The Nympho

In the short story, "Motherfucker", the guy is like addicted to sex. I really do know why Bender used this story. I think he had sex with all these women to fill something he was missing. He went from women to women. It did not matter what the profession was.

I do not see why Bender would write a story about this. I honestly find it really disgusting. I feel as if he is using woman, just for the sex. In today's society you see it a lot. They call it being a PIMP, or a man whore. I really wonder why Bender put this story in with the rest of the stories. But it was an interesting story. (Nicole Butzke, Post 15).

Everyone's Peach

In the short story "Fruit and Words" the main character continuously runs into problems. One of the main problems being marital troubles. These problems occur everywhere in society and unfortunately more often then anyone would like. As the main character is driving she craves a mango, however is in the middle of nowhere and nowhere would normally have them. This is an excellent metaphor relevant to marriage. This relays the fact that people have a unique and specific type of person that they look for and that exact definition of who you want is nearly impossible to find, similar to the nearly impossible to find mango.
Not only is a mango hard to find, but it is sweet and luscious with flavors that makes your taste buds explode (mango is of course, interchangeable with someone's actual favorite food). This description is metaphorically relevant to love. It is something that should overwhelm you and without a doubt be one of the most enjoyable feelings you've ever had in life. However the main character struggles in finding this feeling and as a result many unfortunate events unfold hinting and pressuring her to believe that she has officially lost all hope and can no longer find love. This is because the peaches (which are comparable to her lover or possible lovers) are rotten giving her no opportunities or possibilities whatsoever.
-Derek Guarino

What is Never Actually Considered

Throughout the entire world there is one thing in life that millions of people have never even considered. This is the idea of holding something or someone and keeping them for your own use. After reading "Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler I personally, have put much thought into this idea. One of the most significant ideas presented in this reading was displayed when we got to the part where the aliens (T'Gatoi) used humans to reproduce.
The aliens using the humans to reproduce would normally be considered absolutely unjust and resemble a parasitic relationship, however the humans benefit significantly at the same time because when an alien uses a human, the human's life expectancy becomes greatly extended. Taking only this into consideration would actually be a difficult choice to many, because one could live a much longer giving one more time to enjoy life, but it would different life and would contain a horrendous ending. This is not the case though, and not only do the humans have that to take into consideration, but they're already cooped up like cows on a farm as it is so its almost like the humans are being captivated and bred. So what is actually never put into consideration, is how easy it is to think about cows being forced to eat certain foods and coop them up in a fence their whole life and then in opposition, look at it as completely inhuman and wrong to do the same to our own species.
-Derek Guarino

hymn

This story is about normal men and women who have children that have special powers. I believe that this story was talking about how some things in life were created by average people but they do stand out to people. For example, the blond child that sent electricity through the whole town.
I believe that all of these extraordinary children or people are symbolizing the people in the past who invented all of these things. Also the I believe that the author is saying that these great people never really got the recognition they deserved until later in the future.

Anthony DiChristopher
post 12

Fate of the Leading Man

In "The Leading Man," the protagonist's life seems to be predestined. Because he was born with 9 key fingers, it seemed to me that he was destined to find the doors to which his fingers opened. Whether he wanted to or not, his life journey would lead him to all the doors he could open. After finding that his finger opens the door to his childhood house, his mother wonders what would have happened if she had decided to buy another house. This example also conveys the prescense of fate in the characters' lives. Although the mother considered buying a different house, it was her fate to buy that house. It was her destiny to buy that house; she was always going to buy that house, regardless of her indecisiveness at the time. It was predestined that she would buy that house. Similarly, the protagonists life was predestined for him. It was his fate to find all the doors to which his fingers opened, and to find them at the time he did.

Cailee J-9

bloodchild

The argument we had in class about this story was, was Octavia Butler referring to slavery in this story. I do believe that in this story she was referring to slavery in an indirect way. Whether she meant to or not there are many clues that say she was hinting at slavery.
The first clue was the fact that humans were kept in sort of like a cage by the Tlics on this other planet or world just as slaves were many years ago. Also the forced "impregnation" if you will of humans by the aliens or Tlics. This also happened to slaves by there masters on many occasions. These were the two main reasons that I noticed to make me feel that she was referring to slavery in this story.

Anthony DiChristopher
post 11

15 minutes of fame.

Andy Warhol said that everybody have in his life 15 minutes of fame. In the story The Leading Man, it is all about that. The ninth door really disappointed me while reading the story, because all this leading up took us only to a short celebrity. Even when giving the medal to his father, giving him the recognition his father earned during this untold war, basically giving him his 15 minutes of fame, this remained a relatively uninteresting event.

In French, the expression "chiens ecrases" (litteraly "ran-over dogs") refers to those uninteresting news of relative unimportance a newspaper would put in last pages (I think the french expression gives a good idea of the content.) And though it gave the father his medal, to me it doesn't really matter, because the public has already forgotten it 15 minutes after... This was a real downer for me, and prevented the story to reach his goal.

Romain Dahan Post 6

Always Coming back until...

One of the major aspect of the story Dearth that really struck me was the fact that at some point, the potatoes do not grow back. at one point she eats one and it doesn't re-appear as it used to. It doesn't appear to be relevant that she eats it (she already ate the potatoes once and they grew back), but the fact that she is sick tells us something. This story is obviously a metaphor for pregnancy, and in my opinion, this shows an example of "miscarriage". At the point where she eats the potato, she isn't even trying to get rid of them anymore, she just does it by "tradition". It is never clear if she is sick from the potato or from a form of guilt. My opinion is that now that the babies are fully formed as "babies", she feels guilty for "killing" one of them. She could have attempted to get rid of the other six, now that one did not come back, but she did not.

A miscariage can be a tough experience for a pregnant woman, both physically and mentally, at it might lead to a reaction very similar to what the woman is experiencing after eating those potatoes. This really brings back to all the pregnancy related details (babies, 9 month growth). I think this may be suppose to relate to miscarriages.

Romain Dahan Post 5

Never Leaving

In the story "Dearth" the potatoes represented staying forever. She always tried to discard the potatoes but they always returned. No matter what she did they always came back. I think they represented a children because the lady was lonely. It took them nine months to mature. The woman was mean to them to but the children still loved her.

In every Bender story loneliness is shown. Somehow there is always something to take care of that loneliness though. The woman buried her children and she left lonely again, and then went and got them out. Almost like she didn't realize what she had until she lost it. She treated them like her children after that though. She dressed them up, and took good care of them. (Nicole Butzke, Post 14).

What Does Bender Think?

The most confusing story I think out of Aimee Bender's work is "Hymn". The story was about mothers, fathers, and children, but it was so confusing. The children of course were not normal. They were see through or had books as bodies. The parents left the children, and you see that a lot in her stories, someone always has to be lonely.

I believe that Bender went too far in this story. For the last story in the book, I was so confused. I thought she would give a story that you could reflect on. The last story did keep with the same lonely theme, but you never know when she is going to stop with the imagination. The last line of the story was; "My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside." I feel like that line is how she sees herself. She made herself the person she is. (Nicole Butzke, Post 13).

Life Experiences

I think that “Bloodchild” is one of the oddest stories I have ever read. When I first read it, I had no idea of what to make of it. I found it very hard to relate to any of the characters because they are just so “out there”. I couldn’t even really picture them in my head. I was completely thrown off by this story. It wasn’t until I read the afterward that I got an idea about what the story was about, and how it might be relatable to me.

However, now that I have the author’s insight as to what she meant this story to be, I find it a very clever story. It did have that “coming of age” feel, when I went back and read it a second time. That’s why I think it is a clever story overall. It raises questions about major life points, but disguises them in a crazy science fiction story.

The life point that I thought that was the most interesting was the idea that Gan witnessed a truth about what T’Gatoi was going to do to him, but still made the choice to go ahead with it. I think that we all have to make decisions like this in life. This choice of Gan’s also raised the question if I would want to know what I was getting into when I am faced with a decision like this. At this point I would have to say that I would want to know what I was getting into before it actually happened. This way I would be at least a little bit prepared for it. That’s why I think I ended up liking this story overall. It gets one to think about how the situations the characters went through would affect us, and how we would react if we were in the same situations. And truth is, while we might not be impregnated by aliens, we still could be put into some of the same situations.

(Sarah Jaworowicz, Post 14)

Aimee Bender and Sexual Experiences

I completely agree with Jason's post about the leading man's sexual experiences being a way to connect with others. The leading man is completely different from everyone else and is the only one that has these nine key fingers. He spends most of his life trying to find these doors he can open like some of us go throughout life trying everything to figure out the answers to who we are and our importance. One way that he finds a way to connect with at least someone, that someone being a girl, is to have sex. At one point in the story they even have sex in the closet, which was a door that he could open with his finger. This makes me think that he wanted someone to understand the importance of his fingers to him because they do make him different. He tried to include the girl into his life and his most important feature by sleeping with her in the closet.

I really like how Aimee Bender writes about people who try to fit in because they are different. The use of magical realism really helps to enforce the importance of fitting in and finding out what it is that makes you who you are. All her characters have to go through experiences in order to figure out who they are, whether they succeed or not, they all have to go through the journey. This is what we all do while growing up but the magical aspect just makes the topic a little more fun to look deeper into. It is definitely a twist the way she adds the magical realism to the stories.
(Kelcey Summers 14)

breaking natural boundaries

In the story "Bloodchild" the author give twist view of what what we call natural boundaries. T'Gatoi is first present as a kind of mother figure to Gan, which make sense because she like 3 times older than his mother. But then creates in word a sense of sexual desire for him. So what he a lover or child to her, but it gets stranger.
Also in the story they are located on a preserve, which we normally think of animals for this. thought they had animals on this preserve, you get the sense they treated as animal because they treat them the same way. They have filled both animal and terrans with there egg, to reproduce the alien race. So then is this a relationship with intelligent species of people and animals? And theres more but I think it gets more disturbing. I think the author blurs the relationship boundaries in this piece, leaving us wondering what kind of twisted relationship is this?

A need for a companion

In the story "The Leading Man" we have a lot of sexual adventures for our key handed friend. It seem as though to become so-called normal or have something to connect with everyone else there a need to have sex. It seems that way for this character that is separated from society as different by virtue of his hands. I think the author did this to give him a more normal or regular person feel.
The romance first starts with a girlfriend, then some french fling, then finally his true love. This is similar to the blue eye beauty in "Girl who fell from the Sky". Sex was a way to cope with being different and for a night or a few seconds feel excepted. The blue eye beauty was used just like the leading man, in that there early sexual relationship seem to be for there partner a great idea to try something with a person who is deemed different or a freak. Both character were used for both sexual desires of another and to explode there freakish natural to them.

Potato Love

After the discussions we had in class about the story "Dearth" and then looking back at the story something came to mind. These potatoes symbolize someone that may come into your life that you didn't accept at first but after you start to accept them being in your life you realize their importance. You may want to push someone different away because you are afraid of differences or afraid of change but then they keep coming back and you soon realize they are meant to be there. Why do we push away people who are different or people who bring change? After we have tried everything we can to push this away once it is finally gone we start to realize how much we didn't actually want it gone. In the story, the woman finally manages to get rid of one of the potatoes and it disappears forever but then she starts freaking out because it is gone.

This goes back to the saying "You don't know what you have until it is gone." She didn't realize how much she was starting to care about these potatoes until one of them did disappear. She then never tried getting rid of them ever again. Sometimes we need to lose something important to us in order to teach us to appreciate everything we have and accept others who are different. How boring would life be if we were all the same and there wasn't differences in life.
(Kelcey Summers 13)

Father Dearest

I believe that the story of the father in “The Leading Man” is more important than one might think. The story seems to focus mainly on the boy with keys for fingers, and the father takes a back seat. But the father plays a more important role that just being a background story. Throughout his life, the boy focuses on his hands, and what his fingers might open. Slowly, he figures them out, one by one. The one thing he can’t seem to figure out is his father.

The first thing we learn about the father is that he is away fighting in a war that is completely secret. No one can know about it. That shrouds the father in mystery right away. His son wants to know everything about his father. He wants to have a key on his hand that will open his father up, and make him tell all of his secrets. This desire is mentioned a few times throughout the story. I think that this is why the boy has nine fingers that are keys and not ten. I think the plain finger is representative of this inability to “open” his father. The boy eventually accepts this, and just makes adjustments to fit his father back into his life, like having a night wedding.

When he finally figures out what his last key finger opens, the boy momentarily accepts this vision of him as a hero. But instead of flaunting it, he instead gives the medal to his father. I believe the moment of figuring out what his last key opens is important because the boy is now complete, and he is now like everyone else in the world, and every door is just as closed to him as to everyone else. He is in fact “normal”. I believe that the boy giving his medal to his father is an acknowledgment of his father’s being “normal”, despite his quirks, and still being his leading man.

(Sarah Jaworowicz, Post 13)

9 Keys to Life

In "The Leading Man," the boy in the story has a significant talent of opening up certain locks with his fingers. This just isnt any ordinary talent though. Each of these locks he unlocks have meaning to it. He opened up the door to his house so he wouldnt be outside bored which started the whole scenario of opening doors. Each lock he unlocked was like a memory in his life. He got to go to Paris to open up a lock in the Louvre and also a saftey deposit box that had gold in it. The story shows how this boy was never the Leading Man and was always a weird character in plays. But as the story continues, he begins to make a difference in peoples lives like unlocking a case to weapons for this weaponry salesman and saving this boy by unclocking this steel shed. I think one of the morals of the story is just because one thing doesn't go your way does not mean you should give up but keep striving and unlock the doors in your life. This is referring to when he thought he can unlock the shuttle for NASA but his finger wouldn't fit. He kept going and later saved this boy from a locked shed.

The relationship that the boy has with his father is quite distant. His father was in this secret war and was never around and the boy never knew when he would be back. Even when he did see him in Paris the father spent more time with his wife than his son. The boy still cared for his father and it showed by the end when the boy gave his father the metal that he was given when he saved the boy from the shed. He felt like his father was the real hero because he was fighting in a war that nobody knew about so he was getting no recognition for risking his life. It is in my belief that they finally connected at the end of the story when they boy put his metal around his father's neck because he was giving him something that was a part of him and wanted his father to have. It was a great thing to see how all of his key fingers opened a door in his life which helped him succeed in life. (Mason Roessler Post 12)

Iron Head and Heart of Steel

In the story Ironhead that I did my critical source presentation on, there is much significance to this character who has and iron head. The rest of the family's heads are pumkins so he was different. He did not have any friends and was always an outcast to society. He hardly slept and this caused him to be exhauseted all the time and made him the way he is. It was sad to see he did not have anybody that could relate to him. He may have died of exhaustion, but I think he died of a broken heart. He could not take being lonely anymore so when he was sitting with other metal objects in the store he was in, it showed how desperate he was to have somebody or something around that was like him. This goes to show that just because somebody is different on the outside does not mean that they are different on the inside.

When we find out that one of Ironhead's siblings had a child whose head was a teapot, it was not the same has Ironhead. People excepted them more and the teapot head fit into society and made a lot of friends. I agree with the in class discussion on how the teapot weighed less than the Iron so it was a metaphor for the Ironhead having a lot to deal with being the only Ironhead around and since this teapot head came into the story, much weight is taken off due to her late uncle's struggle in society. One of the morals that i found in the story was don't judge a book by its cover. Just because somebody is different on the outside does not mean they are different in the inside. Everybody is unique in their own way and that is important to remember. (Mason Roessler Post 11)

Edward Keyhands

Several of the stories that we have read dealt with some sort of theme revolving around loneliness. However, "The Leading Man" seemed to shift in another direction and instead focused on more of discovery. The boy in the story was born with fingers shaped like keys that would open nine doors, of which were unbeknownst to him. He soon finds out that one of his fingers opens the front door of his house, while the other eight opened anything from a closet in france to a metal door. His fingers seemed to open miscellaneous objects that at first seemed like they would be important, but really didn't connect to each other. It was odd, but it made sence, because not everything in this world has a specific meaning, sometimes things just happen for no particular reason. The boy opened the doors not because he had to, but rather because he could. He had a choice each time to open the door and each time he chose to do so. It was like he was searching for something only to find nothing. It wasn't until the end that his strange gift was able to save a live, which then gave purpose to his key fingers.

The boy's father in the story did not really make sense at first. His father complained frequently about the sunlight or anything bright for that matter, and seemed kind of out of it throughout the story. It said that he was off fighting a war that no one seemed to know about, which did not make any sense. However, he could have been fighting a war but not physically, but instead fighting a mental war. The father could have been institutionalized in an insane asylum where he could have been placed in a padded room with white walls. This idea is rather farfetched, but it could make sense why he was so adamant about not seeing anything white or bright in fear that his head might explode. He could have had tests performed on him where this would leave him confused and forgetful. Still, his father did not really seem to have a dramatic impact in the story, because it focused mostly on the boy and his unique ability to open doors with his fingers. Although, his father refused to tell the boy about the war he fought, which could have further expanded the boy's sense of discovery.
(David Roberts, Post 14)

Growing Memories

The story of "Dearth" was different and odd upon first read. The main character appears to be sad and lonely throughout most of the story, which seems to be a reoccurring theme in several of Aimee Bender's short stories. The main character's apparent lover has left her and she is left alone to take care of herself, or so she thinks. She soon discovers that there are seven potatoes in the pot on her stove, which cannot be disposed of so easily. This could possibly be a metaphor for her memories. She so desperately wants to get rid of them only to find that they keep on returning each and every day. The only way she was able to dispose of some of them was by eating one and burying the other two. She was essentially trying to bury the way in which she had felt and by eating one of the potatoes, it was as if she was swallowing her pride. She may not like it, but it is the only way to achieve peace within herself. The remaining four potatoes grow and eventually resemble small children with legs, arms, and a head. This was like her memories were growing into living examples of those memories. They were created in order to comfort her and keep her company so that she is not truly alone. It's like the main character craves their presence only to be disgusted by them like she can't come to terms with her past memories. It isn't until the end of the story that the main character fully embodies the potatoe children to remind her of her grandmother, which by assumption could have had a big impact upon her life at one time.

An interesting scene in the story was when the bartender talks about his wife and how she had refused to say the word love in fear there were only a certain amount of times that love could be said. The bartender's wife even refused to say love on her death bed and instead chose "I like you" to represent her feelings toward her husband. This was quite similar to how the main character in the whole story of "Dearth" was isolated from love. Her lover had left her and gave her a note which was signed with sincerely instead of love. She was alone to take care of herself where love was absent from her life. This could be the reason why she eventually accepted the potatoes as her "children" to sort of demonstrate the love that was missing from her life. Once she accepted the idea of love, she let it grow into real representations of that love. She became emotionally attached to the potatoes only to discover that they reminded her of her grandmother, which was most likely the source from where the most love and attention was recieved.
(David Roberts, Post 13)

Scarce and Dear

In the story "Dearth," by Aimee Bender, the meaning and symbolism of the potatoes is very ambiguous. In trying to understand the story, there were many different things that the potatoes seem to represent. The potatoes might represent the family and children that "our woman" never had. They might also represent past memories that "our woman" is not able to forget. Just as the potatoes keep coming back no matter what the woman does them, memories from her past continue to haunt her no matter how much time has passed. The potatoes might also represent misconceptions. The woman did not like to eat potatoes, in fact she hated them. However, once the woman gave these potatoes a chance, she learned to love them and treated them as if they were her own children. In this sense, the potatoes represent how although we may have an initial opinion or judgment about something/someone, in time we may find that our original judgment was inaccurate.

In trying to decipher the meaning behind the potatoes, I looked to the title of the story. According to dictionary.com, dearth means scarcity and dearness of food; famine. After learning the meaning of this term, my understanding of the symbolism of the potatoes became much clearer. The potatoes represent those things in life that are scarce and dear to all of us i.e. family and love. "Our woman" lived a very lonely life; all of her family has died, she no longer has a lover and she doesn't appear to have any friends. The potatoes bring a sense of love and family to the woman's life. For example, after finally accepting the potatoes into her life as her own children, the woman remembers her mother. She does not mention anything specific about her mother until this point in the story. The potatoes reminded "our woman" of what is really important in life; the things that are scarce and dear.
cailee j-8