First off, this has been my favorite short story we’ve read so far this semester. It had a complete grip on me from the very first sentence all the way to the last. Honestly, it made me tear up by the end. I really want to focus on how descriptive Groff was while also allowing the story to move forward. The way she explored the five senses and added such detail to each scene, character, or thought, is what I believe engaged me so much. Without ever even learning the narrators name, I felt as if I were her. I could see through her eyes, smell what she smelled, tasted what touched her tongue, and touched everything she had felt. Yet, it was never too much. Groff blended it with other characters stories or simply the motions of the narrators routine. On top of this, it had such wonderful detail in the small innate things we do as humans that often don’t get picked up. I felt this most with the narrators co-worker, Anais. I think this connects back to a lot of what we talked about last class. As humans, our brains make connections with the five senses seamlessly because they have never not been a part of our experience in the world. Therefore, as writers, we tend to either neglect or forget the fact we have such a natural act to pull inspiration from. Or, how powerful our brains are in making such deep connections with the world. I greatly appreciate how much Groff tapped into it with this short story. One thing that I am left wondering, though, is what to make of the title. I looked up annunciation for the definition and it came back with a slight religious connotation or the literal idea of word pronunciation. My first thought went to Anais and her evangelical ties, but maybe this is something we can discuss this Tuesday.
There is a lot going on in this story. I think that the aspect of it that pops out to me the most is the fact that the Maine character tends to shift throughout the story. At first i was certain that it was going to be the narrator, and then it shifted to being all about Anais and the story could have followed her for the rest of the story but then it shifts to being all about Griselda which it could have then been all about her until the end as well. However, as confused as this story left me, it would not have felt complete without some form of interaction with the narrator’s mother, forming some type of symmetry with the beginning of the story. In the 20 pages that everything takes place, it is easy for the reader to forget that the narrator had a rough beginning as well, since it is not really talked about or even hinted at in the actions of the narrator in following these other characters and their emotions and life choices. I think that this short story has a lot to unpack and a lot could be said about it. Like we have said before this is another example of a story that perfectly fits the idea of zooming in on part of a whole, yet giving us some form of beginning, middle and end. We are given little information about the narrator’s childhood, and little about what she does after moving to a new continent all together. More could for sure be said and this could be made into a novel yet we are given just enough to make it a story. I think it is fascinating how far the narrator is running from her family. She started in New England and then went so far west that she found herself in California and when she was found there she went as far as moving to another continent. I think that is worth exploring, along with the fact that she enjoyed seeing her mother after all of that time and there were no hard feelings yet she never looked back in the airport and she seemed unhappy yet obligated to go back to her noisy and unhappy life back in New England without the narrator. Yes this was some type of ending to the story yet, like any good story, leaves me wanting to know more about the ending and about the surrounding context that is not directly apparent when reading the story.
I found myself semi-fond of this story. It starts out strong but throughout I can’t place where it takes place, or when. I love her adjectives and the descriptors in the beginning, that’s only emphasized by powerful imagery. The sudden switch of topics that explore her family’s neglectfulness is interesting, showing the toughness that an eldest sibling, specifically a sister, goes through and how one becomes independent through that. I feel that this also gives background to her dealings with Child Protective Services. It’s interesting how quickly the author fleshed out Grizelda in the beginning, too. The substory about the introduction of the dog made me think there was symbolism in the dog being chained, but I can’t put my finger on what the symbolism would be. I also love the description of Grizelda’s childhood; I thought it also fleshed out her character. I loved the couple lines about the repeated story telling by Grizelda juxtaposed by the erasure of the narrator’s own past- both are interesting to hear about. I thought the seemingly sudden twist in background on the narrator’s history in social work wasn’t done well, that the timeline is overall very confusing. This whole story only emphasizes my hate for CPS, the fact that they prefaced this woman with sharpening her wit and heart and not being soft with these kids breaks me. There are so many characters, I really don’t like how this story jumps around. Perhaps it’s too long or too short, and now I can’t even tell who’s narrating and if they’re a girl or a boy. I love the plot twist near almost the end of the story, the line “in every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death.” Stuck with me.
As I read “Annunciation” I loved that Groff’s descriptions were actually informing the behavior of the characters and showing aspects that wouldn’t be explained until later in the story. It’s like she’s taking a snapshot of a moment, a person or place she sees, and uses a couple sentences to color the characters with it. On page 96, she shows the tree, how it made a stool and table with its roots and had a constant humming, and the gravel would glow in the moonlight. Just those words worked to make this little backyard area seem ethereal and somewhere I can imagine the narrator would want to spend as much time as she could in order to relax and feel more connected to the world. Groff does this again on page 100, with the description of the clamshell of fruit. Even just using the word clamshell implies something about this fruit, as though it is a special and secret treat, hidden away until the narrator eats it. This descriptor even works to give the reader a new view on the relationship between her and Anais. There must be a kinship or deep appreciation in this strange friendship for the narrator to bring another clamshell of fruit to Anais, in the same way that Anais leaves half for her daughter.
The narrator of Annuciation’s internal dialogue manages to capture both the characterization of herself as well as Anais, Griselda, and her family, and it’s this internal dialogue that makes me invested in the story, especially as the narrator reflects how now she’d make a different choice following the scene where Anais is drunk in the bathroom. Both Griselda and Anais feel believable as being actual people as well, to the point where I briefly questioned if this was based on a true story, especially with the details of Griselda’s supposed tall-tale-telling and Anais’ use of her time at work on the phone. I also sensed a feeling of shared kinship between the women in this story, despite being from different backgrounds and ages, especially when we see Griselda opening up about her life to a total stranger, or the narrator becoming invested in the lives of the women around her, even if she didn’t know them all that well.
This story did not go where I thought it was gonna go AT ALL. I had assumed it was gonna be a story about the narrator and that was all. What I found the most interesting about this story was that it was kind of explaining the female experience in a way. We had four different women with different life experiences yet all of them were intrinsically female. I think the way that the narrator saw the women and even herself in different lights throughout the course of the story was really well done. For Griselda, the narrator originally saw her as a more shallow woman but she learned that Griselda was just more of an enigmatic woman and she was never lying about her experiences. For Anais, she originally viewed her as a super closed-off and cold person but of course, she learned that Anais had no choice to be to be secretive for not only her own safety but also her daughter, Luce’s safety. We saw her see how burnt out and over-encumbered her mother was by raising so many children but how full of life and color she could be when she took time for herself. And finally, we see the narrator learn that she has a darkness in her but she can find ways to combat it and let it out without abandoning the life she has made and the family she has formed.
The story as a whole is quite the downer. I quite frankly did not find myself enjoying the story. Perhaps that is the point. The author does a fantastic job at creating a vivid narrative that did not bore or lose me. I found myself engaged with tasteful uses of description and a story that left me wanting a little more from it. This is a short story where not everything can be expanded on. This story I feel blitzes through the life of a character without giving her much of a break. Some characters are quick in and out, used as a tool for plot as opposed to being a character. With all this in mind, that perhaps is the point of the whole thing. Life is quick and unrelenting; people here one minute are gone the next with no resolution. The author gives the narrator a few moments to breath and think but these are not long and do not last. Yet again, just as in life, we have little time to stop and think unless we take the time intentionally. It is not given it must be taken. While I did not like the story, that could be t being chalked up to it being a very good and accurate representation and analogous way of portraying an often cruel world. The “happy ending” was slightly shoehorned and swept under the rug. Whether it be for artistic effect or writers choice I found it lacking. After taking all this into consideration I had a feeling I was just reading some sob story, of which I have little compassion for at the time of writing.
“Annunciation” was a very interesting story. There was a lot about it that really stuck with me, in terms of plot and characters. But the craft aspect that I really thought was unique was the lack of communication. In stories you normally see characters talking one another in quotations and seeing the narrator react to those words. But in this story everything was done in such a descriptive manner. Everything was embedded within the text and description of the story. At first I was not entirely sure that I enjoyed the way it was written, I kept feeling like I was getting confused with what was going on and who was talking about what. But as the story progressed it really stuck out to me that this style of writing really made sense. It was showing everything the narrator was going through, in the style of perception of the past. Having the story be in this style, of reflection of your past and who you were and what you were doing, was very informative for the plot. It added a lot of depth to the main character and showed how in-tune she was with everything around her. There was so much that was learned about her, her life and those that made a lasting impact on her being written this way. I have never read, or remember reading, a story set up quite like this one. But overall I really enjoyed what it added to the story and how much it gave the story in terms of depth and understanding.
I really liked this short story! “Annunciation” presents itself as a retelling of the past of a troubled recent college graduate who is struggling to keep herself afloat. The most compelling part of this story is the description. By the end, I felt like the characters in this story were all real, that this story was actualyl a retelling of a true one. Each character is both flawed and meritorious, has shortcomings and strengths. We see the narrator meet Anais, a devout worshipper of an evangelical preacher and struggling mother. While the narrator dislikes Anais at first, we grow to appreciate her and the hardships she faces through the narrator’s own change of view. The author uses a technique of building up a lot of information related to the characters without revealing some of the most basic, bottom level information. For example, with Griselda, we hear her telling these outlandish stories that the narrator dismisses as tall tales. It is revealed at the end that the stories were not lies, but all truth. This reveal worked really well. I really thought it recontextualized the characters in a super interesting light that I’ve never seen done before.
An aspect of this story that i found interesting while reading was the complete lack of dialogue and quotation marks throughout the story, it made it feel like this was a story that was actually being told to or being relayed to the reader by the character in the story or much more like a diary entry about this section of the characters life. I tend to write with a lot of dialogue because I think that character interaction is a good way to get a sense of characters and their interpersonal relationships any dynamics, but this story had character relationships and dynamics without any quotations or written dialogue, people of course talked, there were words, but nothing said was ever coming from someone’s mouth it was all the internal dialogue of the narrator and seeing this style of writing was really interesting as someone who uses a lot of quotations.
I thoroughly enjoyed Annunciation by Groff. One element of this story that I found the most compelling was the author’s ability to tie in the main character’s imagination. They kept bringing in elements of fantasy to describe the world around them. For instance, when the main character saw the little cottage. To describe how they felt about the cottage, they went into the character’s mind and had them imagining the cottage singing like the fairytales she loved as a child. These repeated insights into the main character’s mind gave the story more dimension. While it was somewhat of a sad story, it added a light to it that I found to be very engaging. This author also did something that I found very interesting. Groff did not use quotations around dialogue. This gave the dialogue an almost mysterious feel as I found myself wondering if we were still in the character’s imagination or not. It was a very interesting style choice and I feel that it fit quite well into this story, especially given how much this character was in their own head. I did not find this to be annoying about this character, in fact, it was very fitting given that they were alone for a good chunk of this story as a result of the circumstances. Overall, I think this author’s flow and style kept this story very interesting and created a certain rhythm of both fantasy and reality that was highly compelling throughout the story.
The story “Annunciation” was a good story but I found myself having a hard time following the writer and keeping with the story. I was drawn into some areas that were intense or action filled but I felt there was many times of just description and observations. I had a hard time following with the timeline of events as it was spread to over a course of a year or so. I do think there was good character development throughout the story which helped with making the characters personable. The conflict is resolved at the end of the story and the narrator builds a life for themself and faces the issues. You can see the narrator also becomes more in touch with their surroundings on the last page and goes into detail describing the cottage and landscape. I felt the ending was a bit abrupt though I didn’t feel that there was closure
I really like the presence of nature in “Annunciation”, I thought it made for some interesting imagery if you viewed the presence of nature as the presence of life, or representative of someone’s home. In the beginning our main character receives flowers from her parents in lieu of them attending her ceremony (flowers from home, in her dreams about running through her hometown nature also features) and her new home with Griselda is blanketed by a huge oak tree, signifying her new life. When Griselda passes, I thought the details about the bamboo roots was really interesting. To me, they signified Griselda herself putting down roots in that home, and tearing up the home to remove the roots pushing through the floor boards also signifies tearing away the metaphorical roots that Griselda put down, eliminating all sign of her presence and character.
13 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 7”
First off, this has been my favorite short story we’ve read so far this semester. It had a complete grip on me from the very first sentence all the way to the last. Honestly, it made me tear up by the end. I really want to focus on how descriptive Groff was while also allowing the story to move forward. The way she explored the five senses and added such detail to each scene, character, or thought, is what I believe engaged me so much. Without ever even learning the narrators name, I felt as if I were her. I could see through her eyes, smell what she smelled, tasted what touched her tongue, and touched everything she had felt. Yet, it was never too much. Groff blended it with other characters stories or simply the motions of the narrators routine. On top of this, it had such wonderful detail in the small innate things we do as humans that often don’t get picked up. I felt this most with the narrators co-worker, Anais. I think this connects back to a lot of what we talked about last class. As humans, our brains make connections with the five senses seamlessly because they have never not been a part of our experience in the world. Therefore, as writers, we tend to either neglect or forget the fact we have such a natural act to pull inspiration from. Or, how powerful our brains are in making such deep connections with the world. I greatly appreciate how much Groff tapped into it with this short story. One thing that I am left wondering, though, is what to make of the title. I looked up annunciation for the definition and it came back with a slight religious connotation or the literal idea of word pronunciation. My first thought went to Anais and her evangelical ties, but maybe this is something we can discuss this Tuesday.
There is a lot going on in this story. I think that the aspect of it that pops out to me the most is the fact that the Maine character tends to shift throughout the story. At first i was certain that it was going to be the narrator, and then it shifted to being all about Anais and the story could have followed her for the rest of the story but then it shifts to being all about Griselda which it could have then been all about her until the end as well. However, as confused as this story left me, it would not have felt complete without some form of interaction with the narrator’s mother, forming some type of symmetry with the beginning of the story. In the 20 pages that everything takes place, it is easy for the reader to forget that the narrator had a rough beginning as well, since it is not really talked about or even hinted at in the actions of the narrator in following these other characters and their emotions and life choices. I think that this short story has a lot to unpack and a lot could be said about it. Like we have said before this is another example of a story that perfectly fits the idea of zooming in on part of a whole, yet giving us some form of beginning, middle and end. We are given little information about the narrator’s childhood, and little about what she does after moving to a new continent all together. More could for sure be said and this could be made into a novel yet we are given just enough to make it a story. I think it is fascinating how far the narrator is running from her family. She started in New England and then went so far west that she found herself in California and when she was found there she went as far as moving to another continent. I think that is worth exploring, along with the fact that she enjoyed seeing her mother after all of that time and there were no hard feelings yet she never looked back in the airport and she seemed unhappy yet obligated to go back to her noisy and unhappy life back in New England without the narrator. Yes this was some type of ending to the story yet, like any good story, leaves me wanting to know more about the ending and about the surrounding context that is not directly apparent when reading the story.
I found myself semi-fond of this story. It starts out strong but throughout I can’t place where it takes place, or when. I love her adjectives and the descriptors in the beginning, that’s only emphasized by powerful imagery. The sudden switch of topics that explore her family’s neglectfulness is interesting, showing the toughness that an eldest sibling, specifically a sister, goes through and how one becomes independent through that. I feel that this also gives background to her dealings with Child Protective Services. It’s interesting how quickly the author fleshed out Grizelda in the beginning, too. The substory about the introduction of the dog made me think there was symbolism in the dog being chained, but I can’t put my finger on what the symbolism would be. I also love the description of Grizelda’s childhood; I thought it also fleshed out her character. I loved the couple lines about the repeated story telling by Grizelda juxtaposed by the erasure of the narrator’s own past- both are interesting to hear about. I thought the seemingly sudden twist in background on the narrator’s history in social work wasn’t done well, that the timeline is overall very confusing. This whole story only emphasizes my hate for CPS, the fact that they prefaced this woman with sharpening her wit and heart and not being soft with these kids breaks me. There are so many characters, I really don’t like how this story jumps around. Perhaps it’s too long or too short, and now I can’t even tell who’s narrating and if they’re a girl or a boy. I love the plot twist near almost the end of the story, the line “in every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death.” Stuck with me.
As I read “Annunciation” I loved that Groff’s descriptions were actually informing the behavior of the characters and showing aspects that wouldn’t be explained until later in the story. It’s like she’s taking a snapshot of a moment, a person or place she sees, and uses a couple sentences to color the characters with it. On page 96, she shows the tree, how it made a stool and table with its roots and had a constant humming, and the gravel would glow in the moonlight. Just those words worked to make this little backyard area seem ethereal and somewhere I can imagine the narrator would want to spend as much time as she could in order to relax and feel more connected to the world. Groff does this again on page 100, with the description of the clamshell of fruit. Even just using the word clamshell implies something about this fruit, as though it is a special and secret treat, hidden away until the narrator eats it. This descriptor even works to give the reader a new view on the relationship between her and Anais. There must be a kinship or deep appreciation in this strange friendship for the narrator to bring another clamshell of fruit to Anais, in the same way that Anais leaves half for her daughter.
The narrator of Annuciation’s internal dialogue manages to capture both the characterization of herself as well as Anais, Griselda, and her family, and it’s this internal dialogue that makes me invested in the story, especially as the narrator reflects how now she’d make a different choice following the scene where Anais is drunk in the bathroom. Both Griselda and Anais feel believable as being actual people as well, to the point where I briefly questioned if this was based on a true story, especially with the details of Griselda’s supposed tall-tale-telling and Anais’ use of her time at work on the phone. I also sensed a feeling of shared kinship between the women in this story, despite being from different backgrounds and ages, especially when we see Griselda opening up about her life to a total stranger, or the narrator becoming invested in the lives of the women around her, even if she didn’t know them all that well.
This story did not go where I thought it was gonna go AT ALL. I had assumed it was gonna be a story about the narrator and that was all. What I found the most interesting about this story was that it was kind of explaining the female experience in a way. We had four different women with different life experiences yet all of them were intrinsically female. I think the way that the narrator saw the women and even herself in different lights throughout the course of the story was really well done. For Griselda, the narrator originally saw her as a more shallow woman but she learned that Griselda was just more of an enigmatic woman and she was never lying about her experiences. For Anais, she originally viewed her as a super closed-off and cold person but of course, she learned that Anais had no choice to be to be secretive for not only her own safety but also her daughter, Luce’s safety. We saw her see how burnt out and over-encumbered her mother was by raising so many children but how full of life and color she could be when she took time for herself. And finally, we see the narrator learn that she has a darkness in her but she can find ways to combat it and let it out without abandoning the life she has made and the family she has formed.
The story as a whole is quite the downer. I quite frankly did not find myself enjoying the story. Perhaps that is the point. The author does a fantastic job at creating a vivid narrative that did not bore or lose me. I found myself engaged with tasteful uses of description and a story that left me wanting a little more from it. This is a short story where not everything can be expanded on. This story I feel blitzes through the life of a character without giving her much of a break. Some characters are quick in and out, used as a tool for plot as opposed to being a character. With all this in mind, that perhaps is the point of the whole thing. Life is quick and unrelenting; people here one minute are gone the next with no resolution. The author gives the narrator a few moments to breath and think but these are not long and do not last. Yet again, just as in life, we have little time to stop and think unless we take the time intentionally. It is not given it must be taken. While I did not like the story, that could be t being chalked up to it being a very good and accurate representation and analogous way of portraying an often cruel world. The “happy ending” was slightly shoehorned and swept under the rug. Whether it be for artistic effect or writers choice I found it lacking. After taking all this into consideration I had a feeling I was just reading some sob story, of which I have little compassion for at the time of writing.
“Annunciation” was a very interesting story. There was a lot about it that really stuck with me, in terms of plot and characters. But the craft aspect that I really thought was unique was the lack of communication. In stories you normally see characters talking one another in quotations and seeing the narrator react to those words. But in this story everything was done in such a descriptive manner. Everything was embedded within the text and description of the story. At first I was not entirely sure that I enjoyed the way it was written, I kept feeling like I was getting confused with what was going on and who was talking about what. But as the story progressed it really stuck out to me that this style of writing really made sense. It was showing everything the narrator was going through, in the style of perception of the past. Having the story be in this style, of reflection of your past and who you were and what you were doing, was very informative for the plot. It added a lot of depth to the main character and showed how in-tune she was with everything around her. There was so much that was learned about her, her life and those that made a lasting impact on her being written this way. I have never read, or remember reading, a story set up quite like this one. But overall I really enjoyed what it added to the story and how much it gave the story in terms of depth and understanding.
I really liked this short story! “Annunciation” presents itself as a retelling of the past of a troubled recent college graduate who is struggling to keep herself afloat. The most compelling part of this story is the description. By the end, I felt like the characters in this story were all real, that this story was actualyl a retelling of a true one. Each character is both flawed and meritorious, has shortcomings and strengths. We see the narrator meet Anais, a devout worshipper of an evangelical preacher and struggling mother. While the narrator dislikes Anais at first, we grow to appreciate her and the hardships she faces through the narrator’s own change of view. The author uses a technique of building up a lot of information related to the characters without revealing some of the most basic, bottom level information. For example, with Griselda, we hear her telling these outlandish stories that the narrator dismisses as tall tales. It is revealed at the end that the stories were not lies, but all truth. This reveal worked really well. I really thought it recontextualized the characters in a super interesting light that I’ve never seen done before.
An aspect of this story that i found interesting while reading was the complete lack of dialogue and quotation marks throughout the story, it made it feel like this was a story that was actually being told to or being relayed to the reader by the character in the story or much more like a diary entry about this section of the characters life. I tend to write with a lot of dialogue because I think that character interaction is a good way to get a sense of characters and their interpersonal relationships any dynamics, but this story had character relationships and dynamics without any quotations or written dialogue, people of course talked, there were words, but nothing said was ever coming from someone’s mouth it was all the internal dialogue of the narrator and seeing this style of writing was really interesting as someone who uses a lot of quotations.
I thoroughly enjoyed Annunciation by Groff. One element of this story that I found the most compelling was the author’s ability to tie in the main character’s imagination. They kept bringing in elements of fantasy to describe the world around them. For instance, when the main character saw the little cottage. To describe how they felt about the cottage, they went into the character’s mind and had them imagining the cottage singing like the fairytales she loved as a child. These repeated insights into the main character’s mind gave the story more dimension. While it was somewhat of a sad story, it added a light to it that I found to be very engaging. This author also did something that I found very interesting. Groff did not use quotations around dialogue. This gave the dialogue an almost mysterious feel as I found myself wondering if we were still in the character’s imagination or not. It was a very interesting style choice and I feel that it fit quite well into this story, especially given how much this character was in their own head. I did not find this to be annoying about this character, in fact, it was very fitting given that they were alone for a good chunk of this story as a result of the circumstances. Overall, I think this author’s flow and style kept this story very interesting and created a certain rhythm of both fantasy and reality that was highly compelling throughout the story.
The story “Annunciation” was a good story but I found myself having a hard time following the writer and keeping with the story. I was drawn into some areas that were intense or action filled but I felt there was many times of just description and observations. I had a hard time following with the timeline of events as it was spread to over a course of a year or so. I do think there was good character development throughout the story which helped with making the characters personable. The conflict is resolved at the end of the story and the narrator builds a life for themself and faces the issues. You can see the narrator also becomes more in touch with their surroundings on the last page and goes into detail describing the cottage and landscape. I felt the ending was a bit abrupt though I didn’t feel that there was closure
I really like the presence of nature in “Annunciation”, I thought it made for some interesting imagery if you viewed the presence of nature as the presence of life, or representative of someone’s home. In the beginning our main character receives flowers from her parents in lieu of them attending her ceremony (flowers from home, in her dreams about running through her hometown nature also features) and her new home with Griselda is blanketed by a huge oak tree, signifying her new life. When Griselda passes, I thought the details about the bamboo roots was really interesting. To me, they signified Griselda herself putting down roots in that home, and tearing up the home to remove the roots pushing through the floor boards also signifies tearing away the metaphorical roots that Griselda put down, eliminating all sign of her presence and character.