Trifles

Trifles is a very funny story, and very ironic. "Trifles" are insignificant things. And the whole time the men are searching for clues, they think the women are concerned with minutia and such. "Oh, look how cute you ladies are with your quilting. Ha, they're wondering about her bread! How adorable." During these times, and despite the men's search, they find no clues. All the while, the ladies--concerned with these trifles--unravel the entire mystery. Brilliant.
In the end, the women choose to keep their discoveries to themselves. I think this is a poor moral choice--because, in my eyes, they've just become accomplices to murder--but I understand why they did it. They're proud of Mrs. Wright, perhaps even a tad envious. Women of this time period had little to no rights, and were more or less bound to their husband/family. Now, Mrs. Wright is free, and the other women are happy that she was able to free herself; it gives them hope that one day, maybe they can be free as well.
Not a bad little play, I think.

The Yellow Wallpaper

So. This story. Yea. I first read this about a year ago, and when I saw it on our syallbus, I was actually a little creeped out. (It's following me...) This story sticks with me.
It's awesome--in a really dark, gruesome way. We're basically watching a woman's mind turn to scrambled eggs. Brilliantly written, anyway; it's like the author herself was going insane while writing it. The unnamed narrator fixates on this yellow wallpaper. The words she uses to describe the paper are, for lack of a better word, horrifying. She says it is an unclean, smouldering color, bordering on revolting, with some places colored a "sickly sulphur tint." The pattern she describes as committing artistic sin (which is a beautiful choice of words), and says that if one follows the curves of the pattern long enough they--wait for it--commit suicide... Who the hell thinks of something like that? Then she obsesses over these figures she keeps seeing behind the pattern. She thinks the figure is trapped and that she needs to free it. She's certifiable at this point.
After reading through the entire story, I even felt crazy. The imagery was beautiful; it could not have been more realistic and dark. Possibly more macabre than the movie Se7en. I may be committing literary blasphemy by saying this, but I think this story is darker and more pyschotic than anything Poe ever wrote.
(Forgive me, literature gods)

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

This story was pretty funny. I love irony and sarcasm, and Twain is a master of both. I mean, I don't know much about frogs but I'm pretty sure that you don't have to teach them to jump. They're pretty good at figuring that out themselves. The character of Simon Wheeler was--interesting. He's not someone with whom I'd like to spend a lot of time, but he's definitely someone to gossip about. I recall the scene where the stranger asks what is in his box. He replies "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it an't—it's only just a frog." What sort of crazy answers a question like that? Come on, Wheeler. And he thinks that every bit of minutia is fascinating. It's not. The story he tells is far-fetched and probably mostly bullshit.
I've been in situations like the narrator: hearing a story you find to be an absolute snooze-fest. You don't wanna be rude about it, but there's not really an etiquette established for telling someone that they're boring. If I were in the narrator's shoes, I think I would have done exactly what he did.
Twain gives very little description of the setting, but it wasn't difficult to imagine the dirty, rundown bar in which they were talking. Or when Smiley stomps around in the swamp looking for a frog for the stranger--which I thought was a very funny scene.