Literary Reflection: The Sniper

Life doesn’t need to be complicated.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”

~Albert Einstein

     Sometimes, the smallest things are the best things. By telling a detailed account of a singular experience, a couple of hours in the life of an individual, “The Sniper” forced me to arrive at the realization that something doesn’t need to be huge, impressive, or grand for it to make an impact. Out of the many lessons that it taught, this one was perhaps the most important to me. The way “The Sniper” told it’s story, the unique way that it employed it’s briefness in order to focus on the smaller actions caught my attention in ways that a longer story never would’ve been able to do. 

      At first, I approached this piece like all of the other pieces I’ve read so far this year: I would read through it normally, and then proceed to suffer through the literary reflection. However, this time, reading through it normally wasn’t really an option. It was just... too short. Too short for any obvious themes to pop up, too short for anything good to reflect on, too short for just about everything I was used to being able to do. I sat there for far too long, thinking about what I could make of this story. It wasn’t as if I had disliked the story. No, it was the exact opposite of that. Logic had said that it would have been a bad story, unable to convey anything significant to the reader. Yet, it somehow managed to do everything that all of the larger stories had done, albeit in a more subtle, hinting way. 

     Finally, it dawned on me. The reason that the author was able to convey the sniper’s story across to the reader so well was because of it’s briefness. If it had been any longer, all of the subtle, hinted emotion, all of the suspense, all of the things that were left up to interpretation and the imagination would have almost certainly disappeared. The story would have grown in size, and it would have developed more, but in return it would have lost all of the elegance and complexity that it once had.

     An excess of detail can be just as detrimental as not including enough detail.

The Power of Friendship

Life is far more difficult without your friends.

“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.”
~Arnold H. Glasgow

      Life can be stressful at times. Despite how inconvenient it might have been for them, it was my friends who helped me when I needed it most. When everything had lined up in exactly the wrong way, and I had given up all hope, it was my friends who helped me past the trouble.

     At no other time had this essential truth of life been more obvious to me than at a time last year, when a near-perfect series of rather unfortunate coincidences occurred, and life rapidly turned upside down on it’s head.

     It had been a rough couple of days. Life outside of school was starting to get busy, a new term had just started, and a dentist appointment that I had forgotten about did nothing to help the matter. It was at the perfect timing as well—not quite late enough for me to miss school entirely, not quite early enough for me to still be able to attend the class I needed to be at the most—math. Normally, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem, since I could just ask the teacher for an explanation of the homework, and another day to do it. However, this time, it was different. I had forgotten to ask the teacher during the day, there was very little online on how to solve the problems, and what little time I had in the next few days needed to be used for doing other that I had homework. It was too late in the day to email the teacher, either. With no other options in hand, I turned to the only thing that I had left—my friends. Wearily, I turned on my iPad and wrote a quick message a one of my friends, and sat back, hoping for a reply. Barely a minute had passed before I got one.

     It can be frustrating at times to explain something to someone who’s completely clueless about the subject. But, despite the annoyance, despite the endless frustration, despite the fact that they used time that could’ve been used for doing something else, my friends didn’t let me down. Even though they knew they probably wouldn’t get anything from helping me, they still did it anyway. Because that’s what a true friend does.

    Friends will always be there for you.

Literary Reflection: “Through the Tunnel”

Why perseverance matters.

“Perseverance is a great element of success. If you knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.”

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    With enough hard work and persistence, nearly anything becomes possible. The short story, “Through the Tunnel”, taught me the lesson that you can accomplish nearly anything with enough tenacity and perseverance, if that something truly means a lot to you. This short story manages to show in a clear and relatively straightforward way about how someone managed to succeeded at doing something we all think we’ve done, yet rarely actually manage to do: perseverance toward, and eventually achieving a certain end goal, despite all of the hardships and setbacks that may impede our progress.

Literary Reflection: “The Gift of the Magi”

We can’t control the world.

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

~Cormac Mccarthy

      There are things in the world that we can’t control. The “Gift of the Magi” taught me that valuable lesson; forced me to arrive at the realization that sometimes, even though we may have never done anything wrong, the world simply just isn’t kind to us. Reading this short story challenged me to think about misfortune and randomness in a way that I had never quite done before; it’s fascinating plot events and ending pushing me to ponder and think, not about why something happens, but instead about what to do when the world works the way it works.

The Power of Place

Finding peace, and focus.

”Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

~Joseph Campbell

       Oftentimes, when things get out of control, it is only in the smallest places where we can find peace and focus. For me, the only place that truly creates that feeling inside my brain is the chair in my room. When life gets chaotic, when my mind gives up and stops functioning in any logical way, and everything starts to fall apart, it is only that chair that calms and pieces together the broken, shattered remnants of my mind. At no other time had this effect been more obvious than a couple weeks ago, when I had returned back home after a long day, and realized that I still had a lot of homework left to do.