Fiction Packet 3

      "When It Rains It Rains A River" jumped out at me not as much for its symbolism and story line, but because of its sentence structure and diction.  "Us brothers, we love mud.  Mud, us brothers, we can't get us enough of mud."  It is almost as if the author takes a word or phrase out of the previous sentence and finds a place for it in the next sentence and continues to do this throughout the story.  This lends a sort of pattern to the story that is a distraction to the overall meaning, and done so on purpose I believe.  Also, as far as sentence structure, the sentences seemed to either be very short and choppy or separated by a plethora of commas.  This idea is unique but somewhat hard to read and by the end I am still unsure of the symbolism of "Girl" and the girls within "Girl." 
      I absolutely loved reading "The Falling Girl."  As far as sentence structure and diction the story was rather normal, but the message I received from it was impeccable.  ""You have your entire life before you," they told her, "why are you in such a hurry? You still have time to rush around and busy yourself.""  This quote I believe is the key to the story.  The author was trying to get at the idea that most 19 year olds, the age of the girl falling off the skyscraper, have.  The girl, who is later joined by many other girls, jumps off because she wants to reach the party at the bottom.  On the way down she is confronted by many people who try to help her and try to get her to simply enjoy life because it doesn't need to be one big rush to the finish line.  While falling she sees other girls falling and is more concerned with how her dress compares to them then the fact that in reality they are falling to their death because no one survives a trip off a skyscraper.  
        Continuing on with "The Falling Girl,"  as the girl nears the bottom she is spotted from a window by a man and his wife.  Strangely, by the time she reaches the bottom she is an old woman at the end of her life when she started at the top as a 19 year old girl with her entire life before her.  The skyscraper is supposed to symbolize a persons life.  The girl wanted to go straight to the party and skipped the floors like the party floor and the work floor.  She was so focused on the end picture that she loses all that was in the middle, what life is actually made of.  She reaches the end realizing that she never really lived, but simply died.  ""At least down here there's an advantage," observed the wife, "that you can hear the thud when they touch the ground.""  In the end the girl lived a small part of her life to just jump off a skyscraper, pass all the real aspects of life, and hit the ground like the rest of them, regardless of who's dress was prettier.  This story told me that we should just live for the now because we all end up in the same place in the end,  6 feet under.  It is just how we get there that counts.