Wow, I'm impressed. First I had Mark Twain which took some warming up to, but this Chestnut guy is a good writer, yet the real teat is if he wrote more than one goodien, so I don't know at the moment, hopefully not too many to come before I do. If the class didn't have a discussion I think I would have missed some key points--the hole of good in my head was shoveled deeper and the story resonated (thanks to the talking). Unfortunately, I feel anything I write about will be robotically repetitive from the discussion, so I’m going to comment on things I thought about with the discussion--if that makes sense.
First of all my opinion from the beginning: the beginning was a bit of a struggle, I read it over and over 3 times or more, my compression and attention just wasn’t there, my thoughts were—the writing is good and well constructed, but why is nothing sticking. Finally I just moved along in the story, grabbing onto what thoughts of reading I could. I got there, around the time of the boy Sam (I think is the name) when he was talking to the Sheriff’s house lady. That be the time me brain was no longer on earth, but in the movements of the story. Before the ending I flowing with every bump and crevice of the plot and, of course the ending, I didn’t want the ending to come.
The Sheriff, well I was quite excited to finally meet him, the funny thing is his character was exactly as I expected--that’s not a common happening. Back to the excitement—it was one of those gitty things such in the Fellowship of the ring (Lord of the Rings) when Gandalf stands up in the movie and says ‘so this is the Fellowship of the Ring’ and I think at one point or another he also mentioned ‘the lord of the rings’. But meeting the sheriff wasn’t as corny as a person mentioning the title of the movie. (But, same adrenal rush) The Sheriff was brave (stood up for the law), respectable, noble man, yet he was as bad as the others, (amongst other things, he was kind of racist) but he came to his senses…although it cost him the loss of his son. Which leads me into the ending, left me satisfied—just the right amount of ending—if the story had ended with the Sheriff once again being the ‘heroic good guy’ the story would have been an ‘enh’ that was ok, hero saves the day again, naa this was more realistic and a wake up call… it was meant to be.
Chestnut put a variety of Southern accents in the story which really help develop the characters and their diverse personalities. One of the lines that were –woo woo that’s good—was “But the baleful influence of human slavery poisoned the very fountains of life, and created new standards of right”—wow that was deep, and so few words to get such a strong point out. The best part is this is not the only one, they’re many more, I just wasn’t sly enough to catch them. And boy, the sheriff’s daughter comes and saves the day, what a surprise!—so exciting.
The fact that I’m recommended certain writings, from popular authors of this time, and am not impressed to the decree that I would recommend them; when this ‘bump in the earth’ story leaves a thumbs ups, questions my trust for the human minds around me—what are they thinking?
