Gryphon
Njoya 1
Djibril Njoya
Professor Colleen Dieckmann
English 1102
25 March 2013
Gryphon
Personally, I love short stories. There is something paradoxically satisfying about a good short story, the way it uses far less words than its larger cousins to say just as much, if not more. “Gryphon” one of Charles Baxter’s collection of short stories first published in 1985,is immensely satisfying in just that way. The type of plot of this story is psychological; the time of work is the late twentieth century with a setting in Five Oaks, Michigan. Its characters are Tommy, Miss Ferenczi, Mr. Hibler, Carl Whiteside, Wayne, and Mrs. Mantei. This story is somehow short, but has a different kind of character that many of us would consider unusual. That character is Miss Ferenczi. Miss Ferenczi is a new substitute teacher at a rural community of Five Oaks, Michigan. As her now students get to meet her, she is not just a new teacher; she is also a strange lady who brings them strange yet fascinating lectures. As time goes by, she mesmerizes them with a description of a Gryphon as being that monster animal half bird, half lion that she had heard about them and never seen them until her travel to the outskirt of Cairo, where she will be personally shown gryphon in the cage by an old Egyptian man who worked for a circus.
Njoya 2
Plus other stories about Egyptians’ beliefs and their great exploration history, two of her students, the narrator, Tommy and Carl Whiteside do not believe her. After the short conversation between the narrator and Carl, during which both do not believe all things Miss Forenczi said and the narrator tried to convince Carl that Miss Forenczi could be telling the truth, they will get off the bus without a clear conclusion on whether she was really telling lies. It was not until the narrator pulled a dictionary next to the television stand and opened it to the G’s that he finally discovered the meaning of Gryphon:”variant of
Djibril Njoya
Professor Colleen Dieckmann
English 1102
25 March 2013
Gryphon
Personally, I love short stories. There is something paradoxically satisfying about a good short story, the way it uses far less words than its larger cousins to say just as much, if not more. “Gryphon” one of Charles Baxter’s collection of short stories first published in 1985,is immensely satisfying in just that way. The type of plot of this story is psychological; the time of work is the late twentieth century with a setting in Five Oaks, Michigan. Its characters are Tommy, Miss Ferenczi, Mr. Hibler, Carl Whiteside, Wayne, and Mrs. Mantei. This story is somehow short, but has a different kind of character that many of us would consider unusual. That character is Miss Ferenczi. Miss Ferenczi is a new substitute teacher at a rural community of Five Oaks, Michigan. As her now students get to meet her, she is not just a new teacher; she is also a strange lady who brings them strange yet fascinating lectures. As time goes by, she mesmerizes them with a description of a Gryphon as being that monster animal half bird, half lion that she had heard about them and never seen them until her travel to the outskirt of Cairo, where she will be personally shown gryphon in the cage by an old Egyptian man who worked for a circus.
Njoya 2
Plus other stories about Egyptians’ beliefs and their great exploration history, two of her students, the narrator, Tommy and Carl Whiteside do not believe her. After the short conversation between the narrator and Carl, during which both do not believe all things Miss Forenczi said and the narrator tried to convince Carl that Miss Forenczi could be telling the truth, they will get off the bus without a clear conclusion on whether she was really telling lies. It was not until the narrator pulled a dictionary next to the television stand and opened it to the G’s that he finally discovered the meaning of Gryphon:”variant of
Cited: Study 1 "New books by our advisory editors." Ploughshares 37.1 (2011): 199. Academic OneFile