In class we were asked to act out one of the stories that we read for class.  My group selected to act out Bernard Dadie's The Hunter and the Boa.  This tale was about how a man gains access to power and uses it to only profit himself instead of saving his community from the terrors that happened over twenty years.  He then came to the decision of staying alive and becoming poor or dying with his wealth.  This conflict was not answered in the story.  Which made me think about what would I do?  I probably would chose staying alive to take punishment for what I have done by only serving myself and not the community in general.  I believe the story would have changed if the hunter would have used his information to help save the people he would have never had this proposition forced on him or he would not stay alive and become poor again.

For class one of the readings we had due was The Bone by Birago Diop.  The one thing I first noticed about his style of writing was that the moral you were supposed to learn was in the first sentance of the story.  The Bone's moral was about not being selfish about your possesions and and being giving to those who you are close to you.  The one thing he used in his story was the use of repetition.  The one phrase he said during the process of his death when he asks how the bone is doing.  This phrase just on its repetition just reinforced the moral, for all it showed was that he wanted to enjoy every morsel and was not willing to give it to his hut brother.  This selfishness lead him to lose more than just his meat, but also his wife and life.

Howdy,

This fine Tuesday on April 2nd Mercyhurst brought Terry Bisson on campus to read some of his short stories for interested students.  Well the first selection he read was called They are Made of Meat.  The story is the classic first encounter tale.  This though turns the tale upside down seeing how extra terestrial's may view seeing humans for the first time.  This was an interesting take for the aliens veiwed that since humans were not even part mechanical and that they were all flesh and bone or also known as "meat."  This baffled them about how we have done so much.  This idea of seeing that the human would be incapable of what we have accomplished because our lack of technology as part of our being is kind of astonishing.  This story shows the ability of humans and how far we have come that we would baffle aliens on our accomplishments.  Even though they chose to ignore us, because this concept would have been hard to explain to their superiors.