Adit K's The Short Story Blog

I feel like a story we've read this semester that connects to our current situation is "Speech Sounds" by Olivia Butler. In both cases, society is ravaged by an illness that affects individuals' ability to communicate with each other. One achieves directly and the other indirectly. Coronavirus has prevented us from truly speaking to anyone outside of our immediate families. Society has been halted, sports canceled, economy suffering, streets emptied, all indications of a collapsed community. While it hasn't reached the extremity described in "Speech Sounds" there are definitely parallels.  While we see a lot of similarities between these diseases in terms of their effect, I think the biggest connection is how we distinguish the people who are afflicted and the people who aren't. The speechless are almost considered subhuman, shown by Rye's reaction to Obsidian's incoherence. "He made the same sound over and over the way some speechles...

Jenny Zhang's "The Evolution of My Brother" is a short story about the growth of Jenney's younger brother and the effect it has on her as the narrator. Zhang makes a point to show Jenney's lack of growth while demonstrating her brother's to the fullest. For example, in the opening paragraph, the two have a playful exchange that resembles that of siblings at a similar age.  “Eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it.” I backed him into a corner with the coffee end of the candle pointed at his mouth. “Stop it, Jen-naay,” he said, stepping back, “or I’ll enable my force shield to turn your bones into dirt” (Zhang 1). However, as readers, we know that the age gap between the two is about 9 years which is clearly not reflected in Jenney's behavior. These are common occurrences for her and there was even a time when her lack of maturity and patience caused her to lash out a hold a knife to her own brother's neck.  Zhang's recurrence back to the theme of...