Scary Stories Treasury

This blog is again on Scary Stories Treasury, or Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. In this post, instead of a summary, or something like that, I'll be doing the conflict and theme. Wonderful Sausage is the short story this time.

The conflict in this is Man vs Man, or it even could be Man vs Society. The butcher of the town, Samuel Blunt, had an argument with his wife and killed her. To hide the murder, he grounded her body up, and buried her bones. After adding a couple indigents to his wife's meat, he displayed it, and she was available to purchase. People of the town bought it, ate it, and loved it. So demand was high for his new "special sausage." That was Man vs Man, now this is the part that gets to Man vs Society. Obviously, because of high demand, and a chance to get money (which is the reason his wife and him were fighting) he saw an opportunity. He began killing plump children, animals, and adults, that came into his shop. Into the grinder, all of them; just like his wife.

I think the theme of the story is two things. There is really nothing since it's a short movie, and a scary story. This will be kind of funny, but then kind of weird.
Try not to fight the ones you love; you'll do things you'll regret later on. Seems a bit odd, but murder is something you might regret, especially if it's your loved one.
The other one is, karma. Karma comes back, eventually. Samuel gets caught in the end...It could be a metaphor for not getting away with something so horrible without a consequence.

Scary Stories Treasury

This short story I will be blogging about this week is, Harold. Again, like the two previous times, this is from the book of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. I forgot to say who the author and illustrator are in the two other blogs, so I'll state them today. The author of all the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series is Alvin Schwartz. He has, over the years, collected numerous stories in several places for his books. The person he is working with who illustrates for the books is Stephen Gammell. By looking at the pictures he has created, they fit well into the story. The creepy/scary vibe it gives off.

Harold is about two men, Thomas and Alfred, who are working at night in a field, scaring away birds. During the day, they tended to their cows. They didn't hate their jobs, but everyday they did the same thing. Their routine became boring, so Thomas got an idea. "Let's make a doll the size of a man," With this, he was thinking of hanging up the doll, to make their jobs easier in the later hours. "It would be fun to make, and we could put it in the garden to scare the birds away."
Alfred agreed, with the exception of making it a bit of a revenge doll. The two men decided it should look like a farmer they both despised, Harold. They made the facial features out to be, as best they could do, Harold. So, sure enough, they had created a scarecrow. They put him out each night, bringing him in during the day to ensure he would not get rained on. Both Alfred and Thomas made fun of the doll, asking it questions like, "How are the crops growing, Harold?" Whenever one was upset, they would take their anger out on him by kicking or punching him. Other times, since they were sick of the stew they had for supper, they'd often smear it on his face.
One night, while the men were eating their stew, and smeared some on Harold's face, he grunted. Of course, they were confused on what the noise was. Thomas was the one who wiped the food on his face, so he told Alfred, the one who questioned it, that it was him. Alfred didn't believe him, for obvious reasons. Thomas was contemplating plans to get rid of the odd scarecrow, but it was a one sided thought.
They left Harold alone for some time, maybe hoping the grunt didn't really come from him and was one of the cows or something. Now and then, he grunted. They debunked it as a rodent that had crawled inside of him, so they continued their vicious ways with him.
Soon, things began getting even weirder with Harold. They both agreed, but quickly brushed it off and thought there really was nothing to be afraid of. One day they were going somewhere and left their hut. Thomas looked back to the hut to look for Alfred, Harold was on the roof of the hut. Thomas was confused since he only saw him and not Alfred.  He watched closely as Harold knelt down only to stretch out bloody skin to dry in the sun.       Summary, character analysis

Goals!

An academic goal for me this quarter is either, teach myself, watch from others, or learn more in class to improve my writing skills. I plan to write more descriptively, use better vocabulary, and learn more about proper punctuation. This is probably the thing I want to achieve the most this quarter, and most likely for the rest of the year. But, for now I focus on just this quarter instead of the rest of the year. I want to do this because I feel as if I can do a lot better on my writing than what I'm doing now, and with just some practice I can and will do so. I think that, even if I don't succeed, I would be learning useful things. I plan on getting there by teaching myself, reading, or during assignments that require paragraphs to be written. Definitely, a lot of practice. I plan to write a lot this quarter, in and out of school.
A personal goal for me would probably have to be a tie between drawing, and controlling my emotions better. Drawing is more of a thing that would be nice to have and to do, since it mostly cheers me up. Although, at times, it could be really frustrating. I look at the drawing and always pick at it, saying the hair could be better, I did bad on the face, and all these different things. I believe that doing better would probably make me less frustrated so I will at least be content with it instead of picking at it.
Controlling my emotions, there are a lot of emotions going on in my brain right now. So many, that even if someone asked what I was feeling, I would have to sit there contemplating which one would be better to say. I know this isn't the easiest thing to control, or may even be impossible to control, but I would like to at least try. With controlling my emotions, I'd be a better person in my opinion. I won't be so, confused. I won't get so easily hurt, offended, or angry with a conversation. Being too sensitive like I am is a difficult thing, even if something little was muttered or said, I assume the worst. I'm really paranoid about people talking about me, so I try to trick myself into thinking that there really isn't a reason for people to speak about me behind my back. It works, for the most part.
Hopefully, all these things will be accomplished! I'm wishing for the best.  

Winter Book: Scary Stories Treasury

Again, another short story from the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series.
This is by far my favorite story of all the books. This short story is titled, "Wolf Girl." It's about a couple who lived where Dry Creek runs into Devil's River in Texas. Mollie, the wife was pregnant after a while of living there. Her husband, John, went on horseback to find their nearest neighbors when her water broke. After he got to their neighbors, they agreed to help them, unfortunately, a storm came along just before they could get going. Along the lines, John had died. The couple who had agreed to help Mollie give birth still went to search for their cabin. They did manage to find it, although it was the next day. When they got to Mollie, she was dead as well. It looked like she gave birth, but they baby could not be found. With the wolf tracks all around, the couple had made the assumption the wolves had gotten to it. Years later, reports began rolling in left and right of the wolves killing animals. It wasn't something serious in these days however (1830's), the thing that was really being reported was the girl like thing running with the wolves. She was seen and hunted after for some while as sighs became reoccurring. Soon, everyone was making stories, wondering, or spreading rumors that this "wolf girl" was really the missing child of deceased Mollie and John Dent.
This story is probably my favorite because of the time, it was the 1830's, which means things weren't as simple as today. Babies would pass away during birth, so would mothers, technology was not how it is today. This is also kind of hard to believe that the wolves raised her as a cub instead of eating her, which I liked since it was less brutal. In my opinion, this story is the best one out of the book, from it's actual stories going on in and around Texas. It's really not something people think about today, wolves, or wolf girls. It seems more of a story from before, which is still really cool to me.

Winter Book: Scary Stories Treasury

I have been reading a complete collection of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, although these are just short stories it really is a great read. It's something for when you're bored, don't really have a good attention span, or maybe just don't have as much time to read an actual book where you have to keep up with the characters to understand what is going on. I'll be doing one blog for one short story.

This is one one of my favorites because of, I guess the story. It's titled, "Clinkity-Clink." It is about an old women who passes away, she has no family or friends. Her neighbors were caring enough to get a gravedigger for her, they have a coffin made, everything they had taken care of for her. The only faulty thing about this, though, is that her eyes were wide open. So, to solve this problem, the neighbors found two silver dollar on her dresser and set them on her eyes to keep them closed. It worked, so the next day a preacher came to say some prayers before her burial. The gravedigger decided to take her silver dollars, not knowing of why they were on her eyelids. Obviously, her eyes opened. He was startled, but still decided to take them anyway. After he did that however, her ghosts haunted him for taking her money. She does various other things as an attempt to get her money back, and make him realize what he did was wrong of him. 

I think why I like this story so much is probably because it's sort of like karma in a way. It's almost as if it's teaching you a lesson: Do not take anything, from the dead or living, it'll come back to haunt you. Well, really not just taking something, doing anything with severe consequences.

As weird as it sounds, I think this little story is cute.