Response to Fiction Packet

      Ungulated by Walter Bargen is a perfect example of what fiction is.  This short story takes something as simple as a deer eating food out of a garden, and turns it into a masterpiece full of details and all the senses making it possible to mentally see it happening as if you were there.  "They nipped the frothing magnificence of oregano.  Its leafy slopes suggesting a rugged perennial range now clipped back from mountain to molehill."  Bargen could have simply said, "The deer ate some oregano," but instead he chose to paint a picture of how and to what extent the deer ate the oregano so as to enable the reader to imagine it.  It is one thing to see words on a paper and follow a stories plot, it is quite another to be so entranced with the details that you feel as if you are a part of the story as opposed to an onlooker gazing from afar.  Another way that Bargen creates images is the adjectives he gives to the basic plants to bring them to life in our mind.  "The broad leaves and prickly stalks, orange, loosely folded, napkin sized flowers, the finger length zucchini, eaten from the center out." This way of writing is so much more effective then simply saying orange stalks of flowers and zucchini.  These adjectives are what make the image come to mind, and this is tell tale sign of a good author.
      Another short story that stuck out to me was The Letter From Home by Jamaica Kincaid.  This story had an impact on my idea of fiction because of the sentence structure.  The sentences are long and full of commas and lists of actions and this lends a lot to the story.  "I milked the cows, I churned the butter, I stored the cheese, i baked the bread, I brewed the tea, I washed the clothes, I dressed the children..." Not only does this structure and diction provide rhythm to the story that helps it to flow and somewhat speed up, it also provides action which leads to the story coming alive and the reader being able to become a part of it. Another strategy used is to ask questions.  "(Is the Heaven to be above? Is the Hell below? does the Lamb still lie meek? Does the Lion roar? Will the streams all run clear? Will we kiss each other deeply later?)"  I think these questions not only tie the reader in more because it gives them a chance to think of answers, it also shows that the speaker has a lot on their mind and questions parts of their life and beliefs.  This idea humanizes the speaker allowing us to connect more freely to them.  The strategies used in this short story provide a lot of energy to the tale.  
         The final short story that stuck out to me from the packet was The Talking Cat by Sharon Krinsky.  This short story, which is very short, stuck out to me because it is so absurd I have no choice but to believe it is fiction.  I used to believe that fiction was only fiction if it was obviously not reality and could never happen. I obviously know now that there are many forms of fiction that could possibly happen, but they just have not.  This however is about a talking cat, therefore I know that it is fiction and that is what caused me to take a second glance at it.  "He (the cat) tells me he's happy to meet me and we have an instantaneous rapport."  
Now, I understand how a meowwww might mean something different to each owner, but there is no way that a cat could carry on such a human conversation with an actual human.  I like this story because it is so short and concise and obviously fake that it does not take all the details and evidence to convince you of its originality.  It simply is what it is.