The fifth story and another blog

Another blog response

            So I figured it’d be in my best interest to write another blog response considering I accidentally missed one. There are plenty of things that I could write about, but I think I’m going to focus on The Fifth Story by Clarice Lispector.

            First thing I have to say about this story is that it has a weird writing style. While there is sort of a story, there really isn’t much of one, this story is special not because of it’s unique plot, but just the obscure way it is written. For example, the story starts “This story could be called “The Statues”. Another possible title would be the “Killing””.  This actually got my a little intrigued, as the question of statues and killing would somehow have to be linked. These are linked (cockroaches turning to stone, it made sense in the story but for some reason I just can’t describe it) and in a very strange way.

            This story seemed to be just about an obsession with cockroaches in a building (no underlying meaning, stories can just be stories, they don’t have to always symbolize modern sexuality or political overtones), and just wanting the cockroaches in their building gone. Obsession is something that is very easy to get, and I think  it something that everyone goes through. I got obsessed over the dishes in the sink and how they never seem to be clean, despite my constant attempts to clean them.  I could get obsessed like the character in this story and do the same things as they do. Cockroaches crawling through drainpipes, that’s fricken creepy.

            So here is my own little story that I think I can relate to this. A few years ago, my dogs chased a groundhog into a tree. This freaked me out, because after being suspicious about why there was a groundhog in my neighborhood, I found out online that their was a rabies outbreak involving groundhogs in my area. So there I was, with a rabid groundhog, in my yard, in a tree, with my dogs barking at it. I swiftly got the dogs inside, and tried to figure out what to do with the groundhog. I imagined it would come to the door, foaming at the mouth, and ready to attack. I thought about it coming in underneath the house, and then it coming in from the floor. It was a dumb obsession , but it was similar to the obsession with the character in the blog.

            Well anyways, here’s how my fifth story starts. It starts with me complaining about groundhogs J