Crash

The story begins in the past-present and then seems to go back through the memories of the narrator. It begins when the narrator is told that someone named Karen has died in a car crash and then skips back to when the narrator is sixteen and moves on from there. He tells of how his life came to be up to the present (the start of the story, when the reader learns that Karen has died) He wanted to go to college, but instead ended up staying to work on the farm his parents own. This was partially because his parents needed his help but his mind was made when he met Karen, and she became pregnant. They got marred and the narrator started to work for his father. From there, the story continues to when their daughter, Hannah, is born. It is written in a way that captures the memory though each "memory just lasts a few sentences. For example, when describing his new job the narrator states "Karen liked it. I didn't, but preatended to for her sake. Later on I told dad, 'even though I'm sticking around, I don't have to like it.' 'Might try to,' he said." (213) The reader absorbs the character's life without the author having to go into too much detail. This quick writing style helps keep the pace of the story.
The change in time keeps the story original. It starts in the past but then goes back even further, telling of when he first met Karen. It continues from there and then jumps to jsut a few days before the narrator wrote this starting with "The other day Ma was writing some christmas cards" (214) The story then proceeds telling how Hannah wants to write a christmas card to her mother. At this point, Hannah is about three years old. The narrator describes his mothers face of pity and says  "for the past two years I got it everywhere I went." (215) telling us that Karen died tow years ago. Though the story thirteen pages long, it manages to cover years by using this technique.

When the Bear Came

When the Bear Came 

The story starts off when a bear comes to a town where, “nothing had happened in a long time” (225). Suddenly, there is news that a bear attacked two girls that were camping in the woods because they did not hang their food properly. The two girls are in critical condition in the local hospital.  The people in the town are on high alert and all want to kill the bear. One day, the narrator, Daniel, comes home and finds that the bear was in his house and destroyed some of his belongings. Daniel then tries to catch the bear.    

The story continues and talks about Daniel’s father, and how his father left the family. His father finds a girlfriend, and moves to a neighboring town. The father never really calls anymore. 

Then Daniel talks more about the bear. A bear is killed, and hung in town. However, this is not the bear that harmed the girls. Daniel then goes into the woods on his horse. He shoots his horse which and Daniel says to the horse, “I never liked you” (246). The bear then appears and starts eating the horse. Daniel then captures the bear with a rope, and is about to shoot and kill it, but decides not to. 

This story is especially rich in description. It was very well written, and contained much imagery and emotion. It was really interesting how the author tied in the story about the bear with the story about Daniel’s  family, and the father leaving. Many of the sentences are extremely powerful, as evidenced by the following sentence:  “The tent looked less like a tent and more like an organ excised by blunt scissors” (228).  Also really powerful was the ending. The reader anticipates that Daniel will kill the bear, because that is basically his mission from the beginning of the story. However, the story ends saying, “....I had found it, here in the peace of the dark woods, with only one slug and twenty feet of rope between me and absolution” (248). This more abstract and less predictable ending is more powerful and meaningful. 

A Refreshing Cup of Patriarchal Refreshment

Refresh, Refresh is from the narrative point of an adolescent named Josh. Josh, along with his best friend Gordon, lived in Tumalo, Oregon (a high desert town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Nothing distinguishes Tumalo except for the 2nd battalion, 34th marines base. Both Josh and Gordon's fathers, enlisted as part time soldiers, had been shipped off to Iraq. Gordon and Josh both admired their fathers for their raw masculinity.At one point in the story, Josh referred to his father as "Coors-drinking, baseball-throwing, crotch-scratching, and Aqua Velva-smelling."

Josh and Gordon, in contrast to their fathers, were skinny to the point of scrawny, which put them at a low point on the social totem pole. Gordon even recounts his embarrassing memory of being beaten badly by a varsity football player named Seth Johnson. The masculinity that the boys lacked was in-fact what fueled the symbolism in the story. Both boys missed their father's terribly and in their father's absence, aspired to become as brawny as possible as to please their fathers upon their return. The story is based around the theme of male approval. The boys lacked what they felt was essential to their classification in the male race and subsequently, took it upon themselves to appropriate their lifestyles.

Refresh, Refresh

The purpose of this blog is to discuss selected readings from the short story collection "Refresh, Refresh"by Benjamin Percy. This blog was generated by several students of Tenafly High School's creative writing program.