Tobias Wolff and Rick Bragg Readings

On Being a Real Westerner
I feel there is a condescending tone in Wolff's description of himself finding the rifle the be a "necessity" for being a Westerner. I guess Wolff is looking back at him himself as naive. I have a bunch of questions popping up as i read this. What year does this take? I guess a long time ago, because he aspires to be a "Westerner". Also, who is Roy? Is he a weird neighbor, older brother, or dad? And is there something wrong, like mentally, with Roy, why does he whine? How old is Tobias Wolff? Similar to our class discussion, I agree that when Wolff describes himself admiring his rifle poses, it reminds me of the pictures that surfaced on the internet of the Virginia Tech shooter. It begins to get really disgusting as Wolff describes his happiness as he stalks the people passing his window, with his gun. I can fully picture the scene, happy, unsuspecting people, and a dumb kid with a gun; I am waiting for and accident to happen. When it gets tot he part where he wants to shoot something, It is scary, I think he might of actually shot a person if there had been one walking by. I find it so ironic that he tells his mom that there is a dead squirrel, and then continue to describe himself as an animal, after he just killed an animal. Even though the he feels remorse in the end I kinda feel that I just read a memoir of a future serial killer. Even though I found this memoir to be very gruesome, I preferred this one, it was able to hold my attention.


100 Miles per Hour, Upside Down and Sideways
Introduction is great. Bragg describes the feelings he felt toward his car, and makes it comprehensible for his audience through describing it as "an approaching storm", something everyone has seen. I like how Bragg transitions from paragraph 1 to paragraph 2 as he uses the same reference, slingshot. As Bragg goes on to describe the car, his detail is vivid and makes it easy to "see" the car. Bragg's praise for his car seems a bit obsessive; especially how he refers to it as "her" and only lets one person drive. Bragg's story is pretty typical, he is over taken by the power he gets from the car and ends up wrecking. It's funny, as Bragg was describing the crash scenario, and before it was mentioned, I was thinking he was really lucky, everything was in the right spot for him not to get hurt. Making Connections: I think the car not only fulfilled Bragg's "High school status", but the work he put forth was a lot and to be able to see the result of his hard work, must be really rewarding.