Willing

I think the story could have been told in the first person even if Sidra’s state of mind is unreliable, because describing her state of mind is the point of the whole story. Even using the third person, the story is focused on Sidra’s perspective and life. Moore created a depressive and sad character which somehow doesn’t really make the reader feel bad. I think this is because the tone of the story is also humoristic. It is told as if it’s a joke, in a sarcastically manner, but it has also a deeper gloomy side. I think the author uses a dark humor. For example, using images as “She hadn’t been given the proper tools to make a real life, she decided, that was it. She’d been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, there you go. She’d stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush.” This sounds miserable, but it’s also funny. Also when the author keeps repeting that Sidra is “a minor movie star, once nominated for a major award”, it seems that Sidra’s life is described in a very unimportant way, as if her miserable life was a normal thing to happen.

I liked this story because the author tells a very sad and realistic story but is still able to make the reader laugh. I think the way she does this is to put the depression on the same level as very unimportant things, that the reader would never expect to read, as for example saying that the solution to all the suffering in the world is to give hugs: “These days, she was reading thin paperback books by a man named Robert Valleys, a man who said that after observing all the suffering in the world – war, starvation, greed – he had discovered the cure: hugs.” The author takes the suffering for granted, she doesn’t seem to want the reader to realize how people suffer and maybe take action against this, but she only makes fun of it. I think that this way of writing the story could eventually work better because the reader laughs, and then thinks how this can be happening. I think the story pushes the reader into reflection.

By reading the last sentence: “But this dream had now changed, and she was gone, gone, out the window, gone, gone”; what do you think about the comparison between Sidra’s life and the movie about the Dream? What do you think will happen with Sidra and Walter’s relationship?