I enjoyed the way Forché sets up the scene of this story; the daughter filing her nails, the son gone out for the night, the pistol, and above it all-- the swinging moon on its black cord. The household, having this lazily wealthy feel about it, is suddenly contrasted by the broken bottles and grating that secure the walls and windows of the home.
The sentence structure is broken, but flows at the same time, does that make any sense? I get the sense while reading, that these are the narrators inner thoughts and they seem to walk from one to the next beautifully.
Forché paints the reader a picture of the colonel as a stern and intimidating figure when the narrator describes him telling the parrot to shut up. Her friend, giving her that "keep your mouth shut" look does much to help us understand the colonel's austere personality.
I would argue that the ears being compared to dried peach halves is the most powerful image in the story. It is here that I realized that this colonel doesn't give a fuck.
Finally, the ears-- some still catching the scraps of the colonel's voice while others lay facing the ground-- give this poem an errie resolve. We have these dried up body parts lying together on the ground, belittled by this merciless colonel raising his wine glass above them-- a powerful image that makes for a nice ending to the story.
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I totally get what you mean about the sentence structure being broken but flowing at the same time. His halting diction makes for a jaunty narrative, but gives you a sense of novelty at each turn!
ReplyDeleteI agree about the unique sentence structure, being short and broken up, yet flowing coherently from one thought to the next. I also found it interesting how the story unfolds with a very relaxed common household, and slowly branches out into reminders that the narrator is indeed in a dangerous house. The contrasts between the beginning and the end are intense. Forche managed to describe so much within such a short short story.
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