Reflection: "The Rockpile"

   The Rockpile is a story that starts off with ta care free aura of sorts. It does not come close to alluding to what it becomes in the first, the second or even the third pargraph. I expected it to focus around Roy and his misbeahavior, or John's soft shell, which it does, just not to the extent in which I would expect. It swerves off the path it seems to lay onto one of marrudal issues and "ungodly" past.
   Gabriel immediately strikes me as man of god, but only when he is in church. For his status to be that of which it is his treatment of his wife, the mother of his childern and his adopted son is repullsive. He mocks Elizabeth and insults her intellegence. He treats her witht the lowest of respect. One would think he physically harms her with the way she reaches for her child immediattely after she yells at him, refusing even the idea of him punishing John. Gabriels holds himself above her and John, he acts as if his very being in comparison to them is worth  ore than gold from my perspective. The Rockpile leads you in on the topic of rambuntious childern and leads you out with domestic viloence lingering in the corner of your mind.

Reflection: "A Worn Path"

   The passage was centered around overcoming life's opticals. It was slow and vague only to fill you in as it went. This story was heartfelt in more ways than one, making you feel for the old woman as she encounters her journey, and pitty her grandson who's throat swells like clockwork. It lores you in with it's ambigious beginnings and keeps you there with it's intersting middle and it's simple end.
   The passage seems to be pointing out that life will always be a struggle and even when the sun is shinning as if it could never disappear it's bound to set or give way to dark skies. The passage ingraves the strength of the grandmother's love into the reader's eyes as one reads. Despite her wavering memory she still pushes past the hill that calls for her to stay, she struggles through the terrain that she can no longer see so clearly, she withstands her ordeals and she keeps her mind just enough to get the medicine her grandson so despartly needs. She shows that despite all the reasons she should be afraid, she isn't, she shows that even through life will have it's gray skies, the sun will always return.