Feel free to respond in whatever (substantive) fashion you wish to the Alice Munro story! If you're at a loss, some things you might want to think about are how the story deals with the act of storytelling, the line between fact and fiction, and agency between characters and landscape.
Once again, avoid trite comments such as whether you liked the piece or not. As opposed to speculating whether you would or would not have cut something from the story, address the piece entirely on it's own terms--everything here is here for a reason. If you miss something's significance, it is definitely worthwhile thinking about why that didn't resonate with you.
"The Photographer" was a very detailed piece. I felt like I was able to imagine and project the scenes, because of the imagery provided by the author throughout the plot. I may have enjoyed more dialogue, although he did include it- mostly when talking to Bob Sherrif. The story started out with a darker story (suicides) but it developed to not be so depressing, in my opinion. The main character seemed to never take the darker path as her mom Made it seem like the town was known for suicides, and her conversation with Sherrif proved that she was right after all to want to look further into these stories. The photographer left me a little bit confused, although I followed her thoughts and theories, I seemed to want more details and more examples of his photos and tragedies that may have followed it. Carolina was another important part to the story, as she had walked into the river after what seemed to be an involvement with the photographer; she was a great example of what the mother was trying to tell the main character at the start, about the town having so many tragedies- suicides. The tone was never too heavy or intense, although at the end it began to be more emotional, but I found it to be tying in the story together. Overall, I enjoyed the story and thought it was a great example of a short story. The fiction behind the photographer being tied into the tragedies added more suspense and interest in the story.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the piece was confusing, but in the end it eventually worked itself out. The sheriff was a main part of the narrative, but it would've been nice to hear from other members of the town, or even the Sheriff family. Overall the piece was a very interesting work of fiction.
DeleteI agree as well because initially I found the photographer part very confusing and random as well, but eventually I realized that the narrator in a way is a photographer as well. I thought the part about her mother telling her if the suicides was background information to set the scene and let the reader know where the narrator was heading with the piece.
DeleteSayawni Lassiter
I also agree with being confused with the photographer character. I was not entirely sure who he was supposed to be in reality rather than in her story, but I would assume it is associated with the rumors of Marion's pregnancy if they were true.
DeleteAt the beginning, I thought that this story was very difficult to keep up with. It took me awhile until I fully understood that the narrator was using people in his town to write his novel about. I thought it was interesting how the piece started off with such a grim topic of suicide and death in the town, it was depressing. This topic of suicide was a major theme of this story. The photographer, also known as the narrator, uses the people of his town as his muse for an upcoming novel. He chooses the Sheriff family as an inspiration for the book, but doesn't use the entire family because he decides not to include the alcoholic older brother. Instead of writing down what is happening around him, he photographs everything and then depicts the scene later on so the photographer can manipulate the situation. Caroline is a major character in the novel, and she represents Marion, who is apart of the Sheriff family. The narrator makes Caroline commit suicide in the novel and executes it by "Caroline would have to lie down on her face as if she was drowning herself in the bathtub." (pg 3) The imaginary line between fact and fiction is pretty clear in this story. The fact comes from the town and the actual reality of the photographers life. The fiction comes from the novel he is writing and how he can manipulate the characters and their lives. "The Photographer" is an interesting story where fact and fiction can be seen through different lenses.
ReplyDeleteI agree with how confusing it started out with and I, too, had a hard time keeping up with it. His writing is certainly the fiction, and his novel is obviously inspired by his own life which I saw too. I wondered if having the older brother who is an alcoholic included In the story could make any impact in this piece. I also enjoyed how you can clearly see the fiction and fact but still flow well.
DeleteThe line between fact and fiction in the story portrays the the mood of Del, for she struggles with both her love and hatred for the town. The reality of the town is made more interesting for Del in her novels.
DeleteI also were lost when first reading this writing, but as I kept going it became more clear throughout. It also became clear the difference of non-ficton and fiction as the main character writes her novel.
DeleteThe story by Alice Munro opens up with a dark intro. The talk of suicide is in the air, and the topic of one particular family is raised. The Marion family that underwent a great "share of tragedy," and that's inspired the narrator to write a novel using characters from the family. While outlining her life, Del also changes and modifies some details to make everything less depressing. As she continues, the gap between what really happened (reality vs. fiction) in Jubilee and what happens in Del's novel widens until the fiction no longer resembles reality. Moreover, tragedy is woven into the very fabric of everyday Jubilee life, and just as one is patriotic of the place they call home, the people of Jubilee are proud of the suicides, strangely enough. If by chance there really are more suicides there than in any of the neighboring towns, then it shows how everyone there is unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives. Nonetheless, Del hates Jubilee in her youth, but after moving away from the town, she finds that the everyday boring routine of life in Jubilee is what she longs for. As a result, She struggles with both her love and the hatred for the town she grew up in. The theme of the story is pride, since the people simply take great pride in their town.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this story the first time, I was confused about the title "The Photographer." Only a small section of the story is spent writing about the actual character "The Photographer", and there does not seem to be much more characterization about the man other than the town's supernatural fear of him. Reading the passage again gave me a better idea on why the author decided to go with this specific title. When the narrator speaks about The Photographer, she puts an emphasis on the aging effects his photographs have on people, saying "the pictures he took turned on to be unusual, even frightening (p 205)." I believe the writer is comparing the Photographer and the narrator herself. Throughout the story, the narrator is attempting to write her own novel, basing the story on a suicide of a girl, Marion Sheriff, in her local town of Jubilee. The main character decides to change certain points of the story, as to make it a better read. Only after speaking the victim's brother, Bobby Sheriff, does the main character realizes that she had presumed much of what she thought of the people in story based on the opinions of others. Much like the photographs from The Photographer, she has put these people in a negative light. This is the reality of many writings or films while based on true stories, find themselves transitioning to fiction as facts are left out and plot is changed.
ReplyDeleteI found “The Photographer” to be an interesting story because of how unconventional but purposeful it is. The talk of the suicides and then the high school photographer and then college scholarships and sitting down eating cake, it all feels scattered, but it’s actually enriching and insightful. From the very beginning, the reader is given a lot of details and insight into the narrator’s town, relationship with her mother, the lives of some of the people around her. At first it seems scattered and it’s a bit confusing, but then it blends itself together to tell a story beyond just that of Marion Sheriff, or Caroline. Munro starting off with the narrator’s growing skepticism of her mother shows curiosity and adding her love for fiction shows creativity. The narrator writing her own novel, her own retelling of Marion’s story, it allows for us to see only one person’s outside perspective. By the end of the story, the narrator realizes this and that by being an outsider, she doesn’t have all the facts. After recognizing that without all the details of Marion’s life she can’t successfully rewrite it or do anyone justice, she puts it down. Marion and her family’s lives continued beyond this novel. This fiction versus reality epiphany drastically shifts the story. The narrator abandons the idea of the novel altogether and becomes more interesting in their real lives, their reality. She moves away from the town she created in her story and starts to appreciate her own town, the people in it, their realities. She’s no longer interested in the fiction she’s created in her book, she’s interested in the real world around her.
ReplyDeleteI agree that once she puts down the novel, she starts to appreciate the actual people in real life rather than the fictional version of them. She was so caught up with the opinions made with the fictional characters that she had formed negative opinions on them.
DeleteI agree that the story had a very different feel to it than most fictional stories. The narrator took a real family and changed small details in their life to create her story. When the true identity of the family emerged, she was given a different perspective than she had ever seen from this family, I agree, and it allowed her to change her thoughts about having very surface thoughts about people in general.
Delete"The Photographer" starts with a pretty intense subject about suicide in the community. The author, Alice Munro, just jumped right into the story without any real background which at first made the passage a bit confusing. As I continued to read, the amount of detail used by the author increased which really help paint a picture of what was happening. For example, the imagery used to describe The Photographer, "Black hair parted in the middle, combed back in two wings, dandruff, rather narrow chest and shoulders, and a pasty, flaky skin..." (page 205) really helped accentuate the creepiness of him. One thing I was sort of confused about was why certain descriptive sentences or phrases were written in italics, and I felt like they were pretty random and could not figure out the reason for them. It was really interesting to me to see the transitions and comparisons between reality and the real people and how the author transformed them into fictional characters. By changing their names and a few things about them, the narrator was able to create a whole new person and world within her novel. She was somewhat removed from the reality of who these people actually were, and formed opinions on them based on what she had written in her book about them. When she actually got to talk to the sheriff, she thought to herself, "this is the sheriffs house," a person she had written so much about and she had forgotten what his house actually looked like. Overall, the transition between fiction and reality was clear and I thought the author did a great job describing everything throughout the entire piece.
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought the transitions were clear, but added an element of confusion to the story. It was an extremely descriptive piece, there was tons of vivid auditory and visual imagery. And it had a unique structure (the italicizing).
Delete“The Photographer” by Alice Munro gives a very detailed story. It starts out with emphasis on the suicides of the town, but eventually opens up and reveals more about individual characters, such as the narrator. There is a sense of fact in the narrator’s fictional story where she explains about writing a novel about certain people in her town, this distinguishes the story from many “typical” novels. The narrator explains how she wrote her fictional, yet based on fact, novel by changing names and slight details. This is an interesting approach for a novel, and draws the reader in, in hopes of revealing more about the direction the narrator is choosing to take with this story, “The Photographer.” Her ability to change the novel she was writing granted her the opportunity to escape reality and feel she was able to change how their life was, possibly a happier ending, without the focus on death as the narrator’s real world seemed to be. The Photographer mentioned in this story, mimics the story the narrator is writing, it encaptures facts, but reveals fiction in the sense that people do not see themselves the way the pictures portray them. The narrator alters the town, Jubilee, which her novel is set in. Similarly to how The Photographer encaptures people in his pictures, the narrator details the town in a much darker and drearier tone than a habitant of the town would agree with. Eventually her fictional story was met with reality when the narrator entered into the real life of the Sherriff's, the family’s life she had been altering for her novel.
ReplyDeleteThe narrator was very expressive and illustrated scenes that were disturbing to read. The author's ability to change the novel from fiction to reality was skillful and entertaining. However, the overall theme of suicide was depressing. I like how you connected the pictures to the pictures the author describes using details and imagery.
DeleteThe Photographer is an unique story that has double fiction. By double fiction, I mean that it is a non fictional story with another fictional story emerged into it. The story highlights the life of a family and the narrator is writing about her life adding various differences and changes to the family in her novel’s life in order to not completely emulate that family’s life. I found the story interesting in that the way it went back and forth between the narrator’s life and the life of her story because in reality, her novel is in a way what she is seeing in her real life since the Sheriff family is real. I also found it interesting and intriguing how initially the novel was all the protagonist could think about, but after meeting and interacting with Bobby, she forgot about it. She could have had more details and ideas for her novel, but after actually meeting someone apart of that family, she could not think it anymore. Initially i also found it striking with the lack of detail into the life of the photographer and how that part of the story shows any relevance, but I thought more deeply about it I found a connection. I thought that the protagonist added the part about the photographer because he captures people’s lives and distorts their appearance in his pictures. The narrator is also doing the same with the work of her novel as she is capturing the Sheriff family’s life but distorting and changing it in many ways.
ReplyDeleteSayawni Lassiter
I like how you picked up on the double fiction thing. I have never heard of that before but it is very cool to hear and learn about something like that.
DeleteAlexandra Lewis
DeleteI did not even think of it as double fiction until I read your response, and I think that is a perfect way to describe it. I also found it interesting that as soon as she actually met a Sheriff family member, she no longer thought of her novel.
I think that your approach on interpreting this piece as double fiction truly put this in a new perspective. I wouldn't have even thought of this as a double fiction if i had not read this post so i definitely appreciate the angle that you interpreted this by.
DeleteWhen I began to read this article, it was a bit difficult to comprehend. The author did not explain a background story and jumped write into the story, which made the article very confusing. After reading it for the second time, I understood the details that were being expressed. The imagery in this story was quite entertaining. The details were well written and painted a picture in the reader’s head of what was happening. The character, Caroline committed suicide in the story and this scene was expressed graphically. Suicide and death in the town was a major theme in the article which made the story extremely depressing. The article was about a photographer who took pictures of a family, the Sheriff family. Leaving out the alcoholic older brother, the author photographs the family. Instead of writing about what is actually happening, the author, Alice Munro, takes the photographs first, then depicts the images and scenes and writes a fictional scene about each image. The structure of the story itself feels very scattered. However, this makes the story intriguing and insightful, leaving the audience guessing of what will happen next. Towards the end of the article, the author becomes bored with the fictional rewrite of the family’s story and develops to be more interested into the reality of the Sheriff family. The tone of the article was intense and objective, leaving the reader to interpret the story in any way they could. However, towards the end the tone became just a little subjective but mainly stayed objective throughout.
ReplyDeleteI think the structure you picked up on is really interesting. I thought it was very subjective, but you did interpret it differently so it’s cool you picked up on that.
DeleteIn the story "The Photographer" by Alice Munro, it starts off with the speaker talking about how the town of Jubilee has a very serious problem with suicide. The speaker says that Jubilee may have more suicides then any other place. Alice Munro used very descriptive wording that almost paints a picture in your head of what is going on in the story. One example of this is when the character Caroline commits suicide. The author used wording that gives you a chilling feeling when reading the scene. Another part of the story was when the photographer went to take pictures of the sheriff's family. He left out the older brother who was a alcoholic. The author then talks about each picture and explains scenes that correlate with the pictures. One thing i did not like about the story was how the passage was all over that place. It seemed to be very scattered and confusing. I also found it strange that we never really learned much about the photographers life. We learn how that the photographer takes photos of people and distorts them to change their appearance. Over all i thought the passage was very confusing and hard to follow because it seemed to be all over the place. In the beginning of the passage it was very eye opening, it put into perspective how suicide is a big problem in the world.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the passage seemed to be all over the place. I was very confused a lot of the time with what was happening in the story and had to go back and re-read it.
DeleteAlexandra Lewis
ReplyDeleteWhen reading "The Photographer", I was initially confused. I understood that the main point of the novel was suicide and death, but the author immediately jumped into stories and started to name characters and did not always give background information beforehand. Although the theme was a very depressing situation, the author did not really seem to be emotional. When discussing who died from suicide and how they did it, there was no empathy and it was discussed casually, as if the seriousness of the issue was not a concern. I felt as though a lot of this piece was scattered, it went from story to story and was slightly hard to keep up with. It was not until the end of the story that I realized that the majority of the chapter was just the author discussing her novel and the fiction within it, but that at the end when she was invited to the Sherrif's home for cake and lemonade it was a real experience. She was given an opportunity to be face to face with someone that she had strictly been thinking about and writing about without one-on-one conversations.
The epilogue of "The Photographer” was short in length but most definitely not in its depth. The beginning of the epilogue had a gloomy, dark and mysterious undertone. Personally I was kind of lost at first because I wasn't sure where the narrative was going. However, as the epilogue took off, I could see the narrative come together. From the beginning, the author opens up with a tense and sensitive subject that is often hard to bring up. This subject, suicide becomes a reoccurring theme throughout the rest of the piece. In the beginning there is also a drive from the main character himself to prove his mom wrong about all the suicides that have occurred in the town that they live in. The recurring suicides and the subject of death adds a lot of suspense to the story. I can say that I was genuinely engaged throughout the piece as I was able to follow along with the motives and thoughts of the main character. The only time that I felt like it was lacking was that there wasn't much dialogue throughout and at times, I felt like I didn't know enough about each case of suicides. I also found the title interesting and how the narrator is referred as the photographer. Overall, I felt like the story in itself was interesting. I loved the angle of tone and setting that took place in the piece. I felt like it was quite moderately suspenseful and shed light on subjects that aren't really talked about.
ReplyDeleteI felt the exact same way about this story how is had a very dark and gloomy subject matter but the narrative started coming together and made more sense as you kept reading. I was very confused by the actual photographer but it seemed to represent the reality in the story and made sense in the end.
DeleteAs I was reading “The Photographer” I was really using the imagery to my advantage and imagining the scenes very vividly. The author uses extreme detail when describing the mother and especially the relationship between the mother and daughter throughout the beginning of the story. She also used imagery when telling about the suicides in the town of jubilee by setting up a dark beginning and how they affected the people in the town. The story was very detailed and had a lot to imagine going on but the imagery helped set up the story and where it was going. But the concept of the photographer was very confusing but as I kept reading it seemed the author used this to explain things more from a different point of view, not just their own opinion but using the photographs for muses for an upcoming book and having a complete outsider’s opinion on this suicide in the town. The Photographer eventually seemed to line up with the narrator’s same point of view of using these pictures and tragedies in town to write a novel. The narrator is doing this by retelling her version of Marion Sheriff with her outside perspective of the situation. The story goes back and forth between fact and fiction when the narrator decides to forget about the novel or the fiction and focus on the town of jubilee which is her reality. This fact and fiction is represented by the novel the narrator is writing and the photographs that are being taken of the town.
ReplyDelete“Epilogue: The Photographer” starts out with the narrator’s mother discussing how their town in a way that made it sound like it had more suicides than any other town. It almost, in a way, seemed like she is prideful in this statement because it sets Jubilee apart from other towns. It is also evident in the first paragraph of the readers’ changed beliefs and mindset surrounding her town as well as later in the story. She talks about how she believed what her mother said to be true until later in her life when she began to argue against it. I believe there is more to the story dealing with the narrator and her mother that made her change her mindset, rather than it just be because of the simple fact that Jubilee was not as tragic and depressing as the people made it seem. A huge theme in the epilogue is one dealing with fiction versus reality. After not being satisfied with books anymore, she turned to write her own based on a specific family’s tragedies in the town she grew up in. In doing this, she creates a gap between fiction and reality that continues to grow wider and wider until the fiction doesn’t resemble the reality anymore. I think this mainly occurs because of the struggling love and hatred she has for her town. When she stops working on her novel, she finally begins to see and appreciate the town for itself rather than letting the words and opinions of others create the view for her. It was not until the narrator’s encounter with Bobby Sherriff that she finally separated the fiction she created from reality and learned to appreciate people for who they are.
ReplyDeleteI found Alice Munro’s “The Photographer” to be very interesting, but also a bit confusing. It was a very detailed piece and very easy to visualize scenes in my head because of the description and imagery that Munro provided throughout the story. Munro opens the story a bit heavy with talk of suicide staining the town of Jubilee’s reputation. As we continue in the story, we learn about a few of the suicides that have happened to members of the town. The author throws in what feels like random details like the narrator’s relationship with her mother, college scholarships and other things. At first it feels like these things have no correlation to each other but then it all comes together when we realize that the people she writes about are people in her life. It was very interesting to see the comparisons between the real people and how the author molds them into a fictional character. What confused me the most at the beginning was trying to figure out how the title “The Photographer” ties into the story. We then learn that the narrator is a photographer who takes “…unusual, even frightening…” photographs and that the people in the town fear the photographer. The photos that photographer takes always portray the people as much older and scarier than they actually are. I think that the point of this is to show us perspective; people do not see themselves the way other people do, or the way pictures portray them. This is an altered version of them, just like the photographs that the narrator takes.
ReplyDeleteStarting with the topic of suicide, “The Photographer” really made me wonder where the story was going. The story plot was written very well and all of the details of the story were very intricate and helped the reader to place themselves within the story and visualize within our minds what is happening. When they started with talking about suicide I figured that they were going to base the rest of the story off of something about suicide but it was just rather the theme of the overall story. The story was sort of hard to keep up with because it went off to different stories and it got really into the details from each one, so I could not really follow what was going. I had to go back and re-read some of the parts to fully understand the story. It was cool how the story went around Caroline and stuff that happened in real life altered with what happened in the story she wrote. The main character is not that fond of Jubilee and finds it boring and kind of despises it, but once she moves away she realizes how it was not that bad and kind of misses it. I think we can all relate to that as well with moving away from our hometowns and coming to Florida State and then after a month or so we realize how much we really do miss our hometown. Overall the story was detailed and written well to be able to have it seen through two different perspectives.
ReplyDeleteReading “The Photographer” at first had me very confused. I did not comprehend most of the story at first and it was only towards the end when it all came together. The language Alice Munro uses kept me entertained throughout the whole story. Each scene described in such intense detail brought it all together. With the theme of suicide surrounding the story every page had a very dark and somber approach to the writing. Alice chooses very carefully too how much to tell us about the family and what we should know. As the reader I felt like I wanted to be reading something other than what was given to me. Each fictional story behind the photographs escaped he reality of it all until she meets them both together in the end. The character had different personalities than the ones in real life as Alice altered any parts she felt necessary. At the end realizing that she herself is an outsider the protagonist decides to stop her writing and that’s when the real world begins. It was a very creative way of writing a story and one that I think make the reader think and have fun while reading.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I had no clue where Alice Munro was going with the story. It started off with somewhat of a sulky and morose tone, because of the fact that she began the story discussing a suicide-driven town of Jubilee. The topic of suicide was one of the main themes of the story itself. What interested me the most was when the narrator went on to talk about the photographer whom everyone feared. The narrator described this photographer as someone who took "unusual" and "frightening" pictures, or at least somehow made the subjects of his pictures look unusually frightening, which is why he wasn't a popular photographer. That specific part of the story was interesting and important. Other than that, I thought the author did a great job of providing imagery throughout the story, using a plethora of adjectives and providing various settings within the main setting of the town of Jubilee such as the "Wawanash River" and the "Anglican Church". The story did take me a while to fully digest, it isn't easily understandable the first time around, and it sort of feels as if Munro is all over the place at times. There’s also plenty of conflicts within the story regarding the photography. There were also internal conflicts within the narrator’s view on the pictures themselves, stating that some things were true, but not real. This is where things got a little bit confusing for me. All in all, the story was dark, extremely descriptive, and uniquely structured.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the Epilogue, Alice Munro described the scene around Jubilee as the " Suicide City" when she was a young girl. Initially, as she was growing, she tried to argue against the claim by stating that there were only three suicides that occurred in the area. However, as the story progresses, the author changes traits of the characters and the town's setting to make the city terrifying.First she names of the daughters who committed suicide and their personalities to create more of a conflict of interest between the characters. The imagery used here makes the reader create a picture of the person in their minds. When the author describes the Tennis star as a girl who accompanied the middle aged and disabled men, I pictured a girl who constantly got taken advantage of, a submissive personality; In contrast the sister, Caroline, had an extroverted attitude and always caused problems for other people for her personally gain. Later on as Munro described the way she changed Jubilee, she create an empty atmosphere. The writer creates a feeling of emptiness in the city by making the weather constant, and making the people in the city have baseless, surface level conversations. It created an air of false reality throughout the scenes that followed about the book she was writing. All in all, the epilogue interesting and used several strategies to create imagery.
ReplyDelete