Fiction Packets

"The Fifth Story" by Clarice Lispector

The main character of this story narrates five different versions of the same story, each starting as "I was complaining about the cockroaches." Aside from the final story which is simply, "I was complaining about the cockroaches," each story begins to have more detail, further explaining the killing of the cockroaches.

One line that stuck out to me in the second story was,"The truth is that I had only complained in abstract form about the cockroaches, for they were not even mine: they belonged to the ground floor and climbed up the pipes in the building into our apartment." I believe the narrator has used the cockroaches as a metaphor to problems, because in life we seem to make other people's problems our own, and try to fix them.


"Survivors" by Kim Addonizio
The narrator of this story tells the point of view of a man and his internal battle with the nearing death of himself and his lover due to AIDS. In the beginning of the story the man argues that he wants to die first because he doesn't want to "take care his lover's parrot, or deal with his lover's family." As the story continues, the man starts to decide what he would do if his lover died first.

Though the man says he doesn't want to deal with his lover's parrot or family, I think these are just excuses to cover that fact that he doesn't want to loose his lover. Dealing with his lover's dis-approving father is a metaphor to the everyday pain of not having his spouse with him anymore. Then as the story goes on he starts to let go because he knows the inevitable will happen; and decides to "take the parrot out of its cage and open the window," letting it fly free, as he is doing with his lover.