RESPONSE FOR 11/5

RESPONSE FOR 11/5

I’m not really sure what was going on in Dinty Moore’s “Son of Mr. Green Jeans.” There were a lot of facts, and I gathered that the speaker related to them in some way, like how he was a victim of abuse and turned to drugs, along with Lauren Chapin (Moore 394). He threw seemingly random facts into the piece; like that he had a vasectomy. I do not think that whatever technique he is using here works. I was distracted and had to go back and reread parts that I automatically glossed over because I felt as if they were unimportant. We only get bits and pieces of the speaker’s life, like his drunken father, his drug abuse, his vasectomy, marriage, and child. But none of those facts help me to understand the purpose of this piece, or what I’m supposed to gain from reading it.

I thought it was interesting how Ryan Van Meter wrote “If You Knew Then What I Know Now” mainly in the future tense. It felt as if the speaker was talking to himself, though I am not sure that is actually the case, since the speaker remains constant and does not seem to change, while the main character grows up and matures. I thought this worked really well in the beginning, when he writes, “…don’t look at Mark. Don’t look at Jared…  If you do end up in a group with Mark and Jared… I don’t know what to tell you” (Van Meter 520). This sounds just like the way I speak to myself when confronting a difficult situation, and it was really relatable.

The only thing from “Son of Mr. Green Jeans” I would be interested in using in my own writing is the similarities between the characters interests and the way he feels and views himself. I think it shows how the character thinks and what he feels instead of the author telling us. From “If You Knew Then What I Know Now,” I would mimic the way Van Meter writes, so it sounds as if the character is talking to himself, because it doesn’t sound strange.