In “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami, An elderly elephant disappears from a suburb outside of Tokyo, but none of it matters. The elephant came into the ownership of the town through somewhat comedic means, and even though it caused quite the uproar for some time, the elephant was never more than an amusing oddity to the town. When the elephant disappears along with its keeper, the town sinks into a temporary state of mass hysteria, but as blame is thrown to just about anyone, the town slowly forgets about the elephant.

Our main character, despite his passion for keeping up on the happenings on this elephant, unfortunately slips back into the functions of everyday life. In time, it is clearly shown that everyone forgets, or wants to forget, about this elephant. Why do they forget? Because the elephant has no significance to them. It’s an oddity; a conversation starter. What did the elephant ever contribute to the town besides some possible publicity? It was simply an abandoned animal, and why the main character ever cared is an illusion.

At the time of the disappearance, there was a lot of attention given to the elephant. There were multiple high class investigations, and it even led to some political unrest. Even though all of these things seem significant, they made no change on the state of the suburb or those living in it. Our main character still went to his day job just like everyone else, and life moved on. The suburb before and after the elephant was the same. The status quo remained the status quo.

In the short story “Secret Woman” by Sidonie Gabrielle Collete is about how a Husband finds out that his wife is not as perfect as he originally perceived her as. Throughout the story, the husband viewed his wife as perfect and innocent up until he caught her at a sexual mascarade party interacting with different people. He never thought that she would come to the party since she wrote off the invite but, in return caused the husband to walk away from her without her noticing his presence in the party.

To me, the idea of the husband walking away shows that he has come to terms with her not being whom she portrayed her self as throughout the story. the husband found mutual recognition since he realized that she was not the “almond” like women that he used to love but the very complex women with “Satanic hands” that he witnessed in the mascarade party. This shows that the wife is much more than just a stereotypical woman but a more free person and that when she is around her husband she has a mask on to hide her differences and characteristics that he is uncomfortable with.

I also feel that mutual recognition is found when the husband begins to follow his wife around the party waiting to see what man she came to the party to see and finds that she is alone but still with everyone physically. He finds that his wife is capable of doing things on her own without a dominating figure above her head controlling her every move.

Therefore the husband had no choice but to respect and understand that his wife was no longer under his control and that she was able to do whatever she felt she needed at that moment. It also made the husband realize that even he was living a lie for lying to his wife but lying to himself that his wife was perfect.

On the surface, Black Box seems like a short story that does a good job of empowering women through the decisions they make, specifically being a spy and helping the government gain information on high profile criminals. However, through the use certain words such as “Beauty”, and the involvement of our narrator’s husband, there seems to be slight ambiguity in what our author was trying to convey.

To begin with, it seems that the use of the word “Beauty” is used to describe all young women. That is only one word, and it can be taken that calling someone a beauty reduces a girl to one aspect. That is degrading to females because it takes all other aspects out of them. They are only seen as beauties and nothing else. On top of that, it is said that “Posing as a beauty means not reading what you like to read on a rocky shore in the South of France.” This quote is one of many that shows that beauties are supposed to not do what they want, and solely have to listen to what their Designated Mate wants. If this is the case, then why does the author refer to all young women as beauties, and not just the spies. I feel like this means that our author is actually in a way being degrading.

When you look at how the narrator talks about her husband, it also seems that she is taking part in this program not because she wanted to, but more because her husband wanted her to. This is taking away from her decision, and is implying that she can’t make her own decision. the quote “You will reflect on the fact that America is your husband’s chosen country and he loves it.” This quote makes it seem that she is partaking in this because of her husband’s allegiance to his country. These quotes, plus many more throughout the story, prove the ambiguity the author makes when trying to empower women.

Throughout Secret Woman, a short story by Colette, there are surprisingly few secrets, especially concerning Irene, the main subject of the story and the narrator’s wife.

The nature of short stories makes telling any tale with great detail a monumental undertaking. To skirt along this limit, Colette chose instead to pursue a single scene of a longer story with enough detail that it sends a message by its lonesome.

She then proceeds to descriptively sculpt all of Irene’s indulgements for the night leaving the reader with very little that is hidden or inconclusive about the so-called “Secret Woman”. Colette portrays the narrator as disgusted and seemingly uninterested in his wife after he realizes the scope of her secondary personality, but the diction of the story in many cases suggests that the wife isn’t quite reliant on her husband for support and can take care of her self.

I would contend that the story is centered around the idea that only the husband thought he was special, and the contrast between his self perception and how his wife actually views him.

Something that I noticed while reading “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler was that the T’ often preceding Tlic names seemed to function as a title.  The T’ in T’Khotgif changes to Ch’ after she produces offspring as evidenced by T’Gatoi’s reference to her shortly after the birth: “‘T’Khotgif—Ch’Khotgif now’”(173).  

This may imply that these titles carry a sort of respect and formality, similarly to the way we would address our superiors as Mr, Ms, and Mrs.  If this is the case, then the way that characters in “Bloodchild” use these titles would tell us more about their relationships with their Tlic and the power dynamics that are implied.  

Before Lomas is cut open, he calls out for his Tlic, T’Khotgif, by her full name.  Gan recalls this later: “‘He said ‘T’Khotgif.’ ’ Qui shuddered. ‘If she had done that to me, she’d be the last person I’d call for.’” (171)

Qui, who is clearly uncomfortable with the Tlic, also refers to their family’s Tlic by her full name while asking Gan how he viewed their relationship “‘while T’Gatoi was picking worms out of that guy’s guts’” (172)

However, we see this binary being broken towards the end of the story when Gan addresses his Tlic, without the prefix.  This has an effect similar to using a teacher’s first name and signifies a shift in their relationship.

I believe this was intentional as Gan, frustrated and emotional from the situation, does it repeatedly while he challenges her: “‘Ask me, Gatoi.’” (174) and “‘There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner.’” (175) While these quotes would have made sense without “Gatoi”, seeing this binary start to change as Gan begins to question her is quite powerful.

When I first read “Black Box” by Jennifer Egan, the thing that caught me the most off-guard was not the language or the rules of the world, but rather the story’s structure. I didn’t understand the way it was formatted; all of the individual boxes and almost fragmented sentences were not what I was used to when it came to short stories. Out of curiosity, I looked it up, and I found that the strange organization came from the fact that the story was originally written through a series of tweets from the author.

The whole thing made a lot more sense when I thought of it coming out in that context. Using Twitter to tell this story actually fits the plot very well, considering that it was told from the point of view of the “beauty’s” mental information log, which has a similar condensed style to a tweet. Although we had to read the story as the New Yorker published it, I could imagine reading it in real time, feeling like you were getting updates from the woman’s black box itself.

Aside from its application to the actual story, I thought the method Egan used was interesting because it reminded me of old serial novels. Many years ago, authors used to publish their stories in fragments in magazines or newspapers, almost like episodes of a TV show. It was a popular technique among science fiction writers, but it was also used by famed authors like Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway. The appeal back then was that it was more profitable for the authors than exclusively selling full novels, but it also allowed their stories to reach a wider audience, seeing as more people could afford to buy magazines than books.

While tweeting out “Black Box” may not have been more profitable for Egan, it did have the same effect as publishing serials did for the authors of the past in that it went out to one of the widest audiences in the world: social media. A vast majority of the world, regardless of social or economic status, participates in social media to some extent, and using it in this way allowed Egan to reach so many more people than she would have if she had published it in book form. And who knows, maybe this will lead to Twitter stories becoming the 21st-century form of serialization–though I’m not sure if I’d be willing to read a Harry Potter novel 280 characters at a time.

Upon reading “The Secret Woman,” the main question that came to mind for me is was it better or worse that she was not at the party for someone specific. In class, a majority of people were saying that it would have been worse if she was meeting a certain person due to the emotional connection she clearly finds more desirable compared to her husband.

While I do understand this rationale, I couldn’t help but to think that at least in a scenario where the woman is there for someone in particular, the husband knows that her feelings for him were triumphed by feelings for another. I would argue that the scenario portrayed where the woman is simply there for the pleasure of being there, is much worse than an affair. This is, in my mind, due to the fact that clearly her husband is not satisfying her enough anymore, and she is bored. At least in an affair, the woman may still have feelings present. What is happening in the story in my mind with her attendance to the “party” is that she is in need of a pleasure no longer provided by her husband.

We started discussing the symbols in “The Elephant Vanishes,” especially with the elephant. Different people all had different theories, but what I want most to expand on is Murakami’s exploration of mental health, and potentially mental illness.

It is very clear in the story that the narrator’s mental health deteriorates throughout the story, as time goes on without the elephant being found. The narrator indicates that since the elephant disappeared, he started smoking again, which he had stopped many years prior. He also finds it very difficult to think or talk about anything besides the vanishing elephant after it disappears.

I have a few different ideas of what the elephant can symbolize. First I view as the situation with the elephant as perhaps an allegory for grief somehow. Obviously losing an elephant is losing something in itself, but I think perhaps Murakami was trying to illuminate a truth about grief. It may be obvious that someone is experiencing grief, and at first, everyone is attentive and compassionate to the people affected by the loss. But, eventually everyone moves on, and the people most affected by the loss still are going through the motions of grieving, while it seems that no one is there to go through the motions with them. Then, the grieving can start feeling isolated and alone.

Because the narrator was so invested in the elephant, its disappearance almost felt like he was losing a part of himself. Being involved in the search for the elephant might have helped him feel better for a bit. The media coverage may be similar to consoling family and friends as I mentioned earlier, and the way that the news stopped covering the elephant might symbolize how someone with mental health issues or those who are grieving can feel isolated like the world is moving too fast. This becomes clear when the narrator feels angry at this lack of coverage.

Another way of interpreting the elephant as a symbol for mental health, specifically mental health care, is the way in which the elephant might serve as a distraction to the narrator. At first, I wasn’t sure why Murakami included the information about the narrator’s job, because I found the details boring and unnecessary. It then registered with me that was quite possibly the point. The narrator was living such a mundane life, that the elephant was the only thing to distract him for a while from how perhaps pointless his life might have seemed.

I feel that if what Murakami was trying to make a statement about work-life, he made a very powerful one. No one should work their life away, and everyone should have something that they are passionate about outside of work. There should be a balance that many cultures don’t value.

In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, although the people take great interest in the man who fell from the sky, they are quick to dismiss him as a real angel solely based on his appearance.

When Pelayo and Elisenda first discover the angel, the first thing they do is point out the flaws in his appearance: “There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of of a drenched great-grandfather had taken away any sense of grandeur he might have had” (Marquez 354). Their first impression of the angel is only about how he looks at first glance. Even with his enormous wings that should most definitely indicate that he is a magical being, they assume he is a castaway from a ship. This is all because the old man did not fit the typical description that is associated with an angel.

Just as Pelayo and Elisenda make assumptions based on the appearance of the old man, the media today similarly overemphasizes appearance. Every model in magazines or on social media has physical features that people are expected to strive for. If people do not fit the stereotype for the “ideal” appearance, the media makes it seem as though they are imperfect. This unrealistic expectation for physical appearance makes people, especially teenagers who are heavily influenced by social media, unhappy with how they look. In a time when appearance has been prioritized over other characteristics of a person, it can be easy to lose sight of what really matters.