Assignment/Activity Title Modern Short Stories Project

Year Freshman
Skill Literature
Critical Reasoning

Portfolio Category

The Short Stories Project made me recognize the effects that the new writing technique of a
modernistic story had on literature, and how different from techniques that came before it. The
modernistic story that my group members and I read was called The Egg, written by Sherwood Anderson,
which explored the life of a young boy born to a poor family of farmers. His father was mentally obsessed
with deformed chickens, hoping to raise one and sell it so he could finally make a legitimate amount of
money off of it. The mother is sick of living on a poor farm, and she moves the family into the city to
open a restaurant, where the father continues his strange obsession with eggs and deformed chickens.
Upon the visit of a young visitor to the restaurant named Joe Kane, the father begins to try and impress
him with a variety of unsuccessful egg tricks. Kanes train eventually arrives and he must leave, but the
father is adamant on performing a successful egg trick, but fails and breaks the egg. He breaks down into
tears and has a mental breakdown. The father runs upstairs and in time, tells his family of his thoughts,
causing the son to follow in his path and question the meaning of eggs.
After reading this story of modernism, my group and I wrote our own modernistic story, about a girl
named Deandra whose best friend was hit by a car at prom, so she moves in search of rebuilding her life
without sadness and bad memories. At her new school Deandra meets a girl exactly like her dead best
friend, and the sheer reality of this meeting causes her to go somewhat mad and drives her to think of
nothing but murdering this doppelganger.
Writing my own story and reading anothers caused me to think and want to learn more about the issue
of human madness and mental illnesses, and how someone can be driven to go mad or acquire a mental
illness. Madness can give someone a different perspective on the entire world than a normal person, since
most dont have rational or usual thoughts and urges. Madness or mental illness is often used as a joke or
an exaggeration, and not put into perspective and realized that its a serious issue. The perspectives of
those who endorse this joking behavior regarding mental illnesses would be considerably ignorant, not
realizing the weight of what theyre really saying. Often times those who choose to think this way call
themselves, in example, OCD, crazy, etc. When I think of something such as OCD, or something much
heavier than that, I definitely dont find it amusing. Although this project didnt introduce a new idea or
perspective to my life, it made me think more in depth about the issue, and work out within myself how I
felt about the problem, and found that my ideas and morals regarding the subject hadnt faltered.

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