Blog Entry # 7 (Option no. 2)

On the short stories “The Method” and “Morocco Junction 90210” the narrations are made from the first person point of view of the female characters who also happen to be the protagonist of the story. The narration is done by sequence with no use of flashback and just focusing on the current moment, I also thought that both women are very descriptive about everything and also find time to introduce themselves to the audience. The “Morocco Junction” is different from “The Method” involvement wise, because Minerva is narrating a story from another character, I am actually a bit confuse if she is really the protagonist and what really is her main topic on that narration, the place? The people? The job? Or Eloise? Or the whole Beverly Hills and everything about it. She talks about everything that at some point when I was reading it I thought that she is talking too much or talking to herself too much but I only get that feeling since there is not much dialogue involve.  While on “The Method”, Holly is the protagonist and the story actually revolves around her.

I know most of us like the stories, majority is women, it’s because we can relate to them. The narration has a lot of emotions involve and that’s not a surprise coming from a woman’s point of view. We sympathize along with Minerva about the tragic ending of Eloise and we witness how Holly’s love for Richard turns in to hatred. It is more effective to choose a girl as a protagonist because every one of us especially woman, suffer from gender discrimination. We are all aware of that even in the 40’s and that is why they created the idea of femme fatale. We have that idea in our head that women only play certain roles and obey rules in man’s world so if we put character like Holly it gives us more fatalistic effect and double the danger as compare when a man does it. “Yeah I was going to go far. Right to fucking prison…He sure as hell wasn’t thinking of me, walking away in handcuffs…To think I’d imagined he was really hot for me, wanted me. He hadn’t even seen me. He’d been fucking me and thinking of her... Now he’d see how special I was” (117) who would have thought that a simple girl, an aspiring actress and part time waitress would do such thing only because her heart got played and broken by a guy? Scary isn’t. A real work of noir indeed. Although we know that she commits a crime and kills him we still find ourselves rooting on her side thinking that Richard deserves it but once again, narrators controls and manipulate the audience, we did not even get the chance to know Richard’s side of the story, only Minerva and Mariah, and since Minerva is female the idea of being a victim works on her very well.

 As for the “Morocco Conjunction 90210” the quality of noir reflects on the tragic suicide ending of Eloise, her nightmare became reality when her illegitimate son died and her “precious” jewelries got stolen, the climax reach at the end of the story and I like how there is so much going on and a lot of revelations right after the story ends. The reason why she kill herself, her annual reunion, her college school, she sold all her fancy jewelry to raise her son she put up for adoption, a son that probably doesn’t know who she was, and now that her jewelry got stolen she chose to kill herself than deal with the public humiliation and destroy her family’s great reputation. Beverly Hills, the place itself is what driven her to kill herself. Aside from losing her son, her choice to commit a suicide for a plain and not so important reason is what evil for me, but I guess some people love their images more than their life.  Other than the suicide, I can’t define it as a work of noir, if you take Eloise’s suicide off the story, it will look just like a blog about Beverly Hills or just a journalist covering the glitz and glamour of that place.