The Two Short Stories

            Both of the short stories, The Lawsuit and A Long-Term Plan, were well-picked stories for us to read as a class.  I thought both stories were interesting enough to want to read, and both kept you reading.  Personally, I liked The Lawsuit better, though I thought A Long-Term Plan was more ironic and had a clearer moral and storyline than the Lawsuit.

                  What I enjoyed about The Lawsuit was that it was a very human story.  It also showed what strife can come about when a man marries more than one woman, and how that strife affects all members of the family.  But maybe what I enjoyed the most was that the story had a HAPPY ending!  Most of the stories we have been reading do not have any sort of happy ending, but this one was different.  Even though so much has happened to the main character in the story, he moves on with his life, and even forgives the woman that caused so much strife in his family.  The story was very realistic in that nothing was perfect (in fact, everything was very imperfect), but it also underlined the timeless message of forgiveness.

                  I found the second story’s title, A Long-Term Plan, to be particularly amusing.  The fact that the main character was basically a lazy, selfish man with absolutely no plan for his future totally contradicted the title.  The character mistreated others, especially his mother, and abused the generosity of all his friends, living parasitically off everyone around him.  Then when his mother died and all of what little money he had disappears, he “wins the lottery,” so to speak, and becomes a millionaire.  But a little while later he dies, spending his last moments in loneliness.  The moral of this story seemed to be that one will never have a happy ending- even if he wins a million bucks- if he spends his life devoted to self.