Difficulty paper
Difficulty Paper: “Near Taurus” In many respects, “Near Taurus” was a mystery text that perplexed my thought process as I read this masterpiece. For me, as an average reader, I found this piece to be a very difficult to understand; so much so that I can say this is one of the most difficult works I have ever read. The grammar, the stylistic language, the lack of information made the story that much harder to comprehend. However as I read this text multiple times to understand what is being conveyed, I am still grasping new information by reading in a different perspective.
Here is what I came to understand of this story. Let’s take a look at the very first line of this piece, “After the rains had come and gone we went down the reservoir” (13). This first line gives us an indication that this is an outside scenery and is beautifully introduced to us readers. The author Jumps straight into the scene and it made me contemplate as to where this setting could be at. I then looked back at the title and it hit me that this was outdoors, maybe on a mountain and the characters where looking to the stars. Taurus”, one of the constellations of the zodiac, is the main topic of this story. There are two people who are looking to the sky and are looking for the Taurus, but see other ones like Orion (13). The Taurus is usually seen in the winter season and is established when the boy says “the body won’t show until the winter” (13). Nevertheless, even though the story was very short, it has still a lot that is uncovered and many passages that left me discombobulated.
Initially, the narrator starts to introduce the characters in this piece, stating “Our voices were high”his, mine; soft, bright” (13). Then, like it was a bad habit, drops the characters description and traits. Why? Is it not important for us readers to grasp who and what the characters are like? Even during the end of the text, the narrator states about the boy in the story, “l could tell you his name. I could and would not” (13).
Perhaps, it is done this way because it leads us readers to look for the surroundings and the setting of the story to make our own interpretations. During the end of this story, the narrator after talking about an incident with the boy, who was most likely teenage lovers with the narrator at the time, Jumps to the future and says “He died, that boy. Light-years! Ages and ages. And here I am: a mother, witness, a raiser of a boy’ (13). The style and grammar and even the word choice in this line was very intriguing and confused me.
When the narrator said “light years” and then “ages and ages” was interesting because she Just mentioned that the boy passed away. I felt that she still had some feeling towards this person, and it even made believe that the boys was the father of the boy she mentioned in that line. I was also confused at when she said she was a “witness. ” What was she referring too? Was it the Taurus or did she witness love? Love because I believe this story is a love story because of the word choices of the narrator and scenery depicted in this story.
Nonetheless this word choice chosen by the narrator I believe is fascinating but can confuse us average readers. Unlike many books that I nave read over the years, I believe this piece was very difficult and interesting at the same time. Even though the was less than a page, less than 300 words, I believe it said so much without saying much, which is unbelievable! The word play, the stylistic language and the lack of information was the primary ause of the difficult understanding of the text when reading it the first couple of times.
However as I continued to break this seemingly unbreakable text, I started to look at it in a different perspective. I then understood as to what this piece meant, and the title played a great role. Furthermore, the way the author chose not to introduce any real information about the characters and left us, the readers, to determine as to what we understand about the scene and setting is fascinating to me. This piece unbolted my mind and made me become a better reader I believe.
