Kim Jae Min Reading Journal Blog

 Cat person, B y Kristen Roupenian (2017) 8/10 Both Margot and Robert are imperfect. Some parts of this imperfectness, like Robert being fat and Margot being underage to enter certain bars, are things they can’t change themselves. However, most of their imperfectness can in fact be fixed, and if so, their relationship could have continued, perhaps even develop into something really special like a marriage. But it didn’t. I must say, through out the story, I did find both Margot and Robert to be very annoying. Margot felt like a person who enjoyed man falling for her, and Robert felt like someone who really just can’t get it right. From what I got from the story, both of them were quite unlikable. I think this story was written in a way that greatly resembles relationships in real life. The lovers are flawed in many ways, they don’t really try to understand each other, things slowly fall apart, and it all ends as a painful memory for everyone. It didn’t start like a Disney movie...

 The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson (1948) 7/10 I think the story depicted the unconscious fear us cityfolk tend to have against country towns. Countless horror films start with a car full of family members or teenagers breaking down near a small shady town hidden in the woods. The development in this story is not so different with this. The author began the story to be a beautiful countryside town, and slowly unwrapped the horrifying tradition. Tradition is another important theme of this story. The ‘lottery’ system is described to be a very old tradition followed in the surrounding region. This isn’t hard to understand, since human sacrifice was a very common culture in the early ages of human history. However, most civilizations got rid of such gruesome traditions as they developed. But in the town in our story, randomly stoning a town member is an ongoing tradition. The lottery could be interpreted as any kind of wrong traditions that people blindly follow. For example, som...

  Afternoon in linen by Shirley Jackson 8/10   Because I knew Shirly Jackson as a famous horror novel writer, I expected this short story to be some kind of horror story itself. After I read it, I concluded that although it’s not similar to major horror stories, it could still be considered as a ‘story about horror’. The interesting thing was that the source of horror in this story was not a supernatural being or a crazy serial killer. Instead, the horror originates from the humane and somewhat childlike will to not be humiliated. Everyone has an experience of facing a situation where the wrong choice would lead to humiliation. We try reacting to this situation, and sometimes make possibly worse choices. In this story’s case, Harriet lying that she copied the poem is such a choice. We can’t blame her for this. Children tend to find some things to be very embarrassing, which adults can’t understand, just like how the two ladies just took Harriet’s feelings as ‘being shy...