“The Falling Girl” by Dino Buzzatti

The story depicts a girl named Marta who falls willingly or accidentally from the highest skyscraper in the city. It is amazing how at the beginning of the story she is but a nineteen-year-old girl, yet at the end she is an old woman. Perhaps the author was trying to convey the quickness in which live easily goes by. People nowadays only take interest in what’s new and exciting meaning that people took interest in the girl when she started falling because she was young and vibrant and then we tend to through the old aside, referring to as how the people in the lower floor don’t really care for the people that are about to die at the pavement in front of their own building. It is also implied in the story that everything new and wonderful, can become dull and boring if copied, or reproduced enough times as we see when all these other girls start jumping off the skyscraper and suddenly the girl who started the trend is no longer the center of attention. There is also a hint of the mathematical paradox the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea spoke of, in which it is described that an arrow would never reach the tree it was intended to hit because it has to cover half the distance to get to it’s destination, so the arrow slows its velocity the closer it gets to its goal. We see these mainly when it is described how Marta first fell with great speed and then started to slow down, as she got closer to the ground. The way people take their life for granted and just waste it on everyday simplicities such as fashion, attention or just doing nothing makes the human the only animal in the world to waste the time it is given unto this Earth. We may be the predominant species on the Earth with a rational mind, but we are also the dumbest creature on it. 

"The Question No One Would Answer" by Nawal El Saadawi

After reading this story I must say I was tremendously appalled, to hear of such intolerant and ghastly ways, alas I am but an observer and I cannot force my opinions unto others, even if I think it is wrong because what is wrong for me, might be right for someone else. Living in the 21^st century, after the women’s right movement, we still see the segregation that women must deal with everyday of their lives and this is in our society, but nothing compares to what goes on in the East. The simple thought of female genital mutilation makes my skin crawl, and awakens every nerve end in my body as I try to conceive, to find the reason behind these heinous acts. I suppose by now you can deduce where my loyalty lies in this case, yes I am against it, but not because it is a different culture than my own, but because willingly and hopefully unknowingly these people are creating margins in which they separate the women and the man as to entire different beings. It seems absolutely preposterous to my western civilization mind that these rituals in which they cut off the clitoris of a girl, not even a women, but a girl is not something that’s frowned upon in their cultures. It is only achieving the dominant thought that has plagued humanity for centuries that man is above woman, and that women’s only role in this world is to give pleasure, to bear children and to raise them. It is forcing the man’s masculinity unto the women by making them nothing more than tools of pleasure. As I finished reading this story I wondered to myself, why does humanity take one step forward and two steps back? It feels like every time we try to progress in some way we  retrogress in another, and until we learn to advance as a whole being, we will never achieve true equality. 

"Pizza for Warsaw, Torte for France" by Slavenca Drakulic

The story portrays the differences between communism and capitalism, by comparing the bright and “uncomfortably rich” nation known as USA and the countries in Europe still living under communism iron rule. In communism there is no incentive to strive, no real reason for workers to give it there all in their line of work because people are paid equally no matter the effort or enthusiasm the person has. People are treated equally and the government controls everything, from the health and educational care, to the prices of the food you see on the supermarkets. Since there isn’t any initiative to strive to produce better efficiency for a company it instills laziness unto the people because, why should I work harder than my partner if we are going to get paid the same? However we live in a society who exercises capitalism instead of communism. Now capitalism is actually the imperfect answer to the inefficiency communist have instilled unwillingly upon their citizens, but at a price. While capitalisms valor hard work, initiative and creativity, it is also the cradle of corruption, for by focusing on the individual progress of ones life instead of the progress of a nation, we are injecting through eyes, mouth, ears and veins the true enemy of progress and that is selfishness. There is no right way when the right only goes to the few who can rise above society, for in this land there is a new God, it’s called money and justice answers to it’s every whim like a lap dog. As Rousseau once said, “Instead of bettering man, we must first better the society.” What good does it do to change man if the seed of it’s corruption is never changed?

"And We Sold The Rain" by Rosario Santos

After reading the short story "And We Sold The Rain" by Rosario Santos, I can honestly say that it makes it absolutely inconceivable from a point of view of a “developed” country what some “undeveloped” countries would do to get money. The story was actually based upon real life events known as the Water War in Bolivia. The story depicts a crippling town who is about to go under unless they find a way to make easy money, so they privatize the towns water works and give the rights of the rain water to a sultan. The sultan is none other than the head of the Aguas del Tunari firm. Although in the story the people leave the town in real life is much more different, for a series of protests of over 2,000 took place to throw out the new regime instilled by the government. It goes without saying that desperate times call for desperate measures, and even though it may be inconceivable to us, corruption is a part of our daily lives. More so in countries with little to no resource, because most of the population is uneducated on their rights and how to make the government exercise them. The governments of these nations know of this and take advantage of it. We live in a time were greed and malice is a common trait among humans, and it is often too late before one can know that a fellow human suffers it, for how can one conceive a disease that is not visible through our five senses? The answer lies in whether we want to see what lies beyond the curtain or hide like cowards behind the wall that block us from the one truth.

"Paper" by Catherine Lim

The short story paper is about greed and how a terrible sickness it can be to those who do not warn it off before it sets in your mind and soul and takes over your daily life.  The story is set in Singapore and it depicts the ambitious ways of the young people in that time who only seem to value material gain. The greed, which takes over the lives of Tay Soon and Yie Liang ultimately, costs the life of Tay Soon and the sanity of Yie Lang. People often associate money and material possession with happiness and joy, these are the great lies of the world. The world portrayed in the story and the world we live in nowadays is no different. Humanity has, since the creation of the monetary system and civilization, always took advantage of the poor and weak to gain more money and lands in a quest to be the richest and most powerful human on the face of the Earth. What the don’t realize is that when we die we are all turned to same thing, dust, and that no matter the virtues we acquired in life, and in death it is but a dream, as Shakespeare stated in his famous speech of Hamlet “To be, or not to be”. We live our lives, much like Tay Soon, working and lusting for money which is only paper that is worthless when we die, and the last image of the story of the burning house made of paper is the irony of which what was most precious to him in life, money, was something as fragile and easily burned as paper. In all to better ourselves as humans we must first change the structure and society we live in.

"I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen

The story is about a single mother trying to raise her children during the time of the Great Depression. It tells us how difficult was just to get by let alone raise 5 children. The narrator of the story tells us how hard it was to raise her children but her voice seems of regret, as she feels guilty on how her first child, Emily, was brought up. When she looks at Emily she feels a kind of remorse she does not feel for her other children, probably because she didn’t show her the affection and love that she constantly remained herself to show the others. It was her first child and being the first child of a young mother, she did not have the experience or knew anything she knows now. The narrator describes us how she worked for six years of Emily’s young life and how this affected her overall development, this is reassured when she compares her second child, Susan, and Emily, as to being just one year apart in development despite being the two having a five year difference. The story describes the mother-daughter relationship and how difficult were the years to brought up a child in the Great Depression when the economy went downhill, and before World War II. 

Ultimately the narrator indicates that society has to take the responsibility of forcing young mother into a difficult task of raising children in that era and for giving her the horrible guidance they told her when they said to send Emily to a sanatorium. The narrator cannot accept the mistakes she made by not following her own instincts instead of what experts said and this is portrayed when she used book to nurture Emily and when she did not have the necessary will to go against what others were telling her to do. If she so accepts that she was wrong then she would have to face the consequences of her actions but in blaming everyone but herself she is in a way escaping from feeling a lot more than remorse when she looks at Emily, she is trying to escape feeling guilty and mournful of what she made Emily go through by her lack of parenting and this is what she fears the most, to be told that she has failed as a parent.