that his beliefs and weird habits, such as wearing the hat to be closer to god, seem to be all stemming from his increasing paranoia due to the use of his drugs. I'm not very well versed in drug addicts and the personal inter workings of their day to day lives, but from what I have read here Dalton is going down a definite path of self-destruction. Bringing a child into this world also has seemed to demand an increase in his use of drugs. This increase demand feeds the vicious cycle that he seems to be trapped in. These are all the gaps that I could infer using my own experiences. I may not be the ideal reader, be it that I am not a drug addict nor do I live their life. Also, I don't find anything glamorous or rewarding about a life like that. The ideal reader that I could try to identify in this story is a person who struggles with a bohemian lifestyle and an ever increasing drug habit. I also believe that, even though it is not said outright, we can infer that Dalton's wanting to leave behind the child is driven by his drug use. If he were clean he would probably be able to see exactly what he is doing. This caused me to feel sympathy for Sunny and the child because for Sunny, it was probably too much to handle. It appears to me that she wants to lead a different life.
Travis,
ReplyDeleteYou write, "The ideal reader that I could try to identify in this story is a person who struggles with a bohemian lifestyle and an ever increasing drug habit." I suppose if Dalton were the character in focus this could be true. But Sunny really is the main character, and I don't think the ideal reader has to be a drug user to be a reader who's picked up most of the textual clues and signals. I think what you're thinking of here is a reader that's ideal in the sense that such a reader would easily be able to feel sympathy and empathy for the characters, perhaps understand them well, but that doesn't necessarily make for the ideal reader. The ideal reader is the one who interprets the text the way the text suggests it should be read (and one might do this whether they're on drugs or not). Does this make sense?