Critical Response to Elephants in Our Bedroom

Critical response to Michael Czyzniejewski’s

Elephants in Our Bedroom

           

The author (I’ll refer to Michael Czyzniejewski as the author because it’s such a long last name) uses many useful tools in his collection of short stories that I can use in my own writing. The author uses symbolism and foreshadowing in his writing. A great example of this is the title story Elephants in Our Bedroom.

In the beginning the author notes the elephant he received and placed in his bedroom, but then he describes the main character of the story and his wife. The man buys a dog and then his wife forces him to get rid of it. In the end the elephant is the tension between the man and his wife. The author uses many tools in this story. One is foreshadowing in the beginning of the story about the elephant that is brought up in the end. A second tool is metaphor. “I play games with the elephant when my wife is in the room, hoping she’ll take notice, say something, something to initiate dialogue” (Czyzniejewski, 43). The metaphor, or symbolism, is the actions of the man with the elephant. He is acting out to get the attention of his wife, but it’s impossible. Another great tool the author uses is what I like to call the “Snowball effect,” and by this I mean the momentum be builds in his stories.

The author begins the story in a normal fashion. It seems like a normal story about a man who buys a dog and then is forced to get rid of it. The story turns into hyperbole about a man who has an elephant in his bedroom to capture his wife’s attention. The opening story has a similar format in Wind. In this story, about a man watching his child and the child gets hurt, the author establishes a somewhat normal, but that world is changed as the background of the man is described with his absurd family. Once again the author uses a technique where he mentions something in the beginning that isn’t resolved until the end.

Prison Romance was a really interesting story. This was a little more serious than some of the other stories. I felt it was ambiguous and didn’t really have a true ending, but I thought it worked as a short story. It captured what a restricted, or long distance, relationship sometimes feels like. I felt like this was an experimental story, and it showed me as a beginning writer that a story can capture one feeling and you can lack a complete story arch if you do it right. IT’s like we talk about in class, know what the rules are and if you’re able to break them and get away with it, then it’s a great story. Prison Romance is a great example of this.

Sleeping Through Starvation had a very good comical part to it. “In the office, I ask my doctor what he thinks, his index and middle finger in my ass. . . One ape in a lab in Korea puts the round peg in the round hole. . . .” (Czyzniejewski,158). I thought this was a great line in the story. This story is similar to the others in the book because the author established something in the beginning, the man going to the doctor, then diverts the reader’s attention to something else, his child, then reverts to the beginning story mysteriously. 

There are a few things I can take from this book of short stories. The first is that foreshadowing and symbolism, much like the Coats’ story, is very important and a great tool to keep a reader’s attention. It teases the reader to bring something in at the beginning, go away from it for awhile, and then refer back to it in the end. Also, like in Sleeping Through Starvation, sometimes not explaining the joke, or leaving it open ended, is more powerful than outright saying it.

I really liked the author’s stories. They touched on real life problems and situations and put a humorous touch on them without demeaning the problems. It was a fun book to read and very well written. I also thought the author’s use of very short sentences and “run-on” sentences helped capture what the story was about. The stories read like someone who was sitting down with a friend and explaining what happened. 

Critical Response 5: Kady Oliker

Response to Allyson’s Long story
Overall I enjoyed this story because I could relate to it being in college. We’ve all had those nights where fast food sounds absolutely amazing at two in the morning. My only problem with this story was where it begins. I think there is too much back story going on with the three characters. I’m not saying to completely cut out the back stories because they are key in understanding why these people are the way they are. I’m just saying that you should intertwine the stories into the story more than just blatantly putting them at the beginning. I think you should actually start the story in the car. That’s the one scene that really caught and held my attention. The first time you wrote this, I liked it but I wanted to know about the whole car situation. I was really excited when I got to read it again, but the car scene seemed the same and I want to know more.
I also think that the ending could be a little more discrete. Even if you want to teach your reader a moral, don’t make it so obvious; it sort of reminds me of a childhood book that ends with “and the moral of the story is…” Overall I really enjoyed your characters. I feel like you really got to know them and got inside their heads; but it might be kind of cool to get into the head of the driver to put in what kinds of things that he has stashed in his car. Maybe some kind of weapon because he’s a very untrusting person?

Critical Response 7:Kady Oliker

Response to Christina Ledesma's long story.

I really enjoyed reading Unexpected by Christina. i felt like i was almost in the hospital and in the car with the girl. The description was very life like. I loved the part in the story when the girl is getting ready to enter the clinic and she looks at the Rosary hanging from her mirror and rips it off. I feel like she could emphasise a little bit more on this just because it is such a profound moment and revelation in the story. I also really liked how every paragraph started with "you were unexpected," it made it feel like a poem to me and I really enjoyed reading it that way.
Another part that really caught and held my attention was the very end when you think she is going to go through with the abortion. I thought she acutally would, and the beginning took on a whole new meaning to me because I thought that this was her second child. But then at the very last second, the story twists and you realize she doesn't go through with it and I thought that was written very very well. Overall I really enjoyed reading this story, it captivated me the entire time I was reading it.

Response to Christina Ledesma’s “Long Story”

Very effectively written. I never questioned the world that the author created, never had trouble suspending my disbelief, even though a lot of details like names of people and places had been obscured or buried in the text, I still felt like the story was about very real people in a very real world. Small details and humor (don’t get food from trucks with kitchens) fleshed out the story without becoming it’s focus. All of this helped me to feel for the narrator during the last scene, and have an emotional investment in the story. Really, the only thing that has me conflicted about the story is the last couple of sentences. It’s abrupt, and I feel like I’m falling off of a bit of a cliff at the end, but on the other hand, I’m not sure where else there would be to go with the story, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be left wanting to read more. On a smaller not, the last two sentences shift from addressing the baby directly to referring to it in the third person. It might give a little more punch to the end if the narrator addresses her child directly, as she had done before.

Response to Kelly Hanken’s “The Wolf In Trouble, Pt. 1”

The vampire-related areas of the story are very well thought-out, with a lot of detail, and an entire social structure that follows a logic within the story that I can easily buying into. In a lot of other areas, the story feels a bit vague, and while I think all of the plot-point and the action of the story is very compelling and makes for interesting reading, I’m having trouble getting an image of the world in which this is happening. I know that it’s taking place in a city with a college and a party scene at night (for some reason I think of Europe, I don’t know why), but I don’t know what city, or even what country/continent. This could be a good device for the story (the vampires could be in any town, on any continent, maybe right next door), but right now it’s too vague, and I’m having trouble believing in the town as a real place.

I also wonder how the story might be different if it were told from the 3^rd person instead of the 1^st. Right now, as a reader, I’m privileged to all of the thoughts in the protagonist’s head, and I get dropped into the story with an understanding of all the relationships and rituals of this vampire world, which doesn’t leave a lot of mystery. On the other hand, if I was seeing the scene at the bar as a casual observer, I’d have a lot more questions about what was going on, and be a lot more frightened by the strange behavior from the protagonist and his posse as he tried to pickup a girl at a club.

Response to Kady Oliker’s “If Only”

It’s great how we get a clearer picture of what happened as the story progresses and we get a more detail with each successive narrator. Sophia and Carter’s accounting of the moment the gun is fired is a little different, and I don’t know if that’s intentional or not (there’re more dialogue from Kendal in Carter’s version of the story). I’m curious what happened to Kendal and Sophia’s mother after Kendal shot Sophia. The focus at the end of the story gets pretty narrow (understandable, Carter is grieving over his dead lover), but its’ too unclear what happens to them. Maybe having Sophia’s crazed interpretation of events book-ending the piece in order to show how her story ends (a confrontation with Carter, or with the mother, or shooting herself, or giving herself up to the police). She’s the on character who we’ve only heard part of the story from (the lead-up, but not the actual incident), so it feels a little incomplete. On another note, the film noir feel of the piece was great, and I liked the use of the color red (the stilettos, the handbag).

Response: Max Gallo’s “Phone Tag”

Expertly written, I have no comments on the writing. I think the story has a few different threads which are going in contradictory directions and need to be reconciled. The opening line “Simon rubbed his eyes weakly while sitting in his tiny office cubicle” gave me an image of the protagonist which didn’t fit with what I saw him doing later—having a gun and being a burnt-out cubicle dweller I could buy, though the fact that he had the gun on him was a little convenient (could he have made a return home to get his weapon, and witnessed some scene set up by his colleagues?), but I didn’t see why his coworkers would go through all of the trouble to do this for a guy who was so burnt out. I think the rest of the story can still work if we don’t get the image of the protagonist as being such a washout.

The ending scene could have been played out a little further as well. What if he did shoot Chuck, thinking he had his child, or because he’d played the joke on him? What would people at the party, and his wife and child, be doing/saying just at the fact that he was holding a gun? Could make for an amazingly awkward scene. His angst gets resolved too tidily with him just punching Chuck in the gut. A good movie to see might be David Fincher’s The Game. It stars Michael Douglas as a high powered financial broker who becomes entangled in an elaborate hoax, and we spend the entire movie wondering if what he’s involved in is a game or for real, and if his life’s in danger—or isn’t.